96 Comments

Will being a paid member put me at risk of Rico charges?

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Happy birthday 🎉 Michael! 72 years young!

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He looks pretty good for 72 years of hard living!

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In honor of his birthday I’m about to crack open my first Martin Amis novel.

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Follow up from the members only but Oliver Anthony’s comments about Fox using his music for the GOP debate is pretty damn Fifth: “I wrote that song about those people. So for [the candidates] to have to sit there and listen to that, that cracks me up,” he says. “That song has nothing to do with Joe Biden. It’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden. That song was written about the people on that stage — and a lot more, not just them, but definitely them…I see the right trying to characterize me as one of their own and I see the left trying to discredit me, I guess in retaliation.”

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Yup. Pretty great.

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I appreciate him more after reading that response. Not that I'm necessarily a fan of the song that much (it's fine but nothing special and honestly a little awkward) but at least he's not just a partisan puppet.

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The things he is describing align with the Trump base. (Who also don't have much use for the people on stage in the debate, to be fair.) He's mad at inflation, taxes, welfare cheats and pedophile politicians, not the low minimum wage, absence of card-check unionization and failure to forgive Oberlin kids' college debt.

Oliver may not like the fact that his song's protagonist is a Trumpy right winger, but Death of the Author and all that.

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Gonna update my dating profile with cosmopolitan international elite they person doing secret things to manipulate power, resident of Gomorrah, who goes to church every week with 35% of my best friends.

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"update"

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Or at least, every Second Sunday.

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I haven’t listened yet (I’m at work), but we know why Not Even Mad, which I like, failed: Heffernan couldn’t bear to be outside her echo chamber and have her ideas challenged. But Pesca and Kirchik are great.

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Sounds like maybe it was coming more from the Kirchik side? I do like him though.

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I’ve listened now. I don’t know. The impression I get, both from what Pesca said here and on the postmortem ep of NEM, was that Kirchik and Heffernan were getting mad, but the latter couldn’t handle online criticism from likeminded lefties. Either way, it’s a shame it didn’t work out.

For a good podcast featuring three people of differing political philosophies getting along, I recommend, if you’re a film lover as I am, Across the Movie Aisle with Sonny Bunch, Alyssa Rosenberg and Peter Suderman.

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I can’t remember if it was the wrap up of NEM or an episode of The Gist, but MP’s in the moment breakdown of the situation put more onus on VH’s failure to cope with both JK’s arguments and criticism from her “side” about not being aggressive enough/participating at all. I can’t really blame MP for going for the “spread & soften” approach a few months removed, though. Diplomacy is wise.

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Kathleen, yes, that was in the NEM epilogue, and MP alludes to it with the lads here, too.

One of the best NEM eps was sans VH, when Dan Savage joined MP and JK. I really enjoyed it. Also the first part of the wrap-up, if I remember correctly, was the intended format but with two different panelists joining MP.

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*liked, I meant to say.

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Shabbat shalom to all the Fifdom Theys 🙌🏼 happy birthday Moynihan! 🥳

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Aww, thanks!  😄

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Had two thoughts from this episode.

1. There's a bar in Chicago called the Tin Lizzie that's decorated with celebrity mug shots, including Larry King. They also do turtle races.

2. Matt made a point about church attendance. Don't know where his numbers came from, but worth noting that church attendance surveys are notoriously unreliable. Social desirability bias makes people over-report how often they go. The effect is particularly strong in the US, to the point where research using time diaries brings the US much more in line with European countries. Although I'd say the fact that the effect is so strong in the US is notable in itself. (PDF) https://www.unil.ch/files/live/sites/issr/files/shared/8._Telechargement/Cours_MA_Chaves_2011/2011_Brenner.pdf

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Yeah I feel like this is something that has really changed in the US over the past 30-40 years. In the 80s/90s there were a lot of people who didn't always go, but people who didn't go at all ever felt a bit of an outlier, and maybe something you even had to hide a bit.

These days the expectation is that people don't go at all, or maybe just a couple times a year, and anything more is surprising. And even people who are fairly religious and go pretty regularly might skip it if the kid has a baseball game or something. When scheduling youth sports, conflicts with church times don't even come up for discussion.

And I am part of an early morning Sunday thing that I am sure initially started at that time so as not to conflict with church, but these days I would be shocked if more than a few of the people there even went to church. Even some of the quite religious people there don't seem to go to church much.

Anyway, just seems like so wild changes in such a short time.

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This was a good ep.

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Shots fired @ Chris Hayes 😏

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How does Kmele know his Tesla identifies as black?

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Criminally underrated comment

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That's preposterous!

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I've been a fan of both you guys and Mike for awhile so super excited that he's able to be a guest again! I think he fits in well as a fourth man on the mic. I would love a Mike & Michael spin-off riffing on random topics to see who can go the deepest on obscure references

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Name of the podcast: ‘Mic Drop’?

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Perfect. Can't be successful without a good pun name

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Moynihan and I have the same birthday. That has to be worth something. Happy birthday, Mike!

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Happy birthday! Even cooler, you share the same birthday as Aaron!

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Happy Birthday!🎉

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Tiger Woods mugshot still holds the title IMO

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Nick Nolte's is pretty infamous.

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I am learning Michael and I share the same birthday of Aug 24th!

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Happy belated birthday!

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Sister's is the 27th. Wife's is the 29th. Wife's best friends is the 31st. Guess it was a Happy Thanksgiving in some people's households.

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I really liked Not Even Mad. I found common ground and disagreement with all three. Heffernan was likable but I remember being very annoyed by her more than the others. I think most when she said James Bennett was pushed out for being a BAD EDITOR, which was a novel take. Also, when she was on with Meghan Daum she was clear there were people she would just not talk to, which seemed to contradict the whole purpose of the podcast!

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Same here. This is the same Heffernan who wrote the ridiculous LA Times piece in which she wondered how to behave toward her very friendly, helpful neighbors who happened to be Trump voters, and the laughably hagiographic story on Pete Buttigieg for Wired. Let her stay in her bubble.

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The booking scene in Night Shift is an uncelebrated gem of 1980s filmmaking. Unfortunately for both Winkler and Keaton, the MTV movie awards were still a decade away. Either could have taken home the box-of-popcorn statuette for Best Mugshot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aR5N6WCAYs

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One of my all-time favorite movies.

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I have to go find it and watch now. It's been decades, one of my all time favs too.

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