More Content Talk

Everyone loves to help others, or at least they realize they should pretend to. Caring is good, according to most people you meet. If more people cared then the world would seemingly be a much better place...or so the story goes. But what is the science of this thing we call empathy? In this episode of More Content Talk I take a look at how our brain is very choosy about what it decides to care about, so choosy that forcing oneself to care too much can, in fact, have the exact opposite effect. As with most of our emotions, empathy is something we feel because of various chemicals being released in the brain. But we are not programmed to feel one particular way for extended periods of time. It is much more normal for human emotion to fluctuate based on whatever circumstance it is exposed to. Staying in one emotional state for an extended period of time can cause the mind unrest and can really unsettle one's daily routines. This is quite worrisome considering the large number of jobs out there for the various caregivers: nurses, teachers, coaches, babysitters, etc. Just think of how much abuse of power may very well be caused by this sensation of empathy overload. It is for this reason that it is so important for us to practice self care, to indulge in some of the things that only we love. If we embrace our personal desires, within reason and without harming others of course, we can prevent empathy overload and live better lives. We should stop blaming others for being too selfish all the time. Sure, there are people who deserve this label, but most of them get paid to sit around of their duffs thinking of ways to spread false information. There is nothing wrong, however, with taking some time to enjoy life in your own unique way, outside of what others may wish for you. So we see that selfishness can indeed be a virtue, if you are in to that sort of thing. Of course, being a nihilist, I am not concerned with virtue so much. Although I will say that feeling better about oneself is always quite nice, regardless of what you do or do not believe in. Being at ease with one's desires has many benefits. It is also a great way to prevent yourself from descending into hedonism because you will not be obsessed with what you do not have if you allow yourself to indulge in moderation. You should really start doing more for yourself if it is your wish to help others for in order to help others you must be a happy, complete person. You cannot help others when you are in need of help yourself. Sometimes the help we need is not some sort of rescue, but a kind of respite from the reality we create for ourselves. We do not need to escape reality, but we do need to unwind from it, making it a bit less serious along the way. If we can allow ourselves to enjoy life again, perhaps we will be able to make it a bit more useful for future generations and for ourselves as well. So try to be a little more selfish today: take that nap, make that recipe, listen to that one song you love that everyone else hates, be the real you for once and enjoy it goddamn it! There is too little time to waste to sit around feeling sorry for yourself, feeling sorry for the world, sorry for life... Instead of being sorry, instead of pitying this life, let us be thankful for it. Let us embrace the good parts of life as well as the bad. We all know how much you care. You have long since proven that. So try to show that same love and care the next time you look in the mirror. Remember that you are a person and that you require certain emotional upkeep that only you can take care of. No one else can do this for you because only you really know what you need and want. If you do start caring more for yourself, you will find that all of that empathy you once had will start to return at a rapid pace for you will no longer feel the need to shut out the bad parts of life. You will finally have the strength one needs to overcome the sorrow. You must be careless to care more.

A group of bipartisan senators, or as I like to call them, morons, decided that it would be a good idea to draw up an infrastructure plan that does not increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans, as many democrats, including Joe Biden, had previously promised. This failure will does not bode well for the democrat's hopes of regaining the White House in four years. It probably would not have been such a big deal if the publication Pro Publica had not recently released a report on the twenty-five richest Americans and how little they pay in taxes every year. It was found in the report that these ridiculously wealthy people do not pay anywhere near the amount of yearly taxes that the average working American pays. The average American gives a whopping thirty percent of their income back to the government in the form of taxation every year, while multi-billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, and many more pay only 15.8% of their earned income in yearly taxes. There were even some years where these super rich elites did not pay an taxes...at all. That is right, it is perfectly legal for the extremely wealthy to get exempted from all taxation simply by pointing to the fact that they did not get a return on their investment. In fact, this was the main excuse given by the wealthy classes for not paying more taxes on their inordinate sums of wealth. It is also worth noting that these so-called employers laid off an estimated eight million people during the pandemic. That is eight million less people that they have to give a yearly salary, yet they just cannot seem to find the extra cash to give to the government every year. Of course these wealthy aristocrats have also been pressured to increase wages, which some of them have done, only to make up for their loss in income by causing the artificial inflation that you are seeing right now. They also pulled this same trick during the 2008 housing bubble and the dot com bust of 2000. Several businesses have already been caught price gouging, the practice of artificially inflating the cost of goods and services. Albertsons, which owns Safeway and various other grocery store chains, was caught artificially inflating prices during the onset of the pandemic and were later ordered to lower prices in California toward the end of that year. A gas station was also recently caught inflating the cost of gas to seven dollars a gallon, well above the four dollar a gallon average we see in most states. Amazon sellers were recently caught doing the exact same thing, and billionaire Bezos has done little to address the problem. There was also the PPE scandal where sellers of emergency covid equipment were selling at ridiculously high prices. We should all know by now that companies, especially monopolies, work this way and we should take measures to prevent it. But instead of actually solving problems, democrats are currently cow tailing to the wealthy classes and allowing them to escape all responsibility for the mess they have made. Are democrats ever going to stop sucking on the teat of billionaires? Not likely. Instead I see a pretty spineless future on the horizon, where politicians of every stripe line up to receive their corporate welfare check before licking the boots of criminal chief executive officers. The republicans have nothing to offer either; they helped to kill any hopes of a real infrastructure bill along with the democrats. They are acting as if they are different, but these politicians all are trying to get rich off of the asshole wealthy classes, while leaving normal people behind. You simply cannot trust American politicians to work in the interest of the people. Instead, it is one excuse after another. Meanwhile, I have to listen to billionaires whine about tax increases that I already know have no chance of passing. I suppose people would rather live vicariously through the wealthy than have anything for themselves.

In case you happened to miss it, Congress is in session and my goodness is it a huge mess in there. It is amusing that unity was the initial sounding board for both sides of the aisle, both of them crying out loud about their superior abilities to make deals in complex situations, to negotiate when the cards are stacked against them, to triumph when the odds are not in their favor. But, in reality, what deals have been made that benefit the people as a whole. The civil rights of poor black communities are being stripped from them. Idiocy continues to be taught as historical fact. Transgender people have lost serious ground on their right to be recognized as people. Hell, we could not even get a commission together to investigate the January sixth Capitol riots. What on earth are we thinking here? Is everyone but me asleep? Do people realize what is at stake? You must deliver on your promises in America so that you can have something to stand by on election day. Helping to get people out of the pandemic is a commendable accomplishment, but that is only if you view Donald Trump as the sole cause of the pandemic and I know that at least half of the nation, probably more, do not believe that. So, really, when President Biden begins with his progression on the pandemic during his presidency, all Trump has to do is take credit for it. His followers will believe him outright, while others may give he and Biden partial credit. Long story short, that is not a strong platform going into to 2022. Democrats have still failed to convince the Latino voters that they are a reliable party and they are scoring lower than usual in the black community because of missed opportunities like these. The now entirely moderate republican congress has also done nothing to address the immigration crisis, but continues to employ outdated policies to secure the border. You would think that a good politician would at least care about their party's image, but the Democrats seem to fail at this like no other. Many voters are also frustrated that the Democrats do not work together more as a party, that there is no clear message coming from the party and that people are not even sure what to expect from them, apart from a whole lot of empty promises. The lack of urgency you see from Congress on these serious issues is what gives you politicians like Trump, who at least argue with passion. Instead we have to listen to a bedtime story told to us by the same cast of characters. "Sorry kids," the democrats say in perfect unison, "maybe we'll do something for you next time around". Maybe my ass. There is never a next time; nothing is ever passed in full. We always end up with some odd, bastardized version of the original plan and even when we do get that it is constantly under threat. Can you truly state that it is wise to continue on this golden path to nowhere? Or are you finally ready to admit that sometimes taking the initiative is the answer? It really is either go big or go home here, especially if you are barely hanging on by a thread in the beginning. The democrats have not capitalized on this opportunity they were given. They are falling into the same mistake of blaming their base and therefore alienating them, perhaps even driving them to the other side. It is easy to constantly say "be patient" when you are not currently struggling. There is no sense of urgency for you when you are comfortable. The terror does not set in until it is too late, until all hope is lost. We cannot simply leave our bold new ideas for a better world to rot because we have returned to some semblance of normalcy. It is a new normal that we are living in and with that we should work to create a new world. We should continue to on our quest for civil rights for all Americans. We cannot be bullied by gerrymandering and conspiracy theories. We have to stay focused and regain our rights in full before it is too late. Democrats must fight for what is right now, not later. 

Comedy is great when it is funny, but when it is dull, it is perhaps the most boring thing that one can experience. Watching bad comedy is like watching a train wreck in real time. You start to feel bad for the comedian at first; you think to yourself, "wow, poor guy is stinking up the place; maybe I'll give him a courtesy laugh or two just so he'll shut up and get off the stage". But what happens when that terrible comedian refuses to leave the stage? What if that subpar comedian grew so accustomed to your courtesy laughs that they actually started to believe that they were the funniest person alive? What if expressing distaste for a particular comedian's style or material became taboo and milquetoast comics came on stage demanding respect from complete strangers? What if the entire industry of popular comedy became about stroking the egos of popular comedians instead of delivering quality entertainment to its audience? If all that happened, you would probably stop going to comedy shows. You may even start to find it difficult to tune in to the latest sitcom. You may start to notice how costly going to the movies is: the snacks, the tickets, the inevitable dinner or dessert after the fact, all so you can take in a comedy that really wasn't that funny to begin with. You may even start to think that any idiot with microphone, a patreon and a few million bucks could be a standup comedian these days. Things may become so bad that you could realize that your jokes are funnier than what a lot of these hacks are putting out there. After that, you might say to yourself, "you know, if these movies and jokes are going to be so bad, they should at least be more diverse; there should at least be a few people who look like me on the stage if I have to pay for such crappy entertainment". Of course you would be right...about everything. It is your money after all and you should be allowed to use that money in a way that you see fit. Only a hack entertainer would ever fault you for this. As an entertainer, I know that the audience pays my salary. If you all do not care for what I put out there, then I look for ways to appeal to you that are different from what I generally find to be humorous. This does not mean I change my opinions; it simply means that I am providing the audience with a product that they prefer. I am making a conscious choice not to be selfish. The grumpy old comedians of today, however, think that you should come to their shows and laugh at them simply because they have longstanding reputations of being funny. Names like Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Burr, Dave Chapelle, and Bill Maher have basically turned into comedy corporate brands. They have ceased to be funny; many of them have completely stopped telling jokes altogether, yet they are still revered in comedy circles because they received rave reviews twenty, thirty or even as much as forty years ago. In other words, these people have had their time in the sun and that time has passed; but they still linger around like a pair of old dirty socks that you just don't have the energy to toss out. These grumpy comedians go around shaming anyone who does not worship the ground they walk on. They get irritated when people don't laugh at their jokes. "It's funny," they cry to yet another silent full house, "laugh at me like you did in the eighties!" Then they take to social media and cry to their fans that the "woke" left is cancelling them. Eventually the end up on Fox News talking about the days of old when everyone loved their jokes; you know, the good old days when their jokes were still relevant and edgy. These old comedians do not understand that audiences change; they grow old, pass on and are replaced by new, younger audiences. This only comes as a surprise to entertainers who are so self-absorbed that they never really saw their audience as people, but as a paycheck. These types of entertainers will never learn to give their audience what they want. They only take.

Americans are not impressed with Republicans...or Democrats. This probably comes as on surprise to the reader. Most of you that I have spoken with share similar feelings of distrust when it comes to the big two. They have continually failed to deliver on the promises they make. Of course bills are signed into law, orders are decreed and business goes on as usual, but that is probably not what you voted for. Sure, a compromise here or there can be expected...if they are sparse enough that is. However, America is a nation that seems to prioritize compromise over action, status quo over change, speeches over rights...This has created a great deal of political neglect. We are not treated by the political establishment as if we matter. Everyone is well aware of this. And so a kind of mass exodus from the two parties has occurred. Now members of both political parties are beginning to realize how much of a sham partisan politics can be, especially when all the competitors attend the same stuffy universities. It becomes quite boring and, dare I say it, unfulfilling to watch the same lot go at it over who will cut required programs this week or who will overtax the middle class the next. The least that you can do is not be a part of it all, but, at the same time, you do not want to become apathetic because you know that apathy is what got us all into this mess in the first place. We cannot simply become careless when it comes to politics. The recent riots and abuses of power demonstrate how, in a democracy, it is really up to the people to maintain the peace. But this is not done with weapons. You cannot scare away political foes with arms when they are so readily available that anyone could have one; such a thing is an act of futility like a fish writhing on dry land, hoping that life will somehow find it again. More Americans are joining the Independent party, but not all of these people are liberals like Bernie Sanders; some of them lean to the left when voting while others lean to the right. They are composed of a new call for a less strict, more secular conservatism and a more socially progressive liberalism. So, do not think for one moment that these people agree on very much, aside from the fact that they despise America's political culture of lies, deception and snobbery. You can always fall back on that in America today if you are looking for common ground: something is very wrong with the way the government operates and everyone is well aware of it. I knew that the independent party would grow, largely due to the press it has received because of Bernie Sander's two unsuccessful bids for president. The media did everything they could to mock Sanders out of the fight, maligning him on Saturday Night Live and really not taking him very seriously throughout his entire run. However, the same media, the one that Donald Trump pretends to hate so much, was and still is absolutely infatuated with Donald Trump, covering him almost non stop even after the orange man was out on his orange can. Such one sided coverage may not be conspiratorial; it doesn't have to be. It is simply part of the culture of the political scheme to exclude those who are branded outsiders and anyone who talks about treating human beings with a little decency is automatically a horrible person in this particular political scheme. Because of shenanigans like that, where the buffoon is boosted to the top, while those with new ideas are shouted out of the discussion, a growing number of individuals are classifying themselves as unaffiliated. This is the ultimate rejection of partisanship, the realization that nothing will ever really get all that better unless you expose the charade. At this stage you are basically weighing the two parties, seeing which one screws up the most at any particular moment. I personally tend to lean liberal because Trump did not impress me...at all. Sure, he talks about helping blacks, but what has he done? They're all talk. 

Well, Jeff Bezos has finally done it; he has cured mental disorders. That's right, all of them. How? With two day shipping of course, and all for the low, low price of...just shut the hell up and get in the closet already! The big executives at Amazon have been working round the clock to give you a safe space for your next mental crisis. That's right, if you work at Amazon, which no one really wants to do, but many people are being forced to do because boomer politicians produce quality jobs like horses produce quality dung. Doesn't that just sound amazing? I mean, just think of it, you too can run inside a cube and beg for mercy while some crazed billionaire toys with your emotions; it's like the movie Saw, but this time you are playing the game! This is all super fun technological stuff folks. We should all be in awe of the innovative genius that surely went into coming up with this. Word has it there are even fancy cool digital technologies included; that's right, your very own computerized psychotherapist! Because who needs a real human being to understand you when you could just talk to a computer screen? Hopefully it can prescribe medication; then you will never have to make physical contact with anyone, just like the boys in corporate always wanted. Seriously though, how freaking creepy is this! Is Jeff Bezos Jigsaw or something? What the hell dude? Who thinks of such idiotic ideas? And how much did this failure of an idea cost to make? How many hours were wasted coming up with this white nonsense? How much money was spent? The very thought of it proves my point about the wealthier classes. Sure, they may be rich, but the intelligence just is not there. Only in America could money be wasted in such grandiose fashion. This was essentially a pep talk in a box, except without the pep because it was all done by a damn computer. How much more impersonal can you possible get? You may as well start herding employees in like cattle and allowing them to graze in the field during lunch for crying out loud. Do billionaires believe that mental health issues are like demons that can be extracted with various prayers? Perhaps there is a mental health exorcist in one of the computer programs in this mental health cubicle. Shut yourself in a room and all your worries will soon go away. Sage advice, if you are someone who is dealing with prisoners of war. Why is this even allowed to happen? Shouldn't there be procedures in place to prevent stoned billionaires from showering us with their idiotic side hobbies. Yes Jeff, we know that you could probably help people with mental problems; you have enough money after all. But is this really the way you want to do it? Can't you just give some money to a homeless shelter or something? Anything normal would be fine pal. This has to be the worst age for worker improvements to be occurring. Every time you tell one of these tech giants to do something human they throw a robot at you. "Sorry, humanity does not compute! Does not compute!" I wonder if they can give you artificially intelligent lobotomies, maybe some eletro shock therapy. Hell, why no? We're already half way there at this point. It sounds like a billion dollar idea. Shut the workers up so you can have another billion dropped in your lap. That is the Amazon way! This is a freaking clown show. All I do in this episode is hate on Jeff Bezos, Amazon and this whole ignorant response to mental health, as if it is some blemish that one can just wipe away. But that is what everything must be to an elitist pig like Bezos. You certainly will not find me lining up for this new cure. Thankfully, after much bad press, Amazon has eliminated the program, for now anyway. The miracle mental health phone booths are currently being used to deal with consumers who return items too frequently. Perhaps a bit of time in the Bezos space tube will teach you a lesson about returning a latex thong the night after Furcon. Do you want to play a game?  

Friends was an awful all white television program that ran during the 1990s. The show was so cheesy and corny that it developed a huge following amongst cheesy and corny people, of which there are many. So now "Friends" is considered the holy grail of white comedy, a bunch of losers with no ambition hanging out in their apartment and crying about the various troubles they face. Everyone else may love that kind of "humor", but it just is not my thing. I have always loathed the show "Friends" because it is completely detached from reality, which Hollywood constantly claims it is the kind of portraying. There is nothing real about the show at all. But what is most unreal about the show is that they never once encounter any black people, at all. The show follows the classic put upon white person narrative. It follows a bunch of lazy underachievers who have been handed everything in life, yet somehow still feel that they have the worst lives in the world. I mean, what is Monica going to do now that she has to choose which designer dress to put on today? How will Phebe go on knowing that she must tell quirky jokes with a dumb smile on her face every episode? How will Ross woo whatever girl he is desiring this week? And why has the world been so unkind to Joey, an out of work actor who seemingly has no income whatsoever, yet is somehow able to afford an apartment in Manhattan? The character of Joey is particularly offensive to me. I know what it is like to be a struggling actor and, trust me, rich people are the last ones to befriend you, let alone invite you to hang out in their upscale Manhattan apartments. The character of Joey is symbolic of ignorance to me. People meet characters like Joey on television and they find them amusing, but when the same people meet real life Joeys their first reaction is disgust followed by complete disrespect. The show is basically a slap in the face to real struggling artists because struggling to eat is not a fun romp in the park where catchy tune chime in every time someone is in trouble. The show trivializes life; it is about much more than the obvious racist undertones. It is not easy for women to make it like the female characters on "Friends" make it, all of them somehow finding great success in the job market, and able to support themselves. For most of the show's run, these women are single and sexually active, yet they never have kids and rarely is the topic of birth control even brought up. Where are the episodes about terminated pregnancy or STDs that would inevitably come from leading such a lifestyle? Maybe all the women are sterile and come with advanced vaginal cleaning systems. Who knows? The point is that the show creates this odd alternate reality where you can have the best of the party single life, while at the same time making the salary of a corporate executive. None of the people on the show ever do any work. They kind of flounce through life, bouncing from paycheck to paycheck with no real thought whatsoever and everything always works out in the end. It worked out for these white people so well that they ended up living in an all white neighborhood without any black friends in a portion of New York, Manhattan, that as of 2019 had a population of a quarter million black people. A quarter million black people in the town your prime time show takes place in and there is not one black person that ever makes an appearance on the damn show? And now on top of that I am supposed to say that this is not racist? It's obviously racist. The casting director did not want to screw with the white purity of the show so they made up some bullshit excuse, essentially implying that Manhattan is too nice for black people or some nonsense. You can see how I would be irritated by this comment because black people make up a large population of the entire state of New York. Had she never made this dumbass comment, this episode of More Content Talk would have never happened. Blame her. 

Paul Mooney once did an interview entitled "Too Black for Hollywood". It is a funny piece in the usual Mooney style, but it also touches on how his style of comedy was never really accepted by the vast majority of people. Mooney was able to make a career for himself and lived comfortably for most of his life, but this was largely because he remained true to his roots, never really opting to spend large amounts of money outside of the black community. He lived in black neighborhoods and spent his money their his whole life. He also went into great detail about how most black entertainers simply do not do this, how the first thing minority entertainers do is abandon the communities they grow up in. These minority entertainers boast about how they came from nothing and made themselves into something. The "nothing" they refer to coming from is a just another cheap shot directed at poor people. In the minds of minority celebrities, not getting paid millions of dollars means that you are a loser; they are just like Donald Trump in that sense and it should come as no surprise that so many of them were willing to abandon poor people of color all because Trump threw them some damn tax breaks. I will never forget that. I will not allow people to forget that these fake ass "pro black" celebrities sucked the dick of a white man so they could make more money, and leave people like me to rot in poverty. I have no love for traitors. These minority celebrities are always the first ones to hop on every movement created by black people, not because they agree with the movement, but because they want to profit off of it. And minority celebrities have profited greatly from the struggle of poor minorities who look just like them and have the same talent as them, but just were not chose by white producers. Because these minority celebrities are chosen by white establishment racists, nothing they say can really be trusted. You have no way of knowing how sincere any of these people are when they say something on twitter or youtube. They could just be telling a lies. If you go by their actions, you will see that these people have done nothing apart from making phony speeches about equality, while allowing the same racist casting in their industry to continue. But they were perfectly okay with benefiting financially from the the George Flyod death, which received widespread political coverage. There were all kinds of interviews with rich black people and other minority entertainers when Flyod was murdered, all of a sudden these rich people who did everything they could to get away from the black community, living in white neighborhoods like those found in Beverly Hills and the Midwest, remembered where they came from. But up until that point all they did was make fun of people like me and deny us jobs just like their white owners. The reason this changed was not, as they like to claim, the violent death of George Flyod; the real reason they "cared" about black people again was because they wanted even more money than they already had. At the time of Flyod's death and the early protesting that occurred, white America was mostly on the side of Black Lives Matter. And wherever there are white people, you will find minority celebrities trying to make money. Why? Because the people who bring you minority entertainment are mostly white, about eighty-three percent of theater producers and writers are white and white actors compose sixty-six percent of every cast. A bunch of minority entertainers, all of them wealthy, fired off a letter to the theatre community about its lack of people of color onstage about a year ago today. Nothing has came of that letter; nothing has changed. No one is really fighting for people like me in the entertainment industry, aside from myself that is. No celebrity can understand the pain rejection and despair. They have their wealth and fame to always fall back on. Spare me the act; none of y'all really care about us.  

We love to talk about a lot of things in America, some of them true and some of them so damn fake that you fall over and laugh. One of these phony topics that the media refuses to let die is this polarization argument, this idea that the United States is at war with itself more than ever before. I just have to laugh at such claims. I talk about in some way almost every show I do, but, as usual, most people are not listening to me. They are listening to the articles they read online, calling for calm, unity and boredom as usual. These reports of political wars raging on with no end in sight is really exaggerated. Though the threat the alt-right poses is real, they are not in the majority and they are not uniting with far left groups, which is what they would need to do to throw a successful of the American government. It cannot be forgotten that Adolph Hitler, Mussolini and various other fascists were able to combine with disenchanted far left groups who felt unaccepted by political moderates and their usual inaction. Some political scientists, the same ones who failed to predict the 2020 tech bubble, the success of the Black Lives Matter movement and January sixth attack of the Capitol, theorized that a violent alt-left would rise up in response to the alt-right. But has this really happened or is it just another right wing fantasy used to distract people from what is actually going on? While you have all been fantasizing about a violent leftist response similar to what happened in South America in the 1970s, little organized violent actions has occurred on the left. Every major news corporation, apart from FOX and OAN, two far right gossip channels, has stated very clearly that the vast majority of political protests by Black Lives Matter, about 93 percent of these protests had not reports of violent behavior. There were even protests where the police marched along side BLM; I still recall one very nice chief of police in Virginia, a black man, who stated that he was very happy to see young black people protesting, that it reminded him of the Civil Rights movement, that he stood with his community. The positive reports on Black Lives Matter have been largely ignored by the mostly right wing media because they are the ones looking for a fight. The alt-right needs a violent leftist response in order to be successful; so they have manufactured a false narrative that states that the nation is tearing itself apart because of leftists. However, the left is nowhere near as disenchanted with our democratic processes as are the alt-right; the alt-right has abandoned all chances of working with popular politicians, opting instead to install their own band of Trump worshiping ass kissers like Matt Gaetz, Majorie Taylor Greeen and Bobert. The left simply has not done this. Even the progressives currently in Congress are not all that supported by far left socialists in this country; indeed, the far left is one of the biggest critics of the squad, frequently calling the traitors as the self-proclaimed progressives frequently vote right along side their moderate partners. There is also no real plan by the left to replace the current middle of the road democrats. The far left was courted by shock radio host Jimmy Dore when he had the leader of the Boogaloo Boys on, and their response was mixed at best. I saw a few socialists I follow on twitter tweet that report so I watched it. The comments section of that interview were filled with leftists stating that they hated the alt-right and wanted nothing to do with it. The far left also takes a very mixed approach to the second amendment. Some far left groups support using guns, but the narrative is much more around self-defense than the alt-right. There have also been very few public demonstrations and even fewer murders on the left than there have been by the alt-right. I have said it before and I will say it again, the "threat" of a civil war between the left and the right is bullshit.

Let me begin by saying that I do not blame the podcast community, perhaps apart from the far right portion of it, for the lack of diversity in podcasting. It is a fairly new medium and new mediums take time to flourish. But podcasting is growing fast and with that growth has come a growth in the diversity of the podcast audience. More and more minorities are beginning to make podcasts a part of their everyday life. This has happened because podcasts are pretty much on their way to becoming the new radio, with more of the nation and the world having easy access to portable electronic devices. Though podcasts are mostly listened to on phones, they are also consumed on laptops, perhaps when people should be working. I see you! But I'm not going to tell your boss. I'm no snitch. So what does all of this mean? Well, with a diverse audience comes diverse responsibilities to said audience. I am not demanding that anyone change their opinions. Even if I disagree with someone, I never make it a point to try to change their mind about it; I simply want my side of the story to be told. There are more sides to every story than you can count so it becomes increasingly popular to be exposed to as many as possible in order to make the most informed decision. I put an emphasis on owning a black podcast because there simply are not many black podcast hosts to represent the black community. I also do it because it is an easy medium if you know what you are doing and the potential to create a new black renaissance in media is sitting at our fingertips. For the first time in a long time we have a pretty effective way of breaking into entertainment without having to mask our real identities, without having our ideas run through a whitewash process that destroys our creativity, our uniqueness. If you know the game, you can really propel yourself to the top over a brief period of time, about three years to be exact. Imagine that, three years of really hard work, of getting the word out in a timely fashion and we can not only be entertaining, but own the rights to our entertainment. There is no one there to tell us what to say for once so we should definitely jump on it. In this episode I pose some reasons why we do not see more minorities in entertainment even as our audiences grow more diverse. I talk about the snap reaction to justify exclusion is inherent in America's culture. New technologies are generally not available en masse to minority communities until much later in the game. You also have this misconception I often hear from people that being black or talking about black issues on podcast is automatically going to get you hated by many people. That is not true at all. There are a lot of people who just like to hear real talk these days and you would probably be surprised how some of them look or what they stand for. It is also that many people are just afraid to be themselves on an open microphone. The truth is that most people are looking for a great story teller when they hear a podcast and you can only do that if you are comfortable in your own skin. It is also hard for some people to take the criticism that comes along with podcasting. They do not realize that many social media accounts are fake and that a lot of the harassment is not even sincere. They also probably believe that there is not much money in it, but minorities should realize what a great long term investment podcasts are. They generate a great deal of engagement for large companies and could likely do the same for black companies. What else is great is that we do not have to cancel anyone to have a more diverse group of voices out there on our favorite listening devices. No one needs to be fired or through a bitch fit because a minority took their job. Nope, all we have to do is encourage minorities to spread their messages with technology and promote their businesses to an audience that is always hungry for something different. Black is the new alternative!