Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central, Please welcome Tonahus Coats. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show. Thanks having It's good to have
Speaker 1: you man. This is uh, this is fun. Before before
Speaker 1: we get into the into the book, there's a story
Speaker 1: that came out of the book that I like, a
Speaker 1: side of you that I didn't really know about, a
Speaker 1: piece of you that I went back and read on.
Speaker 1: And that was Tana Hussy, the blogger. You know you
Speaker 1: you blogged a lot. You You you speak in the
Speaker 1: book about how this is where you forged your writing.
Speaker 1: You know, it was it was your dojo in a way.
Speaker 1: Do you sometimes miss that Tuna Hussy where you could
Speaker 1: say whatever you want? You know, there wasn't the scrutiny
Speaker 1: on you. You were just spitting your ideas out there
Speaker 1: all the time, all the time. Yeah, I mean, I um,
Speaker 1: you know what happened last year. I got I was
Speaker 1: doing an other interview show and I got asked who
Speaker 1: I was voting for, and I said, I said I
Speaker 1: was one offul Bernie Sanders and in New York Times
Speaker 1: before they called me after that and it was clear,
Speaker 1: I like, I couldn't talk in the same way anymore,
Speaker 1: Like I just didn't have like the ability I had,
Speaker 1: you know, very much way, you know how because in
Speaker 1: my mind is just me talking. It's just the guy
Speaker 1: from West Baltom, we're talking. He might know, he might
Speaker 1: not know. But you know, then I realized that people
Speaker 1: don't necessarily see it that way. Well, yeah, it's funny
Speaker 1: you say that, because people see you as knowing everything
Speaker 1: you put down on a page, they see as you knowing.
Speaker 1: But in this book, what you've done is you've gone
Speaker 1: back and you've said I didn't know, and I should
Speaker 1: have known, and I wish I would have known, which
Speaker 1: which is an interesting way to go back and look
Speaker 1: at your life and look at eight years in power.
Speaker 1: The book is really looking at Obama's tenure, looking at
Speaker 1: that time. Am I correct in saying that this is
Speaker 1: a pessimistic outlook on on what that out years, on
Speaker 1: what those eight is meant? I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's an odd thing, you know. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a journalist. Like that's I mean, like, I know people
Speaker 1: won't see that anymore. But you know, my editors never said,
Speaker 1: you know, well tona house. You know, when I tell them,
Speaker 1: go right, is this gonna be hopeful. You know, it's
Speaker 1: going to be optimistic or pessimistic. So it's it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to answer that as a as a practitioner,
Speaker 1: it is what it was, if that makes any sort
Speaker 1: of sense. That's like, from the aspect of actually creating
Speaker 1: the thing. Yes, I don't think why this is going
Speaker 1: to be a really depressing story. But while this is
Speaker 1: gonna make people feel great, you know, it's it's not
Speaker 1: really in my mind. I'm trying to get answers, you know, um,
Speaker 1: And if those answers tend to be depressing, then I
Speaker 1: think that's because of previous stories that maybe we've told
Speaker 1: ourselves about the world. That's that's interesting because I've I've
Speaker 1: seen a few white people who have said, Tanahassi, how
Speaker 1: can you condemn this country? You know, they go like, Tnahs,
Speaker 1: I mean, I hear what you're saying, and I mean,
Speaker 1: you're right about the slavery and your rights, about the
Speaker 1: Jim Crow, and you're right about segregation, and you're it's
Speaker 1: about you know, mass and conceration. But but really is
Speaker 1: it isn't that bad? I mean, Mama, I don't see
Speaker 1: myself condemning the country, right like I think what it
Speaker 1: is is if you believe, if you believe in the
Speaker 1: American exceptional this myth is that America is somehow higher
Speaker 1: than all other countries, that it's touched by God, that
Speaker 1: it really is, you know, as we talked about that
Speaker 1: city on the hill. Then yes, I'm condemning it. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, but if you believe, is I believe that
Speaker 1: it's a society, is a country established by humans with
Speaker 1: all the beautiful things and all the flaws that come
Speaker 1: from being a human being, then no, it's just a story.
Speaker 1: It's just the story. Would you like, what if I
Speaker 1: what if I presented this to you? What if I
Speaker 1: said it is exceptional? What if I went, America is
Speaker 1: exceptional in the same way Superman is exceptional. But then
Speaker 1: there is the clock Kent side of Superman, you know,
Speaker 1: the floors, the cracks in the facility. Can you can
Speaker 1: you be Superman? And the election lother side, like if
Speaker 1: they were the same. No, it's much more like that,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. I think, Um, there's a
Speaker 1: heavy missionary impulse that is buried in the Americans, Like
Speaker 1: maybe it's bright in the psyche of all people, like
Speaker 1: where they want to believe their country is somehow distinctly
Speaker 1: more and moral or more just than all other societies
Speaker 1: and countries before. Um. I don't see myself necessarily as
Speaker 1: saying anything that you know, that you know, sort of
Speaker 1: out there, but I think it does attack that idea
Speaker 1: that's just somehow, you know, particularly special, different, exceptional. You.
Speaker 1: You take us through each year of the Obama presidency,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting how the book starts from a place
Speaker 1: of hope, excitement. You know, you talk about how you
Speaker 1: went with your partner, you bought food, you achieved it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, Black Times, maybe it was a good thing.
Speaker 1: We use different phrase, yeah, I mean not peraphrase, that's
Speaker 1: what I felt Black Times. And yeah, and then um,
Speaker 1: and then as as the presidency unfolds, we we we
Speaker 1: we go through this journey with you. That's really powerful
Speaker 1: because you take us to a place where, in many
Speaker 1: ways you argue that Obama's presidency and black leadership in
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form, is in some way contributing
Speaker 1: to white supremacy, which is very complicated argument. What do
Speaker 1: you mean when you say that, I wouldn't quite, but
Speaker 1: I would say it's it's not you know, like, I
Speaker 1: don't think Obama did anything but be a human being
Speaker 1: and you know, going to the office and just happened
Speaker 1: to be somebody to check black on the centers form.
Speaker 1: It's the reaction to that. It's always the reaction to
Speaker 1: the ordinary nous, to the bourgeois and to the middle
Speaker 1: classness of you know, normal everyday black people, and how
Speaker 1: well that accords with what this country claims the value.
Speaker 1: That's always a threat because it automatically undermines the suppositions
Speaker 1: of white supremacy, which says that black people, you know,
Speaker 1: don't take care that kids. Black people are you know,
Speaker 1: you know, always you know, killing each other. Ended up
Speaker 1: in like there's a kind of moral judgment that can
Speaker 1: always be made on black people. This goes back to
Speaker 1: you know, justifications to slavery and black folks who present
Speaker 1: themselves you know, in a in a particular way as
Speaker 1: undermining that. Know, it's always a threat to the thinking
Speaker 1: about white superson I think that's why folks were so
Speaker 1: offended by Obama, Like they couldn't grasp that he was
Speaker 1: actually black, and so they became this whole other mythology
Speaker 1: that sprung up around them most you know, specifically in
Speaker 1: this birth ofism thing. Somehow he's not like he could
Speaker 1: not be from here because he's not the black that
Speaker 1: we believe black to be exactly. And there's another word
Speaker 1: that I cannot use up here, but I think that
Speaker 1: that they actually want that's the archetype of what that is,
Speaker 1: but that he would be black and be human and
Speaker 1: all the again exception, all the normal ways of a
Speaker 1: human being. Kiss your wife, love your wife, got a dog,
Speaker 1: you know, two kids, just normal human every day. What's
Speaker 1: too much, you know what I mean? And I think
Speaker 1: that contributed to the birth of rhism, you know, all
Speaker 1: the sort of weird conspiracy theories that you know sprung
Speaker 1: up around him. When you when you talk about the
Speaker 1: backlash that many people have tried to dissect looking at
Speaker 1: the election, um, you one of your arguments is, in
Speaker 1: many ways, Trump was a backlash to Obama. Now I
Speaker 1: understand that the argument, but I go was was this
Speaker 1: a backlash to Obama? Or was it a backlash to
Speaker 1: the establishment to Hillary Clinton? Too? More of the same,
Speaker 1: because I mean Mitt Romney and Donald Trump had the
Speaker 1: same amount of votes. You know, Hillary Clinton is the
Speaker 1: person who had fewer votes, and so it feels like
Speaker 1: it was less the people ranning around Trump in the
Speaker 1: in the national president in the national election, more people
Speaker 1: running around him in the in the Republican nomination. Do
Speaker 1: you feel that that, like, does it have to be
Speaker 1: a backlash? Do you think it was a backlash? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely was. It definitely was. I mean, you're right,
Speaker 1: it was a reaction. I think it was to somebody
Speaker 1: sort of reaction to Hillary Clinton. I think it was
Speaker 1: a reacted to the fact of having the possibility of
Speaker 1: a woman president. I think that was definitely there. Um.
Speaker 1: But I've heard, you know, people who make this arguing
Speaker 1: about Mitt Romney and Trump all the time, as though
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney and Trump are equal. Mitt Romney had been governor,
Speaker 1: he had run for president before, he was very very
Speaker 1: practiced politician. The fact that Trump, who had no experience
Speaker 1: at all in politics, who said all sorts of outrageous things,
Speaker 1: who was caught on tape bragging about sexual harassment, was
Speaker 1: even in speeding distance of Mit rom He shows you
Speaker 1: how much the bar was lower. So the fact that
Speaker 1: you know, they somehow that doesn't prove much to me.
Speaker 1: If if he were, if him and Obama were being
Speaker 1: judged by the same standards, he wouldn't even have been
Speaker 1: in the race. It's the lower bar, and I think
Speaker 1: attest to the fact, you know, of backlash when you
Speaker 1: look at the complicated relationship between white supremacy and misogyny,
Speaker 1: that's like a very complicated space to be in, you know,
Speaker 1: where you go. White supremacy and the oppression of women
Speaker 1: have been tied together in ways that I even struggle
Speaker 1: to comprehend. How does how does that plan? Have you
Speaker 1: even taken the time to read through that, because I
Speaker 1: know you don't, you don't. You know, you're you're not
Speaker 1: the journalist of everything. Um. They're batter people that made
Speaker 1: that that that can stress that. Um. But I think
Speaker 1: you know, one of one of the notions that that
Speaker 1: that you know is always there is the fact that
Speaker 1: having a black president like that was a fundamental until shift.
Speaker 1: I mean, you had had a line of why dudes
Speaker 1: you know before him, and then you were going to
Speaker 1: immediately follow that up with a woman, you know, I
Speaker 1: think you know, it was it was almost unfortunate that
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton had to run after there had been a
Speaker 1: black president talking about you know, I just you know,
Speaker 1: two big, big, you know, moments of just huge, huge change.
Speaker 1: I think before I let you go one last question,
Speaker 1: talking to the idea we were eight years in power.
Speaker 1: You draw in the book many parallels between a time
Speaker 1: when black people were ruling, the backlash that came afterwards,
Speaker 1: and Obama's rule. In the backlash that came afterwards. One
Speaker 1: thing you also do in the book, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's coincidental or not, is you also draw
Speaker 1: parallels in the response to that backlash you have the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement that comes afterwards. Do you think that
Speaker 1: in some ways Donald Trump's presidency will be the slingshot
Speaker 1: that propels America even further forward? Is there a possibility
Speaker 1: that now you will have more people engaged in politics,
Speaker 1: You will have more women who are running for office,
Speaker 1: You will have have more men who are accountable for
Speaker 1: sexual harassment. Do you think there's a possibility, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a possibility. It also could be the Trapdoortter plummets. I
Speaker 1: sent to the abyss, So one or the other one
Speaker 1: of you. I'm not saying you know. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: you know one of the other. I hope when I'm
Speaker 1: on my desk. No, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1: Always always a pleasure. Who eight years in power is
Speaker 1: available now? It's fascinating. You want to read this ton
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