Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. I guess Tom. It's a
Speaker 1: national correspondent for the Atlantic and the New York Times
Speaker 1: best selling author whose latest book is called We Were
Speaker 1: Eight Years in Power, An American Tragedy. Please welcome Tanahas Coats,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show. Thanks having It's good to
Speaker 1: have you, man. This is uh, this is fun. Before
Speaker 1: before we get into the into the book, there's a
Speaker 1: story that came out of the book that I like,
Speaker 1: a side of you that I didn't really know about,
Speaker 1: a piece of you that I went back and read on,
Speaker 1: and that was Tana Hussie, 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 Tana Hussy where you could
Speaker 1: say whatever you want? You know, there wasn't the scrutiny
Speaker 1: on you. 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 another interview show and I got asked who I
Speaker 1: was voting for, and I said, I said I was
Speaker 1: voting for Bernie Sanders and the New York Times before
Speaker 1: they called me after that, and it was clear, I
Speaker 1: like I couldn't talk in the same way anymore. Like
Speaker 1: I just didn't have like the ability I had, you know,
Speaker 1: very much way, you know how, because in my mind
Speaker 1: is just me talking. It's just the guy from West
Speaker 1: Baltom were talking. He might know, he might not know.
Speaker 1: But you know, then I realized that people don't necessarily
Speaker 1: see it that way. Well, yeah, it's funny you say that,
Speaker 1: because people see you as knowing everything you put down
Speaker 1: on a page, they see as you knowing. But in
Speaker 1: this book, what you've done is you've gone back and
Speaker 1: you've said I didn't know, and I should have known,
Speaker 1: and I wish I would have known, which which is
Speaker 1: an interesting way to go back and look at your
Speaker 1: life and look at eight years in power. The book
Speaker 1: is really looking at Obama's tenure, right, looking at that time.
Speaker 1: Am I correct in saying that this is a pessimistic
Speaker 1: outlook on on what the outyears, on what the those
Speaker 1: eight years meant. I don't know, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: it's an odd thing, you know, I'm I'm a journalist,
Speaker 1: Like that's I mean, like, I know, people don't see
Speaker 1: that anymore. But you know, my editors never saying, you know,
Speaker 1: well town House. You know when I tell them, go right,
Speaker 1: is this gonna be hopeful? You know, it's going to
Speaker 1: be optimistic or pessimistic. So it's it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to answer that as a as a practitioner, it is
Speaker 1: what it was, if that makes any sort of sense.
Speaker 1: That's like, from the aspect of actually creating the thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: I don't think why it's going to be a really
Speaker 1: depressing story. But while this is gonna make people feel great,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not really in my mind. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get answers, you know. Um, And if those
Speaker 1: answers tend to be depressing, then I think that's because
Speaker 1: of previous stories that maybe we've told ourselves about the world.
Speaker 1: That's that's interesting because I've seen a few white people
Speaker 1: who have said, Tanahassi, how can you condemn this country?
Speaker 1: You know, they go like, Tanahass, I mean, I hear
Speaker 1: what you're saying, and I mean, you're right about the slavery,
Speaker 1: and you writes about the Jim Crow, and you're right
Speaker 1: about segregation, and he writes about you know, mass and conceration.
Speaker 1: But but really is it isn't that bad? I mean, MoMA,
Speaker 1: I don't see myself condemning the country right like I
Speaker 1: think what it is is if you believe, if you
Speaker 1: believe in the American exceptional this myth is that America
Speaker 1: is somehow higher than all other countries, that it's touched
Speaker 1: by God, and it really is, you know, as we
Speaker 1: talked about that city on the hill, Then yes I'm
Speaker 1: condemning it, Yes, I mean, but if you believe, is
Speaker 1: I believe that it's a society, is a country established
Speaker 1: by humans with all the beautiful things and all the
Speaker 1: flaws that come from being a human being, then no,
Speaker 1: it's just a story. It's just the story. Would just
Speaker 1: like what if I what if I presented this to you?
Speaker 1: What if I said it is exceptional? What if I went,
Speaker 1: America is exceptional in the same way Superman is exceptional.
Speaker 1: But then there is the clock Kent side of Superman,
Speaker 1: you know, the flaws, the cracks in the can you
Speaker 1: can you be Superman? An election loser 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 American psyche,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's buried in the psyche of all people
Speaker 1: like where they want to believe their country is somehow
Speaker 1: distinctly more and moral or more just than all other
Speaker 1: societies and countries before. Um. I don't see myself necessarily
Speaker 1: as saying anything that you know, that you know, sort
Speaker 1: of out there, but I think it does attack that
Speaker 1: idea 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 would it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, Black Times, maybe it was good. Use
Speaker 1: a different phrase, yeah, I mean, not perphrase. Pah, that's
Speaker 1: what I felt Black Times. And yeah, and then um,
Speaker 1: and then as as the presidency unfold, we we go
Speaker 1: through this journey with you. That's really powerful because you
Speaker 1: take us to a place where, in many ways you
Speaker 1: argue that Obama's presidency and black leadership in any way,
Speaker 1: shape or form, is in some way contributing to white supremacy,
Speaker 1: which is very complicated argument. What what what do you mean
Speaker 1: when you say that. I wouldn't quite, but I would
Speaker 1: say it's it's not you know, like I don't think
Speaker 1: Obama did anything but be a human being and you know,
Speaker 1: going to the office and just happened to be somebody
Speaker 1: to checked black on the sentence form. It's the reaction
Speaker 1: to that. It's always the reaction to the ordinary ness,
Speaker 1: to the bourgeois and to the middle class neess of
Speaker 1: you know, normal everyday black people, and how well that
Speaker 1: accords with what this country claims the value. That's always
Speaker 1: a threat because it automatically undermines the suppositions of white supremacy,
Speaker 1: which says that black people, you know, don't take care
Speaker 1: that kids. Black people are you know, you know, always
Speaker 1: you know, killing each other ended up in like there's
Speaker 1: a kind of moral judgment that can all ways be
Speaker 1: made on black people. This goes back to, you know,
Speaker 1: justifications to slavery and black folks who present themselves, you know,
Speaker 1: in a in a particular way as undermining that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's always a threat to the thinking about white superson
Speaker 1: I think that's why folks were so offended by Obama,
Speaker 1: Like they couldn't grasp that he was actually black, and
Speaker 1: so they became this whole other mythology that sprung up
Speaker 1: around them most you know, specifically in this birth ofism thing.
Speaker 1: Somehow he's not like, he could not be from here
Speaker 1: because he's not the black that we believe black to
Speaker 1: be exactly. And there's another word that I cannot use
Speaker 1: up here, but I think that that they actually want
Speaker 1: that's the archetype of what that is, but that he
Speaker 1: would be black and be human and all the again exception,
Speaker 1: all the normal ways of a human being, kiss your wife,
Speaker 1: love your wife, got a dog, you know, two kids,
Speaker 1: just normal human every day what's too much, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? And I think that contributed to the
Speaker 1: birth of rhism, you know, all the sort of weird
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories that you know, sprung up around them. When
Speaker 1: you when you talk about the backlash that many people
Speaker 1: have tried to dissect looking at the election, um you
Speaker 1: one of your arguments is, in many ways Trump was
Speaker 1: a backlash to Obama. Now I understand that the argument,
Speaker 1: but I go was was this a backlash to Obama
Speaker 1: or was it a backlash to the establishment? To Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton too? More of the same, Because I mean, Mitt
Speaker 1: Romney and Donald Trump had the same amount of votes.
Speaker 1: You know, Hillary Clinton is the person who had fewer votes,
Speaker 1: and so it feels like it was less the people
Speaker 1: running around Trump in the in the national president in
Speaker 1: the national election, more people running around him in the
Speaker 1: in the Republican nomination. Do you feel that that, like,
Speaker 1: does it have to be a backlash? Do you think
Speaker 1: it was a backlash? Yeah, it definitely was. It definitely was.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're right, it was a reaction. I think
Speaker 1: it was to somebody sort of reaction to Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 1: I think it was a reactive the fact of having
Speaker 1: the possibility of a woman president. Right, I think that
Speaker 1: was definitely there. Um. But I've heard, you know, people
Speaker 1: who make this arguing about Mitt Romney and Trump all
Speaker 1: the time, as though Mitt Romney and Trump are equal. Um.
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney had been governor, he had run for president before,
Speaker 1: He was very, very practiced politician. The fact that Trump,
Speaker 1: who had no experience at all in politics, who said
Speaker 1: all sorts of outrageous things, who was caught on tape
Speaker 1: bragging about sexual harassment, was even in speeding distance of
Speaker 1: Mit Romney shows you how much the bar was lower.
Speaker 1: So the fact that you know, they somehow that doesn't
Speaker 1: prove much to me. If if he were, if him
Speaker 1: and Obama were being judged by the same standards, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't even have been in the race. It's the lower
Speaker 1: bar that I think attest to the fact, you know,
Speaker 1: of backlash when you look at the complicated relationship between
Speaker 1: white supremacy and misogyny, that's like a very complicated space
Speaker 1: to be in. You know, where you go, white supremacy
Speaker 1: and the oppression of women have been tied together in
Speaker 1: ways that I even struggled to comprehend. How does how
Speaker 1: does that plan? And have you even taken the time
Speaker 1: to read through that, because I know you don't. You don't.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're not the journalist of everything. Um.
Speaker 1: They're better people that made that that that can stress that. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think you know, one of one of the
Speaker 1: notions that that that you know is always there is
Speaker 1: the fact that having a black president like that was
Speaker 1: a fundamental shift. I mean, you had had a line
Speaker 1: of why dudes you know before him, and then you
Speaker 1: were gonna immediately follow that up with a woman, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you know it was it was almost unfortunate
Speaker 1: that Hillary Clinton had to run after there had been
Speaker 1: a black president, talking about you know, 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 coincidential 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 sling
Speaker 1: shot that propels America even further forward? Is there a
Speaker 1: possibility 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 more men who are accountable for sexual harassment.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's a possibility, Yeah, there's a possibility.
Speaker 1: It also could be the trapdoorter plummets I sent to
Speaker 1: the abyss, so one or the other one of you.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying, you know, I'm not saying you know,
Speaker 1: I've one or I hope when I'm on my best
Speaker 1: man an no. Thank you so much for being here, Always,
Speaker 1: always a pleasure. Eight Years in Power is available now.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. You want to read this book. Ton of
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