2-Sep-23
[00:00:00.000 –> 00:00:25.519] I I don’t know. Of course. We want this table as dirty as possible. I, it’s not like I’m messing it up.
[00:00:25.519 –> 00:00:26.519] Let’s be on it.
[00:00:26.519 –> 00:00:27.519] I like it lived in.
[00:00:27.519 –> 00:00:31.120] I like it stained in ashes and all that jazz.
[00:00:31.120 –> 00:00:32.679] How you doing?
[00:00:32.679 –> 00:00:33.679] I’m good man.
[00:00:33.679 –> 00:00:34.679] What’s happening?
[00:00:34.679 –> 00:00:36.880] In town to, you know, do my thing.
[00:00:36.880 –> 00:00:38.759] Do you show tonight at ECL, right?
[00:00:38.759 –> 00:00:40.119] Telling jokes to strangers.
[00:00:40.119 –> 00:00:41.119] What we do.
[00:00:41.119 –> 00:00:42.119] Nice.
[00:00:42.119 –> 00:00:47.159] And of course when I got the invite, how can you turn down the king?
[00:00:47.159 –> 00:00:51.759] I know you hate being called the king, but you are Joe, so bask in it a little.
[00:00:51.759 –> 00:00:55.840] Thank you very much. It’s always good to see you. Yeah, you too. How are you
[00:00:55.840 –> 00:01:00.039] enjoying doing your podcast? You know, I love it, especially since I’ve been
[00:01:00.039 –> 00:01:10.480] thrown out of work by a strike, you know, so it’s what I have left plus the touring, but that, you know, touring is a couple of weekends a month. Podcasting
[00:01:10.480 –> 00:01:13.599] doesn’t take that much time either. I don’t do it every day like you, but it’s
[00:01:13.599 –> 00:01:19.599] nice to have an outlet. It’s also nice to be able to talk to people in a non-political
[00:01:19.599 –> 00:01:28.200] way. I mean, right, my show is for, let’s say, people who know things, my HBO show.
[00:01:28.200 –> 00:01:29.200] Right.
[00:01:29.200 –> 00:01:33.760] You know, you just can’t really enjoy that show or watch it if you’re clueless.
[00:01:33.760 –> 00:01:35.400] It’s like I’m speaking in Chinese.
[00:01:35.400 –> 00:01:36.400] Right.
[00:01:36.400 –> 00:01:38.400] So, you know, and that’s okay.
[00:01:38.400 –> 00:01:42.239] You know, that’s a lot of the people in this country that would describe.
[00:01:42.239 –> 00:01:46.140] They just, they’re not involved in politics or what goes on in
[00:01:46.140 –> 00:01:52.340] the world or, you know, don’t ask them what the ACLU is or NATO. These things are just
[00:01:52.340 –> 00:02:01.180] not on their radar. And that certainly describes a lot of celebrities. You know, their intelligence
[00:02:01.180 –> 00:02:07.540] is artistic intelligence generally, I would say. You say. It’s a different kind of intelligence.
[00:02:07.540 –> 00:02:10.340] Not worse or better, it’s just different.
[00:02:10.340 –> 00:02:16.300] So to be able to talk to a lot of people on club random in a setting where I can just
[00:02:16.300 –> 00:02:22.819] be high as a kite and constantly blowing pot smoke in their face, first of all, it’s just
[00:02:22.819 –> 00:02:28.080] a joy. It’s a sign of the progress that this country has
[00:02:28.080 –> 00:02:33.879] made. The thing that I used to sweat bullets going through every airport in this country
[00:02:33.879 –> 00:02:39.580] because I had this much little pot that I was hiding under my balls. That’s really
[00:02:39.580 –> 00:02:45.400] where I hid it. So that if the dog sniffed it, you know, that they’d be embarrassed, I
[00:02:45.400 –> 00:02:53.319] hoped to look there. And now I can freely smoke pot in a nationally aired
[00:02:53.319 –> 00:02:58.759] program is kind of amazing. So I’m enjoying the fuck out of it.
[00:02:58.759 –> 00:03:02.919] That’s beautiful. Yeah, it’s also nice to have like a pretty completely open
[00:03:02.919 –> 00:03:08.719] format so conversations can really air out, you know, when you, you don’t have to worry about running out of time.
[00:03:08.719 –> 00:03:20.479] And you also can kind of let them breathe a little because sometimes you really want to let someone talk for a long time to try to, before you try to interject and pick apart their conversation, their argument.
[00:03:20.479 –> 00:03:22.759] You really want to, I want to know what you’re really thinking.
[00:03:23.080 –> 00:03:24.319] I don’t want to be confused.
[00:03:24.520 –> 00:03:27.360] Again, that’s kind of what you pioneered.
[00:03:27.360 –> 00:03:28.360] Yeah.
[00:03:28.360 –> 00:03:29.400] And we’re grateful for it.
[00:03:29.400 –> 00:03:32.360] And I do like that.
[00:03:32.360 –> 00:03:42.280] I also find it’s interesting, the setting makes a big difference as to what arouses the
[00:03:42.280 –> 00:03:51.259] furies on the left. If I said so many of the things that I’ve said on Club Random, on a podcast, on real
[00:03:51.259 –> 00:03:55.400] time, on HBO, they would have had my head.
[00:03:55.400 –> 00:03:56.400] Yeah.
[00:03:56.400 –> 00:04:01.840] But somehow, when I say it in the setting of the podcast, in my own home, blowing the
[00:04:01.840 –> 00:04:07.240] pot smoke, somehow it’s okay okay and i find that very interesting
[00:04:07.240 –> 00:04:10.360] i think they look at you like a guy
[00:04:10.360 –> 00:04:12.280] who they’re worried about
[00:04:12.280 –> 00:04:17.360] because you don’t tell the line they should be you’re you’re like a nineties
[00:04:17.360 –> 00:04:18.759] liberal
[00:04:18.759 –> 00:04:23.240] you like liberals back when there are more reasonable before they became
[00:04:23.240 –> 00:04:24.300] leftists
[00:04:24.300 –> 00:04:27.540] and now every liberal kind of has to be a leftist.
[00:04:27.540 –> 00:04:33.180] If you want to be on the team, you’ve got to subscribe to the most fringe ideas that
[00:04:33.180 –> 00:04:34.839] the team is promoting.
[00:04:34.839 –> 00:04:36.740] And I get in trouble with that too.
[00:04:36.740 –> 00:04:40.279] It’s such a, I mean, there’s so many, like Joe List has talked about that recently, the
[00:04:40.279 –> 00:04:42.079] comic Joe List, very funny guy.
[00:04:42.079 –> 00:04:45.199] He was talking about like, he was like, I’m a 90s liberal.
[00:04:45.199 –> 00:04:47.439] It goes, what, I didn’t change.
[00:04:47.439 –> 00:04:49.079] It’s like everybody else kind of changed.
[00:04:49.079 –> 00:04:50.879] It just got real weird,
[00:04:50.879 –> 00:04:52.600] like what you’re allowed to disagree with
[00:04:52.600 –> 00:04:53.720] and not to disagree with.
[00:04:53.720 –> 00:04:57.560] And, you know, it’s strange.
[00:04:57.560 –> 00:04:59.959] I’m always trying to make the case
[00:04:59.959 –> 00:05:04.199] that liberal is a different animal than woke.
[00:05:05.000 –> 00:05:05.360] Yeah.
[00:05:05.360 –> 00:05:06.360] Because it is.
[00:05:06.360 –> 00:05:10.759] And you can be woke with all the nonsense
[00:05:10.759 –> 00:05:14.480] that that now implies.
[00:05:14.480 –> 00:05:19.199] But don’t say that somehow it’s an extension of liberalism.
[00:05:19.199 –> 00:05:23.759] Because it’s most often actually an undoing of liberalism.
[00:05:23.759 –> 00:05:26.759] And so you can have your points of view and
[00:05:26.759 –> 00:05:31.279] your positions on these things, but don’t try to piggyback on what I’ve
[00:05:31.279 –> 00:05:35.819] always believed. I have always believed, as liberals do, for example, in a color
[00:05:35.819 –> 00:05:41.160] blind society, that the goal is to not see race at all anywhere for any reason.
[00:05:41.160 –> 00:05:46.120] That’s what liberals always believed all the way through. Obama,
[00:05:46.120 –> 00:05:51.120] going back to Kennedy, everybody. Martin Luther King. That’s not what the woke believed. They
[00:05:51.120 –> 00:05:56.360] believe race is the first and foremost the thing you should always see everywhere, which
[00:05:56.360 –> 00:06:01.279] I find interesting because that used to be the position of the Ku Klux Klan, that we see
[00:06:01.279 –> 00:06:07.800] race first and foremost everywhere. So again, you can have that position,
[00:06:07.800 –> 00:06:10.560] but don’t say that’s a liberal position.
[00:06:10.560 –> 00:06:12.639] You’re doing something very different.
[00:06:12.639 –> 00:06:14.720] I think the idea behind it,
[00:06:14.720 –> 00:06:16.439] I think I understand their idea.
[00:06:16.439 –> 00:06:20.199] The idea is that the society is imbalanced.
[00:06:20.199 –> 00:06:23.360] And so in order to address that imbalance,
[00:06:23.360 –> 00:06:27.360] you’re going to prop up as many minorities
[00:06:27.360 –> 00:06:33.079] as possible, make as many opportunities for minorities as possible, and get it to a position
[00:06:33.079 –> 00:06:35.920] where there are, like white people are a minority.
[00:06:35.920 –> 00:06:38.040] And so that’s not a concern anymore.
[00:06:38.040 –> 00:06:42.360] And that through that somehow or another, you’ll achieve equality.
[00:06:42.360 –> 00:06:46.560] I think the way to achieve equality is your way. I think the colorblind way is the way to really truly achieve equality. I think the way to achieve equality is your way. I think the color blind
[00:06:46.560 –> 00:06:51.439] way is the way to really truly achieve equality and to truly judge people just on their merits.
[00:06:51.439 –> 00:06:58.480] But also recognize that if we don’t address the problems in this country as far as like how
[00:06:58.480 –> 00:07:06.339] disenfranchised some people are and how horrible some communities are that people grow up in. And people find themselves stuck in with no recourse,
[00:07:06.339 –> 00:07:09.939] no way out, no role models, no nothing,
[00:07:09.939 –> 00:07:12.139] no financial opportunities.
[00:07:12.139 –> 00:07:13.839] That’s what our real problem is in this country,
[00:07:13.839 –> 00:07:14.879] more than in this race.
[00:07:14.879 –> 00:07:18.579] It’s extreme poverty, extreme poverty and extreme crime.
[00:07:18.579 –> 00:07:21.720] And that these things don’t get addressed over and over and over again.
[00:07:21.720 –> 00:07:24.879] And in fact, a lot of the policies that you see coming from places
[00:07:24.879 –> 00:07:26.560] like San Francisco and Portland,
[00:07:26.560 –> 00:07:28.060] and they just exacerbated it.
[00:07:28.060 –> 00:07:30.199] You’re just seeing stores close because like,
[00:07:30.199 –> 00:07:32.160] okay, you can’t just steal.
[00:07:32.160 –> 00:07:33.759] Can’t just have everybody just walking
[00:07:33.759 –> 00:07:35.079] on Walmart and steal.
[00:07:35.079 –> 00:07:36.519] I was watching a video where they were showing
[00:07:36.519 –> 00:07:40.680] a Walgreens and they had everything chained up, chain.
[00:07:40.680 –> 00:07:41.519] Oh yeah.
[00:07:41.519 –> 00:07:42.360] Chains.
[00:07:42.360 –> 00:07:43.480] Even minor little things.
[00:07:43.480 –> 00:07:44.319] Yeah, little things.
[00:07:44.319 –> 00:07:45.519] Like frozen food dinners. Yeah, they had even minor little things. Yeah little things like frozen food dinners
[00:07:45.519 –> 00:07:50.639] Yeah, yeah, they had the frozen food section changed off. No again, that’s
[00:07:51.600 –> 00:07:53.600] not liberalism was never
[00:07:54.839 –> 00:07:56.839] Shoplifting is progressive right?
[00:07:57.519 –> 00:08:01.399] Yeah, and we weren’t interested in legalizing
[00:08:02.120 –> 00:08:07.500] Shoplifting or I guess we should call it justice shopping.
[00:08:07.500 –> 00:08:17.339] But in Minnesota, for example, I think it was Minneapolis. After the George Floyd murder
[00:08:17.339 –> 00:08:25.439] and the riots, I think there was a movement to disband a lot of the police.
[00:08:25.439 –> 00:08:26.079] And they did.
[00:08:26.079 –> 00:08:27.920] I think a lot of the police were let go.
[00:08:27.920 –> 00:08:33.960] Or somehow the police force was a lesser force than it was.
[00:08:33.960 –> 00:08:35.519] And what happened was, of course,
[00:08:35.519 –> 00:08:37.559] crime went up in certain areas.
[00:08:37.559 –> 00:08:42.279] And a lot of the officers who had been fired or let go
[00:08:42.279 –> 00:08:42.720] were quid.
[00:08:42.720 –> 00:08:45.440] Or for what of reason they weren’t on the force anymore,
[00:08:45.440 –> 00:08:47.759] they were hired as private security
[00:08:47.759 –> 00:08:52.320] by who, the rich people, who could afford to do it.
[00:08:52.320 –> 00:08:54.679] So their neighborhood stayed safe.
[00:08:54.679 –> 00:08:58.399] So that wasn’t exactly, I thought, a victory for liberalism.
[00:08:58.399 –> 00:08:59.720] No, it’s the opposite.
[00:08:59.720 –> 00:09:00.559] Yeah.
[00:09:00.559 –> 00:09:01.679] It’s unfortunate.
[00:09:01.679 –> 00:09:04.960] Austin defunded the police and then refunded it.
[00:09:04.960 –> 00:09:07.759] And refunded it by far more than they defunded it
[00:09:07.759 –> 00:09:11.320] Because they just of course corrected they went okay. This is not working
[00:09:11.320 –> 00:09:12.840] We have to do something to fix it
[00:09:12.840 –> 00:09:16.120] Which makes me very happy because I was really shocked that they wanted to do that
[00:09:16.120 –> 00:09:19.320] Because there’s a lot of crime and where my club is on 6th Street
[00:09:19.320 –> 00:09:20.639] That’s a wild place
[00:09:20.639 –> 00:09:25.039] 6th Street gets wild and there’s a lot of crime there and there’s a good police
[00:09:25.039 –> 00:09:29.919] presence there and we have a lot of police at the club. We hire off-duty cops towards the club
[00:09:30.559 –> 00:09:35.919] and a lot of security. We want to make it as safe as possible but the streets in the city like
[00:09:36.720 –> 00:09:42.799] you know from pandemic on it’s just it’s not good you know it’s it’s sketchy and I’m glad they
[00:09:42.799 –> 00:09:49.500] recognized it and did something. Well because so many places just aren’t course correcting Chicago. Yeah, I
[00:09:50.679 –> 00:09:54.600] Mean not not just the places where I mean
[00:09:55.759 –> 00:09:59.000] Murders have been happening way out of control in Chicago
[00:10:00.000 –> 00:10:06.080] Among the African American community for far too long and not really reported in the same
[00:10:06.080 –> 00:10:11.759] way, in the way that they should be. It’s amazing how black lives don’t seem to matter
[00:10:11.759 –> 00:10:20.960] when they’re taken by black lives. But I mean now Chicago, my friends who live there
[00:10:20.960 –> 00:10:26.000] say it’s not safe anywhere. Yeah, it’s very sketchy. Very sketchy. And that’s Chicago.
[00:10:26.000 –> 00:10:27.919] Yeah, Chicago used to be great.
[00:10:27.919 –> 00:10:29.360] It used to be easy.
[00:10:29.360 –> 00:10:30.480] It used to be a great city.
[00:10:30.480 –> 00:10:32.480] I mean, it always had problems in some areas.
[00:10:32.480 –> 00:10:36.000] But I mean, even those areas, I had a conversation
[00:10:36.000 –> 00:10:39.559] once with a driver who was a former cop.
[00:10:39.559 –> 00:10:43.279] And what he told me is that they arrested all the key drug
[00:10:43.279 –> 00:10:43.840] players.
[00:10:43.840 –> 00:10:46.179] And then there was a power struggle and things got way worse
[00:10:46.600 –> 00:10:50.659] He’s like their idea was like go in arrest the big kingpins and then we’ll clean up the city
[00:10:50.659 –> 00:10:54.500] It didn’t work at all the opposite had an effect. It was the opposite effect
[00:10:54.500 –> 00:10:58.019] They just there was way more crime. He said it was just got way more violent
[00:10:59.659 –> 00:11:04.940] Well, I mean I think a lot of the murders that happen are over
[00:11:06.240 –> 00:11:09.759] Nonsense, you know somebody dissed you on social media
[00:11:09.759 –> 00:11:12.120] or made funnier sneakers or some shit.
[00:11:12.120 –> 00:11:16.000] I mean, some of it is drug turf and that kind of stuff.
[00:11:16.000 –> 00:11:17.639] Yeah.
[00:11:17.639 –> 00:11:21.360] But I think some of it is just bullshit.
[00:11:21.360 –> 00:11:22.759] And I don’t understand why there
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