The Fifth Column

w / Coleman Hughes

🤫

Recorded Aug 21, 2020

Published Aug 23, 2020

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We can't believe it. Neither can you. It's our 200th episode!! (Well, not including the thirty-plus, subscriber-only Patreon episodes, which are looser, bawdier, and even more problematic...so stop freeloading and subscribe!). In celebration of this momentous anniversary, we called up our old friend Andrew Sullivan, fresh from his separation with New York magazine and joining from his Provincetown whirlpool, to discuss:

- Daddys, bears, and pervs...oh my!

- Andrew has a conversation with some younger gays

- A generation without tragedy

- BTW: No one actually says LGBTQ+

- And you're not suppose to like being oppressed

- Why did Andrew leave New York magazine and what is the "mysterious miasma"? 

- Sully starts his own thing, quickly realizes he was underpaid

- The drunk brilliance of old-school British journalism

- FWIW, Andrew didn't write The Bell Curve

- The anti-Sullivan fatwa issued by a former employer

- Michael Kinsley's two rules of writing 

- The future of magazines, the future of media 

- Why you should read, listen to, and befriend people with bad ideas

- Kmele, Kamala, and the prostitutes

- Andrew convinces us to...change

Recorded Aug 13, 2020

Published Aug 14, 2020

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• Drugs You Should Try
• Heroine, A Black Drug?
• Black People Are All The Same
• Voter Fraud, by Mail
• Selecting A VP
• Cognitive Tests (Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV)
• Scare Tactics
• Suburban Lifestyle Dreams
• The State of New York
• FBG Duck
• New George Floyd Video
• The Trouble With China
• Facebook vs TikTok
• Blazing Saddles

Recorded Aug 6, 2020

Published Aug 9, 2020

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Guest: Nancy Rommelmann, journalist and author of To the Bridge: A True Story of Motherhood and Murder

Nancy Rommelmann, friend of the Fifth and former resident of Portland, Amerikkka, returns from the ramparts of the revolution with news, anecdotes, and a glimpse at our glorious future. Alis volat propriis. So we asked our very own Lady John Reed just what the hell is happening in the insurrectionist precincts of the Pacific Northwest...

• Nancy doesn't recognize parts of Portland
• What everyone is getting wrong about the protests/riots/federal intervention
• Wait, where is the Portland PD?
• Shares in a homemade body armor business are trading higher today...
• Why you're not hearing that amazing, hilarious, enlightening conversation we had about the secret app
• (It's because the SD card ran out of space and no one noticed...)
• We return after our tech screw up--much, much drunker--to talk history vs. journalism
• No one arguing about colonial history knows anything about colonial history
• It sort of falls apart around this point...
• And by the way: stop telling us what we should care about

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Glenn Greenwald,

Co-Founder @ The Intercept

Author, "No Place to Hide"

Thomas Chatterton Williams

Contributing Writer @ New York Times Mag

Author, "Self Portrait in Black and White"

After a little internet drama related to the Harper's Open Letter, Kmele got together w/ Thomas and Glenn to discuss.

• Why we needed "A Letter on Justice and Debate"
• Why Glenn isn't a Signatory
• What is Cancel Culture
• Do we really need to talk about this RIGHT NOW
• Evangelism or Excommunication
• Hypocrisy and Healthier Conversations

Recorded July 24, 2020

Published July 27, 2020

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We haven't unlocked a Patreon episode since way back in February. But we (Moynihan) were feeling generous, so here's a paywalled bonus episode from July 13, liberated for all of you cheapskates. You're welcome.

If you want a new subscriber-only episode every week (plus slurring live Zoom calls, lost episodes, mail bag episodes, a community of like-minded psychos, etc), subscribe here!

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For only the second time since the Bat Flu, the lads are back in the same room...and back at the Stupid Table™ in Williamsburg. The energy! The booze! The crosstalk! Kmele singing! Yay! It's an hour and half bull session covering the most important debates in America. Zum beispiel: 

- Moynihan's new CNBC show "Stock Monstah Dood!"

- Getting psyched about--and possibly auditioning for--a show Kmele loves but has never seen

- Kmele is Mr. 2X. Moynihan is Mr. Angry Irishman Driver

- Understanding the core of the anti-racist project

- Matt's formative moment as an 18-year-old journalist

- The privileged people who hate really privileged people

- Yes, the lads talk about the endless LETTER WARS

- Kmele rants about a Jo Jorgensen tweet

- What does it mean to be anti-racist?

- If they win, we will all will end up living in a joyless world

- Back to Bay Ridge (and coming upon a pro-NYPD protest)

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w/ Josh Szeps (né Zepps), ABC Australia and host of the Uncomfortable Conversations podcast.

Josh-o's back and the dingo has his baby! Australia's most listened-to radio host joins the Fifth from his COVID-free compound in Sydney to talk nonsense about:

• Paul Hogan (obviously)
• How the Aussies handled the COVID
• That story about our friend who resigned from the Times
• "Cancel culture," right and left
• "Good Morning ya' ****s!"
• Armageddon the shit out of that rock
• Are we becoming a totalitarian hell hole? (Probably not)
• Viacom race theorist Nick Cannon on masked singers, Mariah Carey, and the Rothschilds.
• Matt knew a Nazi

Recorded July 15, 2020

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Two-plus hours with our favorite German, Herr Yascha Mounk, contributing editor at The Atlantic and founder of Persuasion, a publication dedicated to promoting and defending the "values of a free society."

The lads discuss that Harper's letter on cancel culture, signed by Kmele and Yasha (and Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, JK Rowling, et al); the attempt to cancel people who signed a statement opposing canceling people; how everyone's still a fascist; the painful absurdity of Robin Diangelo; a Matt and Kmele fight about Trump's Mt. Rushmore speech; the dangers of the populist right; El Chino; and so very much more.

Recorded July 8, 2020

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w/ Wesley Lowery Correspondent @ CBS - "60 Minutes in 6"

Lowery Wrote A Thing:

"A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists" (NYT) - June 23, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/opinion/objectivity-black-journalists-coronavirus.html

Welch Raised Some Objections:

"Journalists Abandoning 'Objectivity' for 'Moral Clarity' Really Just Want To Call People Immoral" (Reason) - June 24, 2020

https://reason.com/2020/06/24/journalists-abandoning-objectivity-for-moral-clarity-really-just-want-to-call-people-immoral/

Some Twitter Drama Ensues.

The Parties Agree to Settle Things Directly.

...And now, here you are. All caught up, ready for the fireworks (literally + figuratively).

Recorded: July 2, 2020

Published: July 6, 2020

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w/ Jacob Siegel, Senior Writer @ Tablet

"The New Truth" (June 22nd 2020)

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/new-truth-rationalism-religion

"Journalists Abandoning 'Objectivity' for 'Moral Clarity' Really Just Want To Call People Immoral" (6/24/2020)

https://reason.com/2020/06/24/journalists-abandoning-objectivity-for-moral-clarity-really-just-want-to-call-people-immoral/

- The Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez of Journalism

- The Great Fireworks Conspiracy (continued)

- The NYT Slack

- All The Smoke

- The New Truth

- Rhetorically Invincible

- White Fragility, The Message of the Cross

- Moral Clarity

- World Heritage Sites

- The Wages of Sin

- Ethical Journalism

Recorded: June 25, 2020

Published: July 1, 2020

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