Whew! I don’t disagree too often with Sarah but this was interesting to listen to. 44% of republicans are women. They’re not the majority for sure but damn that’s a lot of women to refer to as “all five of them”. In a similar topic 33 percent of pro lifers are women, they get ignored and belittled as irrelevant or victims of “internalized misogyny” constantly. Women like my mother are soooo insulted by the idea that there are no republican women.
AOC is absolutely hated by a lot of women, specifically intelligent women on the right, of which there are many. They hate her because she’s an idiot and it’s demeaning to women. At least that’s the character she plays in the political theatre. For every intelligent and intellectually captured woman on the left there’s one on the right too. These women are playing a character. It’s true, but there’s characters on both sides and they’re equally reviled by the other side. That whole section stank of urban elitism. I’ve become accustomed to it showing up, but I was surprised to find it here. Rant over.
I believe “pragmatic” would have fit well for the word you were both looking for at that point. Maybe I miss my guess. As a very broad generalization, republicans would describe themselves as more pragmatic than democrats in the way they approach life and problem solving. It wouldn’t surprise me if the reverse were true as well. So much of politics comes down to realism vs idealism on any given subject that I lose patience with both parties when they flip flop on who gets to chase the windmill on a particular issue.
Outside of the Trump fanatics, republicans are voting for him because of policy, and to give a giant middle finger to the establishment, not personality. If Joe Biden were capable of sitting down and doing these podcasts or anything longer than 15 minutes without being drugged to the moon. I think we would be seeing it. He just can’t. The man turns into a living roomba on stage frequently so I think they’re doing their level best to hide him from the public insofar as they can.
Anyway, great episode! It’s always worth hearing things articulated that make me think.
Yes, right wing women exist! But reverse the scenario: Imagine if I had said the same about democrats (and I did!). Progressive men obviously exist (I'm married to one, the horror), but the party messaging and "orientation" is not towards them.
The difference between 60/40 and 40/60 is huge when it comes to messaging.
I understood what you were saying, I’ve just had to listen to left wingers make insultingly stupid comments/arguments about the right based on a 60/40 split for decades now. So my patience for it has dwindled over the years.
I disagree I think in how we view right wing messaging. Right wing messaging to me is not gendered at all. Even when they try it it’s so poorly done that it gets abandoned immediately. Right wingers are genuinely terrible at pandering to anyone but rich people behind closed doors, so they’ve stopped trying. In this climate that gets interpreted as being geared towards men, but it’s not. Left wing messaging is often gendered which makes it easy to point the finger at the right and say they don’t care about women’s issues.
"Outside of the Trump fanatics, republicans are voting for him because of policy, and to give a giant middle finger to the establishment, not personality." I agree with this assessment. It is hard to understand how main stream news and the liberal elites don't get this. There is something deeply incurious about failure to understand the Trump phenomenon on its terms that does not use a "deplorables" mindset. The way I see it, people see politicians for what they are-- trying to get a vote by making promises along the way. Dems don't speak to normies (defund police, border, trans-issues, abortion on demand, covid authoritarianism, debt forgiveness, climate). Trump is crude and impolite and had many flaws, for many, at least he has the right enemies. Dems are the party of the administrative and cultural elite. Trump may be a prick but he pokes the right people. You don't have to love a candidate or like him or her to vote for them.
Yup. Also, a lot of his positions are just the democratic positions of like 2005. People act like he’s hitler and I don’t think they understand he gains followers when they keep using so much insane hyperbole.
I do not have any detailed cognitive testing results, but I don't agree with your assessment or theirs on the following counts:
I think AOC is smart. Delusional, but not unintelligent.
Conversely, I think Hillary Clinton is dumb. Not "woke", just flat out stupid. I think Trump runs rings around her intellectually and I'm no fan of Trump.
And I think Ketanji Brown Jackson is so deep in postmodern academia that she actually believes that pretending that women don't exist is a step forward for humanity. I don't think she was bullied into that at all.
Honestly dude, if you think Hillary Clinton is “dumb” then I’d love to know what evidence you can show for your superior intellectual judgment-making abilities—or for your own (presumably superior) intellect. The woman was a senator from New York and Secretary of State, and while it is broadly agreed that she’s not much very good at old-fashioned, back-slapping, speech-giving politics, it is also broadly agreed—including by numerous Republicans!—that she is very sharp and was an excellent senator (her performance as SoS is a different question, but it doesn’t really have much to do with her intelligence either way). And the idea that Trump “runs rings around her intellectually”—which is maybe the first time I’ve ever heard someone non-sarcastically use “Trump” and “intellectually” in the same sentence—is genuinely risible. Not trying to be harsh, but get real, man.
I’ve never liked Hillary Clinton, and at times I’ve disliked her quite a lot, but if you’re going to come in here saying she’s “dumb” and “flat out stupid”, and you hope to be taken seriously, you’re gonna have to show at least some sort of supporting evidence for that. And btw, AOC is my representative (and Hillary Clinton was my senator many years ago), and while I do think she’s smart—though I would love for someone to primary her, because yeah, she’s not my thing politically—she’s not as smart as Clinton, and she has the under-informed overconfidence of youth to boot.
I’m curious where you get your information about Democrats, because while I have some guesses, I don’t want to assume; I’ve already been fairly antagonistic here, so no need to pile on.
Genuine question here. What have you seen that gives you the impression that AOC is smart?
I obviously don’t know her personally, but when I see her speak on tv or in congress she speaks with this wide eyed idealistic zeal that makes her look and sound(to me), either so hopelessly captured ideologically that it would be useless to have a conversation with her, or actually incapable of understanding how dumb some of her takes are. She brings the same energy as that chick in your high school classes who just assumed that because she was pretty, you would agree with her on everything. It’s hilarious and also confusing.
On some level I’d be happy to hear that she wasn’t stupid. Ideologically captured is another problem, but a different one, and one that can change.
She is not that pretty, which is kind of the point.
There is not a direct male equivalent of hypergamy. "Girl next door" is a category of which there is orders of magnitude more demand than supply. If you put AOC next to Sydney Sweeney, the average guy will be happy to gaze at pictures of the latter, but would much rather engage with the former because she is more normal looking and it makes her more approachable and relatable.
Also, DC is notoriously "Hollywood for ugly people", so the environment is awfully favorable for "mid" women to get noticed.
Sydney Sweeney's appeal is that she does fit that "girl next door" category, but at a high physical tier. She *isn't* bogglingly pretty. - you'd find plenty of young women as pretty or prettier on most state college campuses. She's just pretty enough that it accentuates her other, more compelling and popularly ideal physical assets (which she consciously leverages to exceptional effect).
The other week Mary Katherine Ham quipped about her moving to DC something along the lines of (definitely a paraphrase) "I went from being a South Carolina 6 to a DC 8."
The male brain is a pretty simple machine when it comes to factoring simple physical attractiveness. No, AOC is not particularly pretty. But she is fairly young, not overweight, and - this is the critical part - she has large breasts. None of this is necessary, but the combination is perfectly sufficient. ("Attractive" here just means you notice her. It's a superficial and trivial unconscious response. Over the course of a lifetime a straight male will register tens of thousands of females in media and real life as being attractive.)
Hard to gauge AOC's attractiveness because her voice will kill a man's desire on contact at 20 paces.
I suspect her mousy demeanor is something of a put-on, and that she's likely very different when she can let her guard down around people she knows with no cameras around, but my god the way she speaks just screams "This'll be the biggest mistake you make in your life if you end up on the other side of a custody dispute with me." Which is about as sexy as the thought of dissecting an elephant's intestines with my bare hands -- and I'm >highly< squeamish.
Of course, I'm talking about the persona, not necessarily her. I'd bet she can be engaging and even endearing in an interview >if< the interviewer can cut through the hyper-vigilant bluster and calculating politician/performer to get through to the three-dimensional human being that's in there somewhere.
And not to be crude but if AOC and Valentina Gomez had known each other in college the chances of them ending up scissoring would be off the charts. I don't say that to be Beavis and Butt-Head -- there's a desperate, almost sexual tension between people who choose to embody one or the other of these polarities. It's like "I >need< you to exist because, without you, who would I even be???"
These people >must< know somewhere deep in the recesses of their politics-addled conscience that they effectively >are< the other person. There's a part of AOC that contains the Gomez archetype and vice-versa.
It should be a requirement of holding office that you have to go on retreats with members of the opposite team and be forced to LIVE with them for like two weeks. Like MTV's The Real World, complete with real-time reels on IG and TikTok for the American people to at least be entertained by the shitshow.
Or... maybe they'd actually get to know each other and some real people would emerge? Gomez could take AOC to the shooting range (which I'd bet she'd love) and AOC could take Gomez to a dog park or something. It could be called... A Special Place in DC. Sarah and Meghan could be the RAs, plan group activities, and adjudicate dish-shattering tantrums.
The masses seem to think so though. As a result she gets more media than I think she would on merit alone. This is true of attractive people in every profession btw.
I think in politics there are very few genuinely very attractive people. So the whole scale gets shifted as far as who gets viewed as pretty/attractive.
If you watch her in committee hearings she asks really good questions. I don’t agree with her leftist policies but she’s clearly a gifted political talent.
Being a Washingtonian originally, I try to ignore mainstream news outlets and commentary because I know how inaccurate they are. If possible, I get my information firsthand and my general opinion of the Democratic party comes from firsthand interactions with staffers and representatives/senators on then Hill, but I left the country before the first Trump election so I've never been in a room with either him or Hillary. The closest secondhand source I have on the Clintons was my mother, who was a lifetime downtown DC bureaucrat who despised Hillary Clinton more than she hated anyone. Even before it was cool to do so.
If you think that being appointed to political office or winning a non-competitive election is a marker of intelligence, I don't know what to tell you. If you think that being considered smart by the Democratic party, who are currently screaming at the top of their lungs that Joe Biden is in in his prime and anyone who says otherwise is a conspiracy theorist, I don't know what to tell you.
What I've heard some sources (none of them really pro-Trump) talk about is how he has an "animal cunning" and is an incredibly skilled manipulator. That is intelligence. I do not think that he would do well if you put a lab coat on him and asked him to explain molecular genetics. I do not think it's good for the country that he is the winner of our political contests. But the guy is not dumb.
On the other hand, Hillary lost in a direct competition against him that was enormously stacked in her favor. No one put the word "deplorable" in her mouth. No one forced her to ignore the middle of the country in her campaigning. And my take is simply that the reason she looked like an absolute fool in debates and other public appearances is not because she's a hidden genius who can't say what she really thinks, which was the claim in this episode. I think her observable behavior actually reflects her intelligence or lack thereof. If I'm being charitable, maybe her failure reflects a lack of being challenged (as was discussed in the last episode), so maybe it's that she has an excess of privilege rather than a defect of skill. But I see no actual evidence that she's anything other than a midwit who is in the right people.
Hillary Clinton is very smart, but presidential campaigns are about playing the media and publicity game and that was never her strong suit. In contrast Donald Trump (who is less smart but by no means stupid) has both a lot of natural talent and decades of experience in that particular area.
I think you’re probably not grasping my point here, but even if you take her name out of it, I think there’s a lot of people who have held positions that she has held or have credentials that she does that would flunk out of their first year of med school (or at least, back before med school was ideologically captured and it became much harder to fail). I often heard even from people in law and politics who I actually respect that they wanted to be a doctor and couldn’t hack it, in their own words.
Which to me, is a problem. I would rather put smart people in charge. I don’t think anyone named Bush was really that smart. Bill Clinton and Trump maybe a bit smarter. Obama clearly vastly more intelligent than any of them. But I wish we had a political system that favored genius over personality disorders, which I think is clearly the opposite of what we actually have.
I disagree- genius does not make political leadership. Who cares if politicians flunk out of medical school? In a representative democracy, it is the people who decide who exercises power, not some criteria about intelligence/merit. Being intelligent or being a genius does not mean you are better at grasping what a polity/government needs. It just means you can make intelligent connections quickly but not necessarily deep nor necessarily reflect reality. Would Einstein make a great political leader? I believe he was offered Israeli presidency but deferred, and its probably good that he did.
The difference/problem between intelligence/political rule has been a subject of political thought from Plato in the Republic down to Machiavelli, and our Founders, who have a particular solution (by limiting power, checks and balances, rights, etc)
A good statesman will surround himself/herself with smart individuals who will provide advice when needed. FDR and Churchill were considered second rate minds but their leadership was fantastic.
This is not some anti-intellectual take-- it is the problem in exercising political governance because the more intelligent you are the greater the mistake/blinders you have about the unknowns.
Yep, the only thing I see that could be construed as "dumb" about Hillary is her forgetfulness that her statements would and will always be taken out of full context. She has a lot of depth and breadth but the soundbites she provides don't convey that.
I don't think cognitive assessments on which public figures are wise or useful, as the assessments are mostly reflections of the assessor's temperament or preferences and based on third hand reporting. That being said, I find it hard to believe that Hilary is dumb and flat out stupid. I personally don't like her and stand far to the right of her, but she is a political operator with great skills.
I disagree with your premise. While my read on how intelligent someone is cannot match a battery of psychometric tests, I would much rather see public figures talked about in terms of their perceived intelligence than in terms of who someone would like to "have a beer with" or their perceived morality. And I don't think estimates of intelligence are useless; it's common to document them as part of a mental status exam that a physician might do, and we make those judgements after one conversation. Everyone makes judgements about others' perceived intelligence all the time, and while they are not perfect, I don't think they are useless.
One's own personal bias certainly plays a hand regardless. The thing is, bias is not an absolute. So when someone fails despite biases in their favor, it raises my eyebrows.
I disagree. Political rule is not intelligence. Wisdom is not intelligence. "I would much rather see public figures talked about in terms of their perceived intelligence than in terms of who someone would like to "have a beer with" or their perceived morality." That's fine, but I don't think that is adequate for me, because for me that is not the choice. The questions is: how would a person rule? How would a government led by that person rule? It goes without saying there are many intelligent people who don't know how to lead or who make tragic mistakes (eg Karl Marx). I did not say that measuring perceived intelligence is useless, only that it is not wise to do so for public figures because it says more about the person assessing. Someone's intelligence is someone's dumb. Also, a patient is not a public figure.
You could be totally right about AOC. That’s why I said that’s the character she plays at least. I don’t know, maybe she’s sharp as a tack under it all.
This is interesting. My biggest gripe with the Clinton’s is that they are recognized world wide as a mascot for political corruption, and justifiably so. I fully agree with your assessment of KBJ, which is arguably more terrifying than her being bullied or being stupid. She’s a true believer in a position of power, a very dangerous thing.
Strangely, I find it easier to detect a President's (or similar high-profile pol's) psychological pathologies than their intelligence. Both Bill Clinton and Biden are almost textbook psychopaths (though in this case it's clear Clinton is vastly more intelligent). It's almost impossible to gauge if a personality style rises to the level of disorder or not, but Trump fairly obviously has an insecure narcissistic personality disorder (it drives almost everything he does). Obama has an extremely high degree of grandiose narcissism, though I'm not sure if it rises to the level of disorder or not (though I suspect it's close - he's always set off my alarm bells). Can't tell if Hillary is just highly narcissistic or a psychopath. I suspect she's a narcissist who absorbed a lot of social style from her highly effective psychopath husband - but I can't say, for instance, that she does not and is incapable of loving her daughter the way I would say with confidence that Joe Biden does not and is incapable of loving his children. None of them are "stupid" in the normie sense, or they couldn't rise to the level they have, but with regards to relative intelligence it seems very hard to gauge.
I hesitate to render clinical diagnoses on people I don’t know (as opposed to general intelligence estimates), but in general, I’d agree that the “elite” are more notable for their psychopathology than their competence. Some senators are quite smart, but a lot of them I think are very ordinary. I don’t think Hillary Clinton or any of the others have an IQ of 70, but some of them are probably low 100’s, which for one of the most important positions in the country qualifies as “dumb” in my book.
There was a recent Taibbi and Kirn conversation where they’re talking about just how shockingly unimpressive the DC establishment is, and having seen this establishment up close, I agree. It’s not that I think Hillary is the dumbest secretary of state we ever had, just that she was unimpressive relative to the magnitude of the office. And the Democrats, the media, and some people here apparently, are hellbent on her having some incredible hidden competence that she has never demonstrated in any way that I’m aware of.
Obama I think was unusually smart for a politician. He’s also another person that Hillary lost to despite having a massive advantage.
When Brown-Jackson said “I can’t say; I’m not a biologist.”, why didn’t the Senator simply say “So you concede that being a woman is rooted in biology; thank you.”
That might have been a good point at the time, but academia has very quickly turned to saying that biology doesn’t support a “gender binary”, hence Carol Hooven is out. Med students at some schools are being taught that there is no such thing as male and female. So add biology to the list of things that have lost their original meaning.
In the first 10 minutes, it was interesting hearing Sarah describe the Republican women and using words like butch and masculine. As a man, I'm guessing I'm way more looks-focused than the typical woman, and I would never describe the women being discussed using those words. For the most part, they all conform to very traditional notions of beauty, which regardless of personality, would make them very much the opposite of butch or masculine.
Yeah, I get it, but for me when using those words, especially butch, it's looks that predominate. I can't imagine ever referring to an attractive woman as butch, even if it is someone like Ronda Rousey who could probably literally beat the crap out of me.
I'm thinking of a girl I knew who was several inches taller than me and looked like an Olympic athlete, like she could literally be the woman from the Bond movie who crushes men to death with her legs, but she had nice long hair and wore pink and such (and was also oddly interested in trying to find me a girlfriend). I would never think of someone like that as being "butch". It's a colloquial term, but to me it implies more of a lack of femininity than a presence of masculinity.
Great conversation. Isn’t there an element of the “cool girl” phenomenon going on here? Remember that whole thing? I might not be remembering it quite right but I understood it to include (but not necessarily be limited to) the sorority chick girlfriend who loves football just as much as the guys. And, oh yeah, she’s a patriot too. Respect our troops! And now- she goes to the shooting range too! All this without having to sacrifice an ounce of her ‘traditional’ femininity.
Of course, the thing that’s never talked about is the way ‘she’ has benefited from the push for women’s rights. It’s almost as if the radical leftists push,push, push for something way outside of the mainstream but then when things spring back towards the middle and finally settle- the center of gravity is a little further left than it previously has been. On the other side- there’s the denial from leftists that these ‘cool girls’ represent anything close to a ‘win’ for feminism. (This point was articulated in the podcast episode)
I always tell people- we’re living through the electric car revolution right now. It just doesn’t look the way Ed Begley Jr. or (insert climate activist here) thought it would. Eventually Marjorie Taylor Green will be driving an electric car designed by Elon Musk (if she’s not already) and that’s how the environmentalists will know they’ve won……as bittersweet as that may be.
If I heard you correctly at the end, you'd like subscribers to leave comments, but it's pure pain to read them. The podcaster's dilemma. Just know that I comment so sparingly out of concern for your well-being, not because I don't have anything intelligent to say. You're welcome!
Others have said this, but I'm completely baffled by calling these women "butch." I get that it's describing personality traits versus appearance, but in my mind butch is ONLY for appearance. It's so outside the realm of even how I'd address it that the old quip of "not even wrong" comes to mind.
One thing I’m curious about re: the abortion debate is whether both sides are willing to trade restrictions for access. Like, adopt something like the median American position, which I happen to share — unrestricted for the first 12-20 weeks, then after that only for rape, incest and to save the mother’s life. BUT abortion clinics need to be accessible from every major urban center and possible travel needs to be subsidized
Most voters on both sides would agree to a 15-week ban with exceptions, but the pro-choice side overplayed its hand, thereby allowing the anti-choice side to run away with wild distortions and ignore the fact that most if not all late terms abortions are due to catastrophic medical situations. (A situation that does not discriminate politically.) I talked about this on The Unspeakable a few times with legendary abortion rights activist (and former president of Catholics for Choice) Frances Kissling.
I howled out loud. You have to admit, she's got a real sense of humor and uses it to great effect, like the part where she says "everybody else loves me" 😂
Sarah is spot on when it comes to the hair analysis in this episode, especially for straight women, as she was in an earlier episode when she recognized that it’s women (and gay men) who appreciate the aesthetic beauty of other women who wear their hair short — it really is about facial structure.
Some famous examples are Halle Berry, Sharon Stone, Charlize Theron (yes, beautiful in any hairdoo, but are more aesthetically pleasing in short hair when you compare pics side by side), Jamie Lee Curtis, Angela Bassett … I could go on but won’t!
I got the impression from this episode that there is a scenario where Meghan and/or Sarah would consider voting for Trump. Assuming I’m not misreading that vibe, would you consider talking about this on a future episode? Not asking you to actually state publicly who you will/would vote for but I’d love to hear your take on the factors influencing your decision.
I think Sarah mentioned that Biden would never do an interview like Trump just did, even though voters would benefit from it, and Meghan seemed to insinuate that Biden couldn't string two sentences together. But Biden just did a long form interview on the Howard Stern show a month or so ago; is that fundamentally different? If so, how?
Whew! I don’t disagree too often with Sarah but this was interesting to listen to. 44% of republicans are women. They’re not the majority for sure but damn that’s a lot of women to refer to as “all five of them”. In a similar topic 33 percent of pro lifers are women, they get ignored and belittled as irrelevant or victims of “internalized misogyny” constantly. Women like my mother are soooo insulted by the idea that there are no republican women.
AOC is absolutely hated by a lot of women, specifically intelligent women on the right, of which there are many. They hate her because she’s an idiot and it’s demeaning to women. At least that’s the character she plays in the political theatre. For every intelligent and intellectually captured woman on the left there’s one on the right too. These women are playing a character. It’s true, but there’s characters on both sides and they’re equally reviled by the other side. That whole section stank of urban elitism. I’ve become accustomed to it showing up, but I was surprised to find it here. Rant over.
I believe “pragmatic” would have fit well for the word you were both looking for at that point. Maybe I miss my guess. As a very broad generalization, republicans would describe themselves as more pragmatic than democrats in the way they approach life and problem solving. It wouldn’t surprise me if the reverse were true as well. So much of politics comes down to realism vs idealism on any given subject that I lose patience with both parties when they flip flop on who gets to chase the windmill on a particular issue.
Outside of the Trump fanatics, republicans are voting for him because of policy, and to give a giant middle finger to the establishment, not personality. If Joe Biden were capable of sitting down and doing these podcasts or anything longer than 15 minutes without being drugged to the moon. I think we would be seeing it. He just can’t. The man turns into a living roomba on stage frequently so I think they’re doing their level best to hide him from the public insofar as they can.
Anyway, great episode! It’s always worth hearing things articulated that make me think.
Yes, right wing women exist! But reverse the scenario: Imagine if I had said the same about democrats (and I did!). Progressive men obviously exist (I'm married to one, the horror), but the party messaging and "orientation" is not towards them.
The difference between 60/40 and 40/60 is huge when it comes to messaging.
I understood what you were saying, I’ve just had to listen to left wingers make insultingly stupid comments/arguments about the right based on a 60/40 split for decades now. So my patience for it has dwindled over the years.
I disagree I think in how we view right wing messaging. Right wing messaging to me is not gendered at all. Even when they try it it’s so poorly done that it gets abandoned immediately. Right wingers are genuinely terrible at pandering to anyone but rich people behind closed doors, so they’ve stopped trying. In this climate that gets interpreted as being geared towards men, but it’s not. Left wing messaging is often gendered which makes it easy to point the finger at the right and say they don’t care about women’s issues.
A Trad married to a Progressive? 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I am a woman who intensely dislikes AOC.
"Outside of the Trump fanatics, republicans are voting for him because of policy, and to give a giant middle finger to the establishment, not personality." I agree with this assessment. It is hard to understand how main stream news and the liberal elites don't get this. There is something deeply incurious about failure to understand the Trump phenomenon on its terms that does not use a "deplorables" mindset. The way I see it, people see politicians for what they are-- trying to get a vote by making promises along the way. Dems don't speak to normies (defund police, border, trans-issues, abortion on demand, covid authoritarianism, debt forgiveness, climate). Trump is crude and impolite and had many flaws, for many, at least he has the right enemies. Dems are the party of the administrative and cultural elite. Trump may be a prick but he pokes the right people. You don't have to love a candidate or like him or her to vote for them.
Yup. Also, a lot of his positions are just the democratic positions of like 2005. People act like he’s hitler and I don’t think they understand he gains followers when they keep using so much insane hyperbole.
I do not have any detailed cognitive testing results, but I don't agree with your assessment or theirs on the following counts:
I think AOC is smart. Delusional, but not unintelligent.
Conversely, I think Hillary Clinton is dumb. Not "woke", just flat out stupid. I think Trump runs rings around her intellectually and I'm no fan of Trump.
And I think Ketanji Brown Jackson is so deep in postmodern academia that she actually believes that pretending that women don't exist is a step forward for humanity. I don't think she was bullied into that at all.
Honestly dude, if you think Hillary Clinton is “dumb” then I’d love to know what evidence you can show for your superior intellectual judgment-making abilities—or for your own (presumably superior) intellect. The woman was a senator from New York and Secretary of State, and while it is broadly agreed that she’s not much very good at old-fashioned, back-slapping, speech-giving politics, it is also broadly agreed—including by numerous Republicans!—that she is very sharp and was an excellent senator (her performance as SoS is a different question, but it doesn’t really have much to do with her intelligence either way). And the idea that Trump “runs rings around her intellectually”—which is maybe the first time I’ve ever heard someone non-sarcastically use “Trump” and “intellectually” in the same sentence—is genuinely risible. Not trying to be harsh, but get real, man.
I’ve never liked Hillary Clinton, and at times I’ve disliked her quite a lot, but if you’re going to come in here saying she’s “dumb” and “flat out stupid”, and you hope to be taken seriously, you’re gonna have to show at least some sort of supporting evidence for that. And btw, AOC is my representative (and Hillary Clinton was my senator many years ago), and while I do think she’s smart—though I would love for someone to primary her, because yeah, she’s not my thing politically—she’s not as smart as Clinton, and she has the under-informed overconfidence of youth to boot.
I’m curious where you get your information about Democrats, because while I have some guesses, I don’t want to assume; I’ve already been fairly antagonistic here, so no need to pile on.
Genuine question here. What have you seen that gives you the impression that AOC is smart?
I obviously don’t know her personally, but when I see her speak on tv or in congress she speaks with this wide eyed idealistic zeal that makes her look and sound(to me), either so hopelessly captured ideologically that it would be useless to have a conversation with her, or actually incapable of understanding how dumb some of her takes are. She brings the same energy as that chick in your high school classes who just assumed that because she was pretty, you would agree with her on everything. It’s hilarious and also confusing.
On some level I’d be happy to hear that she wasn’t stupid. Ideologically captured is another problem, but a different one, and one that can change.
Genuine question, is she really that pretty? I think she is pretty cute, but I've come to mistrust my judgement here.
She is not that pretty, which is kind of the point.
There is not a direct male equivalent of hypergamy. "Girl next door" is a category of which there is orders of magnitude more demand than supply. If you put AOC next to Sydney Sweeney, the average guy will be happy to gaze at pictures of the latter, but would much rather engage with the former because she is more normal looking and it makes her more approachable and relatable.
Also, DC is notoriously "Hollywood for ugly people", so the environment is awfully favorable for "mid" women to get noticed.
Sydney Sweeney's appeal is that she does fit that "girl next door" category, but at a high physical tier. She *isn't* bogglingly pretty. - you'd find plenty of young women as pretty or prettier on most state college campuses. She's just pretty enough that it accentuates her other, more compelling and popularly ideal physical assets (which she consciously leverages to exceptional effect).
The other week Mary Katherine Ham quipped about her moving to DC something along the lines of (definitely a paraphrase) "I went from being a South Carolina 6 to a DC 8."
The male brain is a pretty simple machine when it comes to factoring simple physical attractiveness. No, AOC is not particularly pretty. But she is fairly young, not overweight, and - this is the critical part - she has large breasts. None of this is necessary, but the combination is perfectly sufficient. ("Attractive" here just means you notice her. It's a superficial and trivial unconscious response. Over the course of a lifetime a straight male will register tens of thousands of females in media and real life as being attractive.)
You forgot the most important part: she has long hair. Cut that ponytail off and she’s forgotten the next day.
Hard to gauge AOC's attractiveness because her voice will kill a man's desire on contact at 20 paces.
I suspect her mousy demeanor is something of a put-on, and that she's likely very different when she can let her guard down around people she knows with no cameras around, but my god the way she speaks just screams "This'll be the biggest mistake you make in your life if you end up on the other side of a custody dispute with me." Which is about as sexy as the thought of dissecting an elephant's intestines with my bare hands -- and I'm >highly< squeamish.
Of course, I'm talking about the persona, not necessarily her. I'd bet she can be engaging and even endearing in an interview >if< the interviewer can cut through the hyper-vigilant bluster and calculating politician/performer to get through to the three-dimensional human being that's in there somewhere.
And not to be crude but if AOC and Valentina Gomez had known each other in college the chances of them ending up scissoring would be off the charts. I don't say that to be Beavis and Butt-Head -- there's a desperate, almost sexual tension between people who choose to embody one or the other of these polarities. It's like "I >need< you to exist because, without you, who would I even be???"
These people >must< know somewhere deep in the recesses of their politics-addled conscience that they effectively >are< the other person. There's a part of AOC that contains the Gomez archetype and vice-versa.
It should be a requirement of holding office that you have to go on retreats with members of the opposite team and be forced to LIVE with them for like two weeks. Like MTV's The Real World, complete with real-time reels on IG and TikTok for the American people to at least be entertained by the shitshow.
Or... maybe they'd actually get to know each other and some real people would emerge? Gomez could take AOC to the shooting range (which I'd bet she'd love) and AOC could take Gomez to a dog park or something. It could be called... A Special Place in DC. Sarah and Meghan could be the RAs, plan group activities, and adjudicate dish-shattering tantrums.
Good point. Personally I don’t see it.
The masses seem to think so though. As a result she gets more media than I think she would on merit alone. This is true of attractive people in every profession btw.
I think in politics there are very few genuinely very attractive people. So the whole scale gets shifted as far as who gets viewed as pretty/attractive.
She's a House of Representatives 9.
If you watch her in committee hearings she asks really good questions. I don’t agree with her leftist policies but she’s clearly a gifted political talent.
Being a Washingtonian originally, I try to ignore mainstream news outlets and commentary because I know how inaccurate they are. If possible, I get my information firsthand and my general opinion of the Democratic party comes from firsthand interactions with staffers and representatives/senators on then Hill, but I left the country before the first Trump election so I've never been in a room with either him or Hillary. The closest secondhand source I have on the Clintons was my mother, who was a lifetime downtown DC bureaucrat who despised Hillary Clinton more than she hated anyone. Even before it was cool to do so.
If you think that being appointed to political office or winning a non-competitive election is a marker of intelligence, I don't know what to tell you. If you think that being considered smart by the Democratic party, who are currently screaming at the top of their lungs that Joe Biden is in in his prime and anyone who says otherwise is a conspiracy theorist, I don't know what to tell you.
What I've heard some sources (none of them really pro-Trump) talk about is how he has an "animal cunning" and is an incredibly skilled manipulator. That is intelligence. I do not think that he would do well if you put a lab coat on him and asked him to explain molecular genetics. I do not think it's good for the country that he is the winner of our political contests. But the guy is not dumb.
On the other hand, Hillary lost in a direct competition against him that was enormously stacked in her favor. No one put the word "deplorable" in her mouth. No one forced her to ignore the middle of the country in her campaigning. And my take is simply that the reason she looked like an absolute fool in debates and other public appearances is not because she's a hidden genius who can't say what she really thinks, which was the claim in this episode. I think her observable behavior actually reflects her intelligence or lack thereof. If I'm being charitable, maybe her failure reflects a lack of being challenged (as was discussed in the last episode), so maybe it's that she has an excess of privilege rather than a defect of skill. But I see no actual evidence that she's anything other than a midwit who is in the right people.
Hillary Clinton is very smart, but presidential campaigns are about playing the media and publicity game and that was never her strong suit. In contrast Donald Trump (who is less smart but by no means stupid) has both a lot of natural talent and decades of experience in that particular area.
I think you’re probably not grasping my point here, but even if you take her name out of it, I think there’s a lot of people who have held positions that she has held or have credentials that she does that would flunk out of their first year of med school (or at least, back before med school was ideologically captured and it became much harder to fail). I often heard even from people in law and politics who I actually respect that they wanted to be a doctor and couldn’t hack it, in their own words.
Which to me, is a problem. I would rather put smart people in charge. I don’t think anyone named Bush was really that smart. Bill Clinton and Trump maybe a bit smarter. Obama clearly vastly more intelligent than any of them. But I wish we had a political system that favored genius over personality disorders, which I think is clearly the opposite of what we actually have.
I’m broadly with you here. We haven’t been sending our best to Washington in a long time.
I disagree- genius does not make political leadership. Who cares if politicians flunk out of medical school? In a representative democracy, it is the people who decide who exercises power, not some criteria about intelligence/merit. Being intelligent or being a genius does not mean you are better at grasping what a polity/government needs. It just means you can make intelligent connections quickly but not necessarily deep nor necessarily reflect reality. Would Einstein make a great political leader? I believe he was offered Israeli presidency but deferred, and its probably good that he did.
The difference/problem between intelligence/political rule has been a subject of political thought from Plato in the Republic down to Machiavelli, and our Founders, who have a particular solution (by limiting power, checks and balances, rights, etc)
A good statesman will surround himself/herself with smart individuals who will provide advice when needed. FDR and Churchill were considered second rate minds but their leadership was fantastic.
This is not some anti-intellectual take-- it is the problem in exercising political governance because the more intelligent you are the greater the mistake/blinders you have about the unknowns.
Yep, the only thing I see that could be construed as "dumb" about Hillary is her forgetfulness that her statements would and will always be taken out of full context. She has a lot of depth and breadth but the soundbites she provides don't convey that.
She also has an underrated sense of humor.
I don't think cognitive assessments on which public figures are wise or useful, as the assessments are mostly reflections of the assessor's temperament or preferences and based on third hand reporting. That being said, I find it hard to believe that Hilary is dumb and flat out stupid. I personally don't like her and stand far to the right of her, but she is a political operator with great skills.
I disagree with your premise. While my read on how intelligent someone is cannot match a battery of psychometric tests, I would much rather see public figures talked about in terms of their perceived intelligence than in terms of who someone would like to "have a beer with" or their perceived morality. And I don't think estimates of intelligence are useless; it's common to document them as part of a mental status exam that a physician might do, and we make those judgements after one conversation. Everyone makes judgements about others' perceived intelligence all the time, and while they are not perfect, I don't think they are useless.
One's own personal bias certainly plays a hand regardless. The thing is, bias is not an absolute. So when someone fails despite biases in their favor, it raises my eyebrows.
I disagree. Political rule is not intelligence. Wisdom is not intelligence. "I would much rather see public figures talked about in terms of their perceived intelligence than in terms of who someone would like to "have a beer with" or their perceived morality." That's fine, but I don't think that is adequate for me, because for me that is not the choice. The questions is: how would a person rule? How would a government led by that person rule? It goes without saying there are many intelligent people who don't know how to lead or who make tragic mistakes (eg Karl Marx). I did not say that measuring perceived intelligence is useless, only that it is not wise to do so for public figures because it says more about the person assessing. Someone's intelligence is someone's dumb. Also, a patient is not a public figure.
I would agree that political rule is not intelligence, which is why I don’t think being a senator means that one is smart.
How would a person enact their office (we do not have “rulers” in the U.S., at least in theory) is an entirely different issue.
You could be totally right about AOC. That’s why I said that’s the character she plays at least. I don’t know, maybe she’s sharp as a tack under it all.
This is interesting. My biggest gripe with the Clinton’s is that they are recognized world wide as a mascot for political corruption, and justifiably so. I fully agree with your assessment of KBJ, which is arguably more terrifying than her being bullied or being stupid. She’s a true believer in a position of power, a very dangerous thing.
Strangely, I find it easier to detect a President's (or similar high-profile pol's) psychological pathologies than their intelligence. Both Bill Clinton and Biden are almost textbook psychopaths (though in this case it's clear Clinton is vastly more intelligent). It's almost impossible to gauge if a personality style rises to the level of disorder or not, but Trump fairly obviously has an insecure narcissistic personality disorder (it drives almost everything he does). Obama has an extremely high degree of grandiose narcissism, though I'm not sure if it rises to the level of disorder or not (though I suspect it's close - he's always set off my alarm bells). Can't tell if Hillary is just highly narcissistic or a psychopath. I suspect she's a narcissist who absorbed a lot of social style from her highly effective psychopath husband - but I can't say, for instance, that she does not and is incapable of loving her daughter the way I would say with confidence that Joe Biden does not and is incapable of loving his children. None of them are "stupid" in the normie sense, or they couldn't rise to the level they have, but with regards to relative intelligence it seems very hard to gauge.
I hesitate to render clinical diagnoses on people I don’t know (as opposed to general intelligence estimates), but in general, I’d agree that the “elite” are more notable for their psychopathology than their competence. Some senators are quite smart, but a lot of them I think are very ordinary. I don’t think Hillary Clinton or any of the others have an IQ of 70, but some of them are probably low 100’s, which for one of the most important positions in the country qualifies as “dumb” in my book.
There was a recent Taibbi and Kirn conversation where they’re talking about just how shockingly unimpressive the DC establishment is, and having seen this establishment up close, I agree. It’s not that I think Hillary is the dumbest secretary of state we ever had, just that she was unimpressive relative to the magnitude of the office. And the Democrats, the media, and some people here apparently, are hellbent on her having some incredible hidden competence that she has never demonstrated in any way that I’m aware of.
Obama I think was unusually smart for a politician. He’s also another person that Hillary lost to despite having a massive advantage.
I think we need to find an IQ test for all sitting us congressman. Especially leadership roles.
I think the results would stun people.
When Brown-Jackson said “I can’t say; I’m not a biologist.”, why didn’t the Senator simply say “So you concede that being a woman is rooted in biology; thank you.”
That might have been a good point at the time, but academia has very quickly turned to saying that biology doesn’t support a “gender binary”, hence Carol Hooven is out. Med students at some schools are being taught that there is no such thing as male and female. So add biology to the list of things that have lost their original meaning.
Aren’t you two disagreeable? I’m so confused and possibly offended by this def of “butch”.
In the first 10 minutes, it was interesting hearing Sarah describe the Republican women and using words like butch and masculine. As a man, I'm guessing I'm way more looks-focused than the typical woman, and I would never describe the women being discussed using those words. For the most part, they all conform to very traditional notions of beauty, which regardless of personality, would make them very much the opposite of butch or masculine.
Looks v behavior!
Yeah, I get it, but for me when using those words, especially butch, it's looks that predominate. I can't imagine ever referring to an attractive woman as butch, even if it is someone like Ronda Rousey who could probably literally beat the crap out of me.
I'm thinking of a girl I knew who was several inches taller than me and looked like an Olympic athlete, like she could literally be the woman from the Bond movie who crushes men to death with her legs, but she had nice long hair and wore pink and such (and was also oddly interested in trying to find me a girlfriend). I would never think of someone like that as being "butch". It's a colloquial term, but to me it implies more of a lack of femininity than a presence of masculinity.
First!!
damn
I got a new Garmin which literally gives me tiny electric shocks when a new episode drops. I am now unstoppable.
the commitment we deserve
I also get a small shock for every like my comments get, so if I get on anyone’s nerves you know what to do
This feels like a variation of the Milgram obedience to authority experiments.
Doff cap
Great conversation. Isn’t there an element of the “cool girl” phenomenon going on here? Remember that whole thing? I might not be remembering it quite right but I understood it to include (but not necessarily be limited to) the sorority chick girlfriend who loves football just as much as the guys. And, oh yeah, she’s a patriot too. Respect our troops! And now- she goes to the shooting range too! All this without having to sacrifice an ounce of her ‘traditional’ femininity.
Of course, the thing that’s never talked about is the way ‘she’ has benefited from the push for women’s rights. It’s almost as if the radical leftists push,push, push for something way outside of the mainstream but then when things spring back towards the middle and finally settle- the center of gravity is a little further left than it previously has been. On the other side- there’s the denial from leftists that these ‘cool girls’ represent anything close to a ‘win’ for feminism. (This point was articulated in the podcast episode)
I always tell people- we’re living through the electric car revolution right now. It just doesn’t look the way Ed Begley Jr. or (insert climate activist here) thought it would. Eventually Marjorie Taylor Green will be driving an electric car designed by Elon Musk (if she’s not already) and that’s how the environmentalists will know they’ve won……as bittersweet as that may be.
If I heard you correctly at the end, you'd like subscribers to leave comments, but it's pure pain to read them. The podcaster's dilemma. Just know that I comment so sparingly out of concern for your well-being, not because I don't have anything intelligent to say. You're welcome!
We were referring to the YouTube comments specifically, which are open to the rabble. We love you guys!
I missed the YouTube part of it--that makes more sense. haha
Others have said this, but I'm completely baffled by calling these women "butch." I get that it's describing personality traits versus appearance, but in my mind butch is ONLY for appearance. It's so outside the realm of even how I'd address it that the old quip of "not even wrong" comes to mind.
Me too. I don't get it.
One thing I’m curious about re: the abortion debate is whether both sides are willing to trade restrictions for access. Like, adopt something like the median American position, which I happen to share — unrestricted for the first 12-20 weeks, then after that only for rape, incest and to save the mother’s life. BUT abortion clinics need to be accessible from every major urban center and possible travel needs to be subsidized
Most voters on both sides would agree to a 15-week ban with exceptions, but the pro-choice side overplayed its hand, thereby allowing the anti-choice side to run away with wild distortions and ignore the fact that most if not all late terms abortions are due to catastrophic medical situations. (A situation that does not discriminate politically.) I talked about this on The Unspeakable a few times with legendary abortion rights activist (and former president of Catholics for Choice) Frances Kissling.
amused that meghan compared the way valentina gomez speaks to me :) probably appropriate
i probably watched her running and telling me to "stay hard" 50 times lol
Holy shit, Meghan should love the part of Valentina Gomez's tweet where she talks about her dog: https://x.com/ValentinaForSOS/status/1803543640905596962
I howled out loud. You have to admit, she's got a real sense of humor and uses it to great effect, like the part where she says "everybody else loves me" 😂
Oh, and her brothers look totally GAY:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C8GAh2LNBzX/?hl=en&img_index=1
Sarah is spot on when it comes to the hair analysis in this episode, especially for straight women, as she was in an earlier episode when she recognized that it’s women (and gay men) who appreciate the aesthetic beauty of other women who wear their hair short — it really is about facial structure.
Some famous examples are Halle Berry, Sharon Stone, Charlize Theron (yes, beautiful in any hairdoo, but are more aesthetically pleasing in short hair when you compare pics side by side), Jamie Lee Curtis, Angela Bassett … I could go on but won’t!
Sarah would look very cute in short hair.
I got the impression from this episode that there is a scenario where Meghan and/or Sarah would consider voting for Trump. Assuming I’m not misreading that vibe, would you consider talking about this on a future episode? Not asking you to actually state publicly who you will/would vote for but I’d love to hear your take on the factors influencing your decision.
I think I speak for both of us when I say there is no such scenario.
I’m personally relieved to hear that. I need to relisten to that section - I must have misread the vibe.
I think Sarah mentioned that Biden would never do an interview like Trump just did, even though voters would benefit from it, and Meghan seemed to insinuate that Biden couldn't string two sentences together. But Biden just did a long form interview on the Howard Stern show a month or so ago; is that fundamentally different? If so, how?
Thanks for mentioning that. I will try to check it out. Though I think Howard might be completely paywalled these days.
Howard is also a safe environment for Democrats to go on at this point. He's heavily partisan.
AOC is not hated by women!? Sorry Sarah. There are more than 5 right wing women. It is easy to see AOC as a silly parody by non-dems.
American media is unusually looks-focused. Mary Beard has had a long career on British TV.