153 - 'Moderate Chic, NYT's Kavanaugh Follies, Our Pal Corn Pop'

* Tina, RIP. Bill Lee, RIP.

* Zone of Interest

* DeSantis announces

* Tim Scott announced too, btw

* An increasingly crowded and unimpressive field

* Our old pal Ethan Strauss joins

* Why does Joe keep saying that…thing about Iraq?

* “Trump is sharper than Biden”

* An interregnum on Ike Turner

* Ethan’s piece on Glen Kuiper

* The American employment gulag: exiled forever

* Paying indulgences

* Is it ok to boycott brands for not having the right politics? A debate

* Cruising, the gay Casablanca / Donnie Moore, baseball’s Ike Turner

* Bonus blathering about Basketball

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* RIP Martin Amis (and Andy Rourke and Jeremy Clarke)

* “Pussies are bullshit”

* A reading list: Money. London Fields. Zone of Interest. (Note: these all appear to be sold out on Amazon)

* On Orwell and D.J. Taylor’s new biography

* The Citibike “Karen” and her “white tears”

* Online vigilantism

* Salman Rushdie’s return

* Why’s there no challenge to Biden from The Squad?

* The…

* “Zero-to-insane in the first three minutes”

* The terrible 2024 election

* The right’s bizarre infatuation with RFK Jr.

* The immigration crisis in NYC

* The cruelty isn’t always the point

* How the average American thinks about illegal immigration

* Eli Lake joins to wish us all a Happy Durham Week

* Takeaways from the Durham Report

* The “heroes of democracy” are, in fact, the villains of democracy

* David Frum’s Atlantic piece

* Eli on Robert Kennedy Sr., the cop

* Diane Feinstein, John Fetterman, Joe Biden

* That insane LA Times piece (that we will talk about more later)

* Charging the Islip Strangler

* Moynihan’s weird bias

* A bad WSJ podcast

* The Trump townhall

* Rating Kaitlan Collins

* Journalists who hate journalism

* The not Desantis response

* Tucker’s Twitter take

* Can he succeed?

* Killing [TK], A Series

* Sorry, but that guy you hate is actually really smart

* That amazing Firing Line destruction of Leander Perez

* Our grim election / memories of 1968

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* Che jumps on the third rail

* Unaliving all the bad words

* Throat clearing Suedehead

* Let’s come to a conclusion before we know anything, ok?

* Another pretendian

* You guys are like Glenn Beck too, you know

* Nonsense talk about Western science from a nonsense person (and that insane Zoom intro mentioned by Moynihan)

* Michael Jackson’s doll isn’t ok

* A supermarket encou…

* A homicide at Broadway-Lafayette

* Crazy strangers on a train

* The dumb racialization of a tragic death

* The “delightful” and violent Michael Jackson impersonator

* Amazon’s Afrika Bambaataa impersonator goes to Cuba

* On Tucker’s identitarian texts

* Fox News’s leak war

* The Daily Show’s 81% rating collapse

* So many shitty late night talk shows

* You won’t notice the writer’s strike

* Hating the Correspondent’s Dinner is as boring as the Correspondent’s Dinner itself

* Gas stoves and Australian vapes

* Adderall nightmare updates

* Send pics

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* Moynihan on Maher

* Los Angeles is a weird place

* Kmele in Chicago with Nirvana’s producer

* The mechanics of Hollywood that we don’t understand

* AA and Scientology

* A hockey disaster

* We need more “black” hockey players

* A listener on Father Coughlin and Ayn Rand

* RIP Wes’s mom

* First class talk

* A listener in defense of MMA

* Holy shit this Danny Aiello response video

* Holy …

We’re back with one long episode in two cracking segments. First up, Welch and Moynihan (Ed. note: Kmele is currently peering through a telescope on the South Side of Chicago or something) catch up on all the stupid news of the last week, including…

* The news of certain…errrr……media layoffs

* Defenestrations at Fox News and CNN

* The “they-ificaton” of Tucker Carlson

* The bizarro world of Robert F. Kennedy Jr

* Lil’ Bobby: Prosecute people I disagree with

And then it’s an hour with return guest Ben Smith (his third appearance, we think?), editor-in-chief of Semafor, former editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News, and author of the new book Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral. No explanation needed. It’s good. You’ll like it.

He first came on to talk about a suicide in the porn industry. Then he came back to help us explore the origins of our roiling culture wars. And now Jon Ronson returns for his third one-on-one conversation with Michael Moynihan, this time to discuss The Debutante, his brilliant new podcast about high society neo-Nazis, bad swastika tattoos, Throbbing Gr…

* Kmele MC’s the FIRE Gala

* Killer Mike blows the roof off the joint

* This is a hangover episode

* A celebration of FIRE, the great Harvey Silverglate, and various other heroes of free speech

* What cable news network has created this climate of hate….in Japan

* If only we could prevent shitty speech, we would be on a forward march to utopia. Right?

* The temptation, on both the right and left, to not “do the work”

* The EU will control ChatGPT and all will be great

* The forever instinct to “disappear” bad ideas

* That very expensive Fox-Dominion settlement

* The never-ending madness in Chicago

* Root causes: A Pantone chart and a CPA

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* Kmele, Fruit of Islam

* Via Chicago

* Dominion lawsuit stuff again

* Biden and America’s favorite bearded terrorist Gerry Adams!

* Kmele’s Dominican son?

* The life and work of complete psycho Leonard Jefferies

* What do you all think of Amy Wax?

* Peter Popoff and James Randi

* A biracial question from a drunk biracial lad

* Prince’s dirty songs

* Discomfort and historical memo…

* The arrest of Jack Teixeira

* The bad showoff

* Not a source, not a Snowden

* How serious is the Teixeira leak?

* Sorry, but the NYT and WaPo did the *correct* thing

* The Tennessee 2 1/2: a plague of theater kids with dumb ideas

* That really bad and embarrassing shout-and-holler preacher impression

* That really bad and embarrassing Michael Steele clip

* That really bad and embarrassing Andrea Mitchell clip

* And a really bad and embarrassing Marjorie Taylor Greene tweet

* Democracy wasn’t failing. It was working

* I mean, at least Reverend Wright was good at it

* So what the hell is happening in France?

* That Trump-Tucker interview was insane

As an Easter and pesach mitzvah to America, we’re gifting this Member Only episode to all y’all…considering that we were on vacation and had no intention of recording it, it’s just Matt and Moyn, and they cover just one dumb subject. An annoyed text exchange about this whole “Clarence Thomas’s friend Harlan Crow loves Hitler” nonsense precipitated this recording, which also exists so we could resurface a relevant listener question from Members Only #152.

* The Rolling Stone article Matt mentioned (note the illiterate subhead which also bizarrely suggests one would have to “smuggle” statues of overthrown dictators out of “regimes”)

* That Washingtonian article Matt mentioned

* That tweet Moynihan couldn’t find

* Goldberg and French chime in

* A clip from a February Members Only episode in which the lads are asked about Nazi butter knives

Live in front of a crowd of five exhausted crew members, broadcasting from a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in midtown Manhattan (we’ll explain later), it’s another of those *forgive us father, for we are deep in our cups* episodes.

So take it all with a rather large rock of salt:

Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, RIPThe philosemitic film festival Peter Sellers was, in fact, Jewish (Sameach Pesach, btw)Ugh. We have to talk about the Trump arrest.The door wasn’t held. America is in crisisThat Trump speechSo who’s winning?There’s bit of the führerprinzip in there, eh?Political earthquakes in Wisconsin / Chicago A qualified defense of JuniorA qualified defense of Don Lemon?Birding while black

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* What was Kmele talking about? You’ll never know….

* Jewish basketball, Max Schmeling, European baseball players with consumption

* Matt Welch was about to be Paul Castellano’ed

* Are you a member of the UAE royal family? Get Moynihan on Emirates

* The unsavory Italian members of the family

* The knock-on effects of the Trump indictment?

* Melania’s forgotten about parents

* Well, it feels good to various MSNBC hosts, late-night comedians, and resistance types

* We don’t *know* how it feels

* Because no one wants to admit that we *don’t know* very much

* It’s all about race, actually

* That NPR interview with Al Sharpton

* The opposite of Alan Dershowitz

* That weird AI letter

* Fox News, Dominion, and brainy rooms

* Random thought on John Walker Lindh

* Random thought on Adderall and the drug war

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* Tupac’s stepfather Mutulu Shakur

* The adorable and execrable Dean Reed

* The worst article The Atlantic has ever published

* Champagne dreams and Fifth Column nightmares

* Trump in Waco

* Insulin girl!

* That guy cutting your hair is definitely Russian

* Georgian helicopters

* Schultz and Lula and Russia

* Stop saying “lived experience”

* That hideous school shooting

* Whatever happ…

On Monday night, to a packed house of white supremacists and neo-fascists, Kmele debated the awkward proposition “Are we too obsessed with race?” Moynihan and Welch attended. They were amused and ultimately confused. So the lads unpack just what on Earth they witnessed. After thirty minutes of conversation about drunk Fifth fans and race-obsessed weirdos, they move on to more important subjects like Trump vs. Stormy and DeSantis, the proliferation of illegal weed dispensaries, the acquisition of expensive telescopes, an ESG rule that is DOA, and why throwing hot dogs at communists is a heroic act.

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We’re still not sure if it was Peru or Chile or Gabon, but regardless…Kmele is back from his equatorial conference…but…is even really needed?? Why, yes, he is! Because in this totally sober, totally discursive Members Only pod, the lads touch on the most important subjects paralyzing the world today: Lenny Kravitz, kids birthday parties, Hilaria Baldwin…

We do it for you, people. We don’t necessarily want to, but we do. Because you need it. In times of national crisis, the Fifth will forgo all the fun stories so we can tackle the important, necessary stories. It’s time to take your medicine, citizens of Fifdom, and allow Allison Schrager, economist and Bloomberg News columnist, to womansplain just what is ailing the American economy and why the bros and their stupid bro banks are collapsing. According to Schrager, all the people you hate are, in fact, to blame.

And after releasing Allison, Welch and Moynihan stick around to discuss Joe’s gay epiphany, the moron students of America’s top university, and why being anti-bothsidesism might be homophobic. Enjoy.

Oh. And subscribe to the Substack and get an extra episode every damn week (plus lots of other stuff…like the privilege of yelling at us in the comments).

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* Kmele at a Konference? Yup!

* Moynihan spills a wee bit of tea about an old job 😬

* The New Trump U

* Commie spies

* The DeSantis strategy

* Matt’s baseball digression (on rule changes and the WBC)

* This is a very good series

* That Twitter Files circus on Capitol Hill

* So this is exactly what we were talking about re: purity tests

* Don’t identify as anything….

* So very much…

It’s just like old times! Because the boys are back in town, recording together in an actual studio, andpregaming with listener-provided booze. So…yeah, things were pretty rough going in…Sorry about that.

* We try to answer the age old question…

* A handful of some, maybe, constitutes a New York Times trend

* Let us, as men, explain something to you…

* The sexual decline and fall of the podcast bro

* “It’s not because you’re a woman. It’s because I’m an asshole.”

* Does anyone at Fox believe anything?

* Do these January 6th videos change anything?

* Note: my autocorrect knew how to spell “Dolezal”

* A very brief Covid digression

* And so much more!

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* Puerto Rican passports

* Nothing works in New York

* Jimmy the Deregulator

* Fistfight Airlines

* Kmele and Andrew Schultz at Brown

* So what about Chris Rock’s Netflix special?

* The travails of a listener’s white wife

* In praise of Matt and Trey

* A “national divorce” is dorm room, edgelord bullshit

* The loss of Mayor Pepe

* Number #9 dream

* Stirewalt on calling Arizona for Biden and the Dominion lawsuit

* On getting fired by Fox News

* How journalism collapsed

* Sean Hannity is not a conservative (he’s a Republican)

* The Joe Manchin effect

* This wouldn’t have happened under Roger Ailes

* Overestimating the media’s influence

* The inevitable conversation about mis- and disinformation

* Would Chris cancel Alex Jones?

* Cruz v. Carlson: the most excruciating interview ever?

* Will Reaganism return??

* Post-game: lab leak lollapalooza

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* Konference Kmele

* The most Jewish podcast in America?

* Arguing an overcorrection

* Michael Jackson, social conservative

* Kmele sends Angela Davis a SASE

* Slavery, King Cotton, and fighting with NHJ

* The two books on slavery Moynihan mentioned

* Listener question about maybe working for a racist conspiracy theorist

* More thoughts on big boy mannequins

* Clip from Ethan Suple…

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* Apocalypse apparel

* No country for fat men

* Singal white journalist 

* A left-wing Matt *Walsh* stan 

* Books don’t make a man

* Kancel Kmele Pls

* On Mistaken Misgendering

* Dippin toes, stepping on rakes

* A message from Julia (TBC)

* Moynihan engineers a Fifth Marriage

* The zaps of SSRI withdrawl…

* Burning down the house - followed by  

* A listener wonders: were my Italian grandpa…

* Moynihan’s hobo disaster

* KMW, disinformation queen, stops by for a few, tells us how she broke her kneecap

* KMW: The Fifth is staffed by crotchety scare-mongering old dudes (Ed. - This is disinformation)

* So why *is* KMD the disinformation queen?

* Wait, what does “disinformation” even mean??

* The movie Contact is pretty libertarian

* Killing old people, dead crank doctors, and libertarian Rachel Welch

* According to hundreds of stupid people, the New York Times is a hate group or something

* Religious TRUTH replaces reasoned debate

* Nothing is real and everything you say is killing people

* Moynihan’s Caribbean plea………

* And so much more!

* How Jamie ended up writing about Armie Hammer

* So what *is* the Hammer story anyway?

* How the motivated reasoning media ignores inconvenient inconsistencies

* Is there a path back from an utterly destroyed reputation?

* How Jamie’s book Secret City informed his reporting

* Heroes and homophobia

* So is it true what they say about James Webb?

* The Lavender Scare and Joe McCarthy

* Who was worse, JFK or RFK?

* Would anyone care about Larry Craig in 2023?

* Why was Moynihan at a political event in Florida?

* SMDH at the FUBAR SOTU

* A bit about those Twitter hearings…

* And so much more!

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* Armie of the damned

* Jamie Kirchick’s piece on Armie Hammer

* The Robin DiAngelo of Sports

* Ethan’s piece on “DEI man” Richard Lapchick

* The question that ended Ethan’s interview with Lapchick

* The NBA’s Foreskin Ceiling

* “In this day and age…”

* Maverick Carter isn’t going to hire you

* That shocking 1976 PBS documentary about racism in Queens

* Kids don’t like sports any…

* The George Wallace travel app

* The genius and utter stupidity of WEB Dubois

* That disgraceful Dubois obit for Stalin

* A copy of the Conservation of Races book

* Len Downie’s rotten, horribly written piece about objectivity in news

* Jeff Gerth’s really good piece about Trump-Russia coverage

* Remember Hamilton 68? Bush 911? Heaven 17?

* Hunter’s sexy jobs program

* Did anyone notice that Ol’ Joe said that weird lie again?

* Racist tax robots

* What’s good for me isn’t good for thee, silly poor person

* Welcome to WhiteFolksIsBad.com

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* A famous Texas hat

* Kmele’s Twitter beef with a former guest

* The tragedy in Memphis, the predictable response

* Ubiquitous white supremacy

* Don’t even read Mark Twain aloud

* A listener speculates on Kmele’s “blackness”

* Back to Texas: they are just nice people, says Moynihan

* Name this listener’s baby

* The etymology of “Kmele”

* Nicola Sturgeon splutters when asked about …

A sober first segment about war and death is interrupted by our chaotic and fatphobic friend Ben Dreyfuss, who joins the Fifth to discuss his insane Twitter account and why he keeps making people really mad.

* We haven’t seen many of these Oscar movies

* German Leopards for Ukraine

* The arrival of “Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss' actor son Ben, 36, [who was] slammed for saying he'd never have sex 'with a fat person’”

* That Daily Mail article / We read Ben some of the comments

* Wait, why did Ben get fired from Mother Jones again?

* Will there ever be a deal-breaking sex scandal again?

* Peter Falk, gay icon?

* An important conversation about Rocky

* Trump can come back to Facebook

* The government is suing Google

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* Santos: Hotter as a lady?

* Hunter is a shitty person who makes shitty art

* Kmele shuts down a Netflix indoctrination session

* Georgia: Stupid people play stupid games and win stupid prizes

* A shooting in LA

* Another shooting in LA

* A tribute to a listener

* More on Cormac McCarthy (and Camus and Sartre)

* Objecting to Douglas Murray

* On the weirdness of the Phantom of th…

* Release The List

* Crosby, Not So Great

* A Few Nights In Chicago

* Squashing Racism ($5 Million at a Time)

* Reparations and the US Constitution

* A Seat at the Table

* Hereditary Culpability and Entitlement

* Manhattan Beach

* Daily Wire vs. Mug Club

* Drew Carey 🖤 CDC

* “We ain’t gonna talk bout dem papers (so y’all can quit asking)”

* Debt Limit Hold’em

* The Anti-Woke Caucus

* Florida’s “Objective” Nonsense

* What Students Deserve

* “If We Lose, You Lose”

Recorded: 1/19/23

Published: 1/20/23

* The Corvette Papers

* “So my friend gets arrested for murder in South Sudan…”

* No sex please, he’s British

* The times, they have a’ changed

* From Belfast to Pyongyang

* If I Did It: Eichmann versus the neo-Nazis

* Russophilia, left and right

* America: a net exporter of bad ideas

* Is there a war on the West?

* Douglas’s new podcast, Uncancelled History

* In defense of Lincoln and Churchill

* Regrets, I’ve had just…one

* Disqualifying Kant and Hume

* That idiotic USA Today piece cited by Matt

* And so much more!

* Former Rep. Justin Amash was on the floor during the leadership fight??

* Brian Lamb question: What does the speaker actually do?

* And what do the Gang of Twenty actually want?

* Rep. Amash: Kevin McCarthy “isn’t that bright” and “will do whatever it takes to maintain power”

* Why the system is broken and how it got that way

* Congress is becoming more European

* Reminder: Amash created (and named) the Freedom Caucus

* Are you really putting yourself forward to be speaker?

* The whole system is broken. And all the other speaker options are reflections of this brokenness

* The NYT and “ultraconservatives”

* The Ukraine objection exception

* A qualified defense of the execrable Skip Bayless

* Idiots deciding who gets to speak