Speaker 1: What's an earth. I'm taking my pels in the vitamins.
Speaker 1: You know, I gotta stay strong. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Many of you all probably know. Leslie Jones is one
Speaker 1: of the comedians on Saturday Night Live. She's also one
Speaker 1: of the stars of the female version of Ghostbusters, and
Speaker 1: earlier this summer, she was eviscerated, really abused mercilessly on
Speaker 1: social media, particularly Twitter, with the most hateful, bigoted, disgusting comments.
Speaker 1: She really got a lot of attention because she stood
Speaker 1: up and she shared this with the world, which really
Speaker 1: kind of I think unveiled what a cess pool social
Speaker 1: media can be. Have you experienced much hate speech yourself? Oh,
Speaker 1: I've I've been swimming in that cess pool. Actually, you know,
Speaker 1: people don't really understand how it's like a sucker punch
Speaker 1: when people say that such mean, nasty, negative, ugly things
Speaker 1: about you, either about who you are, you know, your intelligence,
Speaker 1: your appearance, and I think under the cloak of anonymity,
Speaker 1: people feel emboldened to say all sorts of horrific things. Well,
Speaker 1: and I've seen what people say about you online and
Speaker 1: I know you, I'm your friend, and it's really upsetting
Speaker 1: because I know that it isn't true, and thank you
Speaker 1: for your support. You're welcome anytime. And I think that anonymity,
Speaker 1: as you said, gives people an ability to say things
Speaker 1: that they never would dream of saying if they actually
Speaker 1: had to identify themselves or to be face to face
Speaker 1: with somebody. We're going to talk with two people today
Speaker 1: who are on the front lines of this issue. First,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Weissman. He's an editor for the New York Times,
Speaker 1: and he quit Twitter over hate speech and he did
Speaker 1: something very very brave, which will tell you about in
Speaker 1: a moment. And will also be hearing from Richard Cohen,
Speaker 1: who's president of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Now, Richard's
Speaker 1: been mired in this stuff for decades. He'll tell us
Speaker 1: that for every big win against hate speech, there is
Speaker 1: inevitably a backlash. But there are still things that we
Speaker 1: can all do to fight these hateful words and deeds.
Speaker 1: I guess the question is our technology companies doing as
Speaker 1: much as they could. Well, it's a tough issue because
Speaker 1: you want people to be able to participate anonymously from
Speaker 1: places like Syria and Iran where they have no choice,
Speaker 1: but in this country people are sort of abusing that
Speaker 1: privilege in order to be really nasty and inject a
Speaker 1: lot of poison into the public discourse. Now, of course
Speaker 1: I'm the target of some of this because I'm a
Speaker 1: public figure or whatever. But we wondered if other people
Speaker 1: experience that even in their small circles, even among their
Speaker 1: followers on social media. So we decided to head out
Speaker 1: to Times Square, the center of the New York universe,
Speaker 1: of course, to find out what other people are experiencing online.
Speaker 1: And here's what we discovered. Hi, can I show a
Speaker 1: quick question? Sure, have you ever experienced hate speech or
Speaker 1: somebody being abusive to you on social media or online? Yeah? Political? Yeah?
Speaker 1: How does it make you feel when you get those
Speaker 1: kinds of comments like, I don't want to be a
Speaker 1: part of it. I mean, I just ignore it. To
Speaker 1: be honest with you, when you see it online directed
Speaker 1: at other people, what do you think? In general? I
Speaker 1: don't like any kind of anybody that makes any adverse
Speaker 1: comments to people online because it goes to everybody, and
Speaker 1: I don't I don't agree with that. Leat haters hate Honestly,
Speaker 1: They're going to talk about whatever they want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Are you shocked sometimes when you see the level of
Speaker 1: discourse online. Well, I'm I'm not shocked because that was
Speaker 1: what the Internet was originally supposed to be, which was
Speaker 1: supposed to be an area where it's democratizing opinion to
Speaker 1: send and so forth. So unfortunately it matches up with
Speaker 1: the spectrum of the world. I think there needs to
Speaker 1: be some boundary of you know, what's appropriate and what's
Speaker 1: not right. You sort of teach kids and people what's
Speaker 1: appropriate what's not and you have to kind of practice
Speaker 1: it in real life. I think have you ever experienced
Speaker 1: online bullying or hate? You know you're talking to I'm
Speaker 1: the Finnish dragon for men's health. So basically everything I
Speaker 1: post is he skipped leg days, calves look terrible. I
Speaker 1: hate his face. Um, I wish you would die. Do
Speaker 1: you monitor your comments and do you ever remove them?
Speaker 1: We often remove them. That's half my job. He's growing
Speaker 1: to the Facebook feed particular. Yeah, Facebook definitely. So it
Speaker 1: keeps you hate speech, keeps you very busy, It keeps
Speaker 1: me employed. Yeah, definitely. There is rough out there, all right,
Speaker 1: stay safe out there. A big thank you to everyone
Speaker 1: willing to talk thus on a warm summer day in
Speaker 1: the middle of Times Square, very warm now, Let's talk
Speaker 1: about Jonathan Wiseman. Jonathan is a very fine writer for
Speaker 1: the New York Times, and he confronted really something that
Speaker 1: is so ugly that many of us believed, probably incorrectly,
Speaker 1: had been put to bed a long time ago, which
Speaker 1: is just blatant anti semitism. So he's here to talk
Speaker 1: about that and what he did about it. Hey, Jonathan Wiseman, Hi, Katie,
Speaker 1: how are you. I'm good, Brian, and I are really
Speaker 1: delighted that you're here to talk about what happened to you,
Speaker 1: because I think it's emblematic of the times we're living
Speaker 1: in and how strange and surreal social media can be,
Speaker 1: and how actually upsetting and dangerous it can be as well.
Speaker 1: Let's start from the beginning. This all happened when you
Speaker 1: posted an article about fascism. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about why you posted it and what it was about.
Speaker 1: You know, if something catches your fancy, um, you tend
Speaker 1: to tweet it out to your followers. It was something
Speaker 1: that I do several times a day. And Robert Kagan,
Speaker 1: kind of a neo conservative author uh supporter of a
Speaker 1: lot of military interventions past um now at the Brookings Institution.
Speaker 1: He had written a piece for the Washington Post on
Speaker 1: how fascism is coming to the United States, and I
Speaker 1: tweeted it out to my followers and I had gotten
Speaker 1: a response back that I had never seen before. It
Speaker 1: was just simply my name in three parentheses from somebody
Speaker 1: who identified himself as Cybertrump. And I tweeted back to him,
Speaker 1: I said, do you care to explain? And you know
Speaker 1: that let loose this retuperative anti Semitic rant and it's
Speaker 1: he said, I have belled the cat. Um. And with
Speaker 1: the belling of that cat, the trolls, the neo Nazis,
Speaker 1: the white supremacists started just day losing me with Holocaust imagery,
Speaker 1: Nazi iconography, really really ugly stuff that I really thought was,
Speaker 1: you know, things of the past. Tell us before I
Speaker 1: ask you a little bit more about some of the
Speaker 1: things that were tweeted at you how this sort of
Speaker 1: three parentheses thing works, and how it's so called bells
Speaker 1: the cat, because I know that a lot of news
Speaker 1: organizations have since written about this. Yeah, I of course
Speaker 1: knew nothing about this until I was sucked into it. Um.
Speaker 1: It turns out that this group of neo Nazis and
Speaker 1: white supremacists had come up with an actual piece of software,
Speaker 1: a Google Chrome plug in that you can download, and
Speaker 1: it puts these three parentheses around Jewish sounding names, which
Speaker 1: allows them, if they have the right software, to search
Speaker 1: social networks m for the three parentheses and then find
Speaker 1: targets to go after, because oddly enough, most search engines
Speaker 1: don't look for things like parentheses and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: They only look for numbers and and letters and set
Speaker 1: things like the at sign. So they had come up
Speaker 1: with an actual organized way to find and target certain
Speaker 1: people with Jewish sounding names. That's just unbelievable to me.
Speaker 1: How long has this been going on, by the way,
Speaker 1: because I know it was recently discovered, but was this
Speaker 1: a practice that had been in effect for years? Even?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think it's been several months.
Speaker 1: And I think the first targets were Jewish conservative writers
Speaker 1: and pundits, people like Bill crystal Um, who had been
Speaker 1: targets of what they called the alt right, and now
Speaker 1: it's moved to more mainstream journalists like myself. I understand
Speaker 1: that Google Chrome was made aware of this, then they
Speaker 1: got rid of the software that enables this process. Is
Speaker 1: that right? That's right, it was. It was labeled something
Speaker 1: very generic that you would never ever recognize as some
Speaker 1: kind of software targeted for anti semit So they had
Speaker 1: no idea that it was there, and once they found
Speaker 1: out about it, they yanked it off. What did it
Speaker 1: feel like when you first got those tweets that showed
Speaker 1: things like dead bodies in the Holocaust and other neo
Speaker 1: Nazi symbols. Yeah, I mean the Holocaust. The concentration camp
Speaker 1: imagery is such a shock in this context because it
Speaker 1: turns your stomach and the first time you see an
Speaker 1: image of like Donald Trump in Nazi garb, flipping the
Speaker 1: switch on a gas chamber in your face inside that
Speaker 1: gas chamber, it's a shock. Now the tenth time you
Speaker 1: see it, you start thinking this is a joke. These
Speaker 1: people are just sick um and you start imagining them
Speaker 1: sitting in their parents basement in their pajamas. The shock
Speaker 1: value does wear off. But you know, the goating, uh,
Speaker 1: the anti semited goating, the constantly asking you, well, why
Speaker 1: are Jews always oppressed? Why are Jews always thrown out
Speaker 1: of these countries through the centuries. It's very, very frustrating,
Speaker 1: And Trump is kind of a funny hero for these
Speaker 1: neo Nazis because he hasn't made, to my knowledge, any
Speaker 1: anti Semitic comments. He in fact has a Jewish daughter
Speaker 1: and son in law. His daughter converted when he got married.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he's become so celebrated and protected
Speaker 1: by these people online? They in in his language on immigrants,
Speaker 1: they see a kindred spirit. They think that he's sending
Speaker 1: signals that that there's much more to it than he
Speaker 1: would that he would like to say, but he can't
Speaker 1: say it because he's running propresed it in. So. Wolf
Speaker 1: Blitzer one time was talking to Donald Trump and brought
Speaker 1: up the anti Semitic goating of of journalists and asked him,
Speaker 1: what do you think about this? Do you were you
Speaker 1: repudiate that? And he basically said, I don't speak from
Speaker 1: my followers. I don't speak for all my voters. No,
Speaker 1: I I think anti semitism is terrible. But he did
Speaker 1: not overtly repudiate them, did not say I do not
Speaker 1: want your vote, I do not want your support, the
Speaker 1: way Ronald Reagan once did when the clan had endorsed him. Jonathan,
Speaker 1: one interesting thing that you did was you didn't mute
Speaker 1: these people. You didn't block them from your account. You
Speaker 1: actually retweeted so all of your followers could see what
Speaker 1: they were saying to you. Why did you want to
Speaker 1: do that? Because if you, you know, just ignore them,
Speaker 1: it's hard for somebody to go onto your Twitter feed
Speaker 1: and and see what you're seeing. If you retweet, then
Speaker 1: everybody who follows you seese it. At first, I would
Speaker 1: make a little comments to make sure that nobody thought
Speaker 1: that I was, you know, in endorsing them by retweeting, uh,
Speaker 1: And then I just started just retweeting, retweeting, retweeting to
Speaker 1: create a record, uh, and to show anybody who wanted
Speaker 1: to see how ugly things were could just search for
Speaker 1: at Jonathan Weissman and find all sorts of evidence right there.
Speaker 1: What was the reaction when you were retweeting? Because I
Speaker 1: was following your Twitter feed and I was looking at
Speaker 1: how some people were coming to your defense. Did you
Speaker 1: get much support from the journalistic community? And I've gotten
Speaker 1: a ton of support. And when I decided to write
Speaker 1: about it, it was actually then there was another reporter
Speaker 1: for Air. It's one of the Israeli newspapers. He's the
Speaker 1: one that came up with the idea that we should
Speaker 1: all put those triple parentheses around our names, um, to
Speaker 1: show that we're not cow, to show that we're not afraid,
Speaker 1: but also to thwart the software. And I thought that
Speaker 1: was an amazing moment of solidarity because now I if
Speaker 1: you look on Twitter, you see a lot of people
Speaker 1: with these triple parentheses. So yes, I do feel supported
Speaker 1: and I do feel like I have accomplished something. But
Speaker 1: you quit Twitter because you were upset with the reaction
Speaker 1: you got from the company. Tell us what transpired? Who
Speaker 1: did you call, what did they say, What were you
Speaker 1: hoping to achieve, and what didn't you get? So as
Speaker 1: as you said, Katie, I wanted to create this trail
Speaker 1: of anti semitism so people could see what they were
Speaker 1: what they were doing. And I thought, I'll leave all
Speaker 1: this stuff out there for a little while. But now
Speaker 1: I'm kind of growing sick of this. So I started
Speaker 1: reporting the most vicious anti Semitic tweets coming at me
Speaker 1: to Twitter. Because Twitter has something called the terms of service.
Speaker 1: When you sign on to Twitter, nobody ever reads them, um,
Speaker 1: but you click on something saying okay, I under stand
Speaker 1: the terms of service, and those terms of service say
Speaker 1: no harassment, no singling out people for ill treatment based
Speaker 1: on race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin. You're vowing to
Speaker 1: to to follow Twitter's rules. So I started reporting them
Speaker 1: to Twitter, and at first I would just get a
Speaker 1: little acknowledgement saying, we got your report, we're looking into it.
Speaker 1: We got your report, we're looking into it. Then one
Speaker 1: of the New York Times social media people, we have
Speaker 1: people who you know, we're hired to look after our
Speaker 1: social media she's she decided to take upon herself too,
Speaker 1: to put together a compendium of all the worst things
Speaker 1: that had had come my way and send them in
Speaker 1: a in a package to Twitter. And then she got
Speaker 1: one of these notes back from Twitter saying we've looked
Speaker 1: at what you've sent us and we see no violations
Speaker 1: of our terms of service, which shocked me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean honestly. And and then I remember, remember her
Speaker 1: name is ari a. Re sent me this, and I
Speaker 1: sent her a little frowny face back, saying this is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: The next morning I woke up and there was somebody
Speaker 1: I would have sent her something more than a frown face,
Speaker 1: but you were very polite. I was. I was much
Speaker 1: more angry at Twitter than I was by this point
Speaker 1: at the neo Nazis because I've got grown used to them,
Speaker 1: um and and I went on to Twitter. I said,
Speaker 1: this is a brief rant, and I said I'm getting
Speaker 1: off Twitter because Twitter will not follow its own rules
Speaker 1: and will not police itself. And almost immediately as soon
Speaker 1: as I did that, I started getting notes back saying
Speaker 1: We've looked at this count and we've suspended it. We've
Speaker 1: looked at that account, we've suspended it. We've looked at
Speaker 1: some of the accounts, and they said, we don't see
Speaker 1: we still don't see, um a violation of our terms
Speaker 1: of service. And I, honestly I went back and I
Speaker 1: could not figure out what criteria Twitter was using to
Speaker 1: decide that this guy's account is going to be suspended
Speaker 1: and this guy's account was fine. I honestly didn't see
Speaker 1: any difference between them. What about this argument that the
Speaker 1: conundrum that some of the social media outlets ostensibly find
Speaker 1: themselves in Jonathan withdrawing the line between free speech and
Speaker 1: hate speech. It's a question that I've gone over in
Speaker 1: my own head for a long time now, a lot,
Speaker 1: well the last few few weeks, and my attitude at
Speaker 1: this point is if Twitter wants to make an announcement
Speaker 1: saying we're doing away with our terms of service. We
Speaker 1: don't care. We can have a wild West. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have open free speech. Say what you want. You know,
Speaker 1: if they did that, I'd probably signed back up. At
Speaker 1: least they were being honest. Or I find offensive is
Speaker 1: that Twitter can wear the halo of the terms of
Speaker 1: service that says we don't put up with harassment, we
Speaker 1: don't put up with racism or anti semitism or homophobia,
Speaker 1: we don't put up with these things, but then don't
Speaker 1: do anything to police it. So they have to make
Speaker 1: a decision. Asian, they are either one thing or another,
Speaker 1: but they can't have it both ways. And the suspensions
Speaker 1: you talked about are meaningless because you're suspending the accounts,
Speaker 1: but not the people behind. All of those people can
Speaker 1: just set up additional hate spewing accounts. So what do
Speaker 1: you think Twitter actually ought to do to fix this
Speaker 1: problem short of turning it into a wild West. It's
Speaker 1: it is a conundrum. It is very hard to puzzle out.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people have said, well, who cares,
Speaker 1: are just a bunch of trolls, And my answer is
Speaker 1: you're right, who cares? Why do I why do I
Speaker 1: need Twitter? So I just my attitude was why if
Speaker 1: if I'm offended by the way Twitter is policing itself,
Speaker 1: then I will just say goodbye to Twitter for a while.
Speaker 1: Did you hear from anyone like Jack Dorsey or any
Speaker 1: executives at Twitter after this whole bruhaha? Because I think
Speaker 1: you put them in a terrible light. I've been expecting
Speaker 1: to hear from somebody and I haven't. They've really been
Speaker 1: remarkably quiescent about this whole thing. They don't seem to
Speaker 1: want to engage. What do you think this says about
Speaker 1: the state of our country? You know, I wonder did
Speaker 1: these people always exist? Are we just now seeing them
Speaker 1: because they have a platform they can express their views.
Speaker 1: Is there something going on that the numbers are multiplying? Um?
Speaker 1: What's your take on what this says about us as
Speaker 1: a country? When Katie to jump in, I mean, the
Speaker 1: polling does show that deeply entrenched anti Semitic views, at
Speaker 1: least according to the A d l S poelling, have
Speaker 1: have gone down from about twenty nine percent of Americans
Speaker 1: in n twelve percent. But it's still twelve percent of
Speaker 1: the American people anyway, And that surprises me. Surprises you
Speaker 1: that it's gone down. No, it surprises me that it's
Speaker 1: at twelve percent. I mean, remember in Washington, especially where
Speaker 1: where you see this high partisan uh commitment to Israel
Speaker 1: and politicians of every conceivable stripe from from very liberal
Speaker 1: to very conservative tumbling over each other to get to
Speaker 1: to get to the right side of Jewish voters. I
Speaker 1: would never have thought it was twelve franc I would
Speaker 1: have thought it was considerably lower now. But we've seen
Speaker 1: if you look on a newspaper website, if the comments
Speaker 1: sections under articles allow anonymity, the tone of the discourse
Speaker 1: is horrific. It degenerates so quickly. But if you have
Speaker 1: to use a real name, it stays at a certain level.
Speaker 1: It just it's like road rage. If you don't have
Speaker 1: an identity, I don't know. I guess it's as old
Speaker 1: as Lord of the Flies or older than that. Um.
Speaker 1: But I do think that the tone of this presidential
Speaker 1: campaign and the tone set by Donald Trump have empowered
Speaker 1: people to bring out views that they used to only speak,
Speaker 1: you know, in the privacy of their home. Around there,
Speaker 1: around the angry dinner table or something. I mean, people
Speaker 1: seem willing to speak in public the way they used
Speaker 1: to never. I mean, I get your point about Trump
Speaker 1: not being strong enough in condemning David Duke or anti
Speaker 1: Semitic pronouncements, But are there elements of his campaign, of
Speaker 1: his platform that you think are attracting white nationalists anti
Speaker 1: Semites even though white supremisists and yeah, even though what
Speaker 1: he's saying of the time is not anti Semitic. But
Speaker 1: I think if if you call for a blanket ban
Speaker 1: on Muslim immigrants, if you call for a giant wall
Speaker 1: on the southern border, if you talk about Mexicans as
Speaker 1: rapists and thieves, I think you're sending a signal that
Speaker 1: exclusionary politics are now mainstream. Do you think that. I
Speaker 1: know that a number of newspapers have done away with
Speaker 1: the comments section, or they're monitoring them more carefully, because
Speaker 1: you look at them. It is so depressing to see
Speaker 1: how the discourse quickly devolves into basically a verbal fist
Speaker 1: fite between respondents, and the kind of vitriol and nastiness
Speaker 1: that is so pervasive. Then I read the letters to
Speaker 1: the editor in the New York Times, and I think, Wow,
Speaker 1: my faith in America has been restored because people have
Speaker 1: different opinions, but they're all sort of thoughtful and well written,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's it's like they're two America's. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the Wall Street Journal did a great exercise
Speaker 1: where they created a blue Facebook and a red Facebook
Speaker 1: and if you are a conservative you're tending to see
Speaker 1: on Facebook, and if you're a liberal, what you're tending
Speaker 1: to see on Facebook? And they made a very very
Speaker 1: compelling illustration of how different and how divided the country
Speaker 1: is along political grounds. I mean, if you look on
Speaker 1: the on the New York Times comments, now, they're curated.
Speaker 1: There are editors picks, there are readers picks, and so
Speaker 1: we we empower certain readers to actually go through and
Speaker 1: select the best ones you can click on, you know,
Speaker 1: see all as well, but those are policed. I mean,
Speaker 1: we actually employ people to go through them. So what's
Speaker 1: the solution, Jonathan, I mean, what have you learned from
Speaker 1: this whole bizarre and really upsetting experience. I think that
Speaker 1: part of the solution is to not care so much
Speaker 1: about social media. You know, since writing off Twitter, I've
Speaker 1: been spending a lot more time actually reading the whole
Speaker 1: article off of you know, off of the New York
Speaker 1: Times in the Washington Post apps and not becoming almost
Speaker 1: like an automaton consulting my social media feed. Um. I
Speaker 1: actually feel like it's been good to pull back from
Speaker 1: that world, and I think we could all do with
Speaker 1: a little less time on social media, right. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of narcissistic, don't you think, because it makes you
Speaker 1: obsessed with what people are saying about you instead of
Speaker 1: looking outward and saying what you think is going on
Speaker 1: in the world. It's a weird inversion, isn't it. I
Speaker 1: have teenage daughters and they measure, you know, their self
Speaker 1: worth by their Instagram following and their life. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: It's weird that they can quantify their popularity on social media.
Speaker 1: But I really wish they would just leave it alone.
Speaker 1: You know. Do you think, Jonathan, that there's a broader
Speaker 1: challenge for the mainstream press this election cycle? Um, when
Speaker 1: it seems like some reporters have crossed the line from
Speaker 1: just covering the campaign to describing Trump and his candidacy
Speaker 1: and his supporters in ways that might have seemed too
Speaker 1: much like advocacy, UM for the other side or against
Speaker 1: one side. Do you think that the mainstream press reinforces
Speaker 1: this narrative of a liberal bias based on the way
Speaker 1: some are covering Donald Trump. I think I and a
Speaker 1: lot of journalists involved in watching this campaign are wrestling
Speaker 1: with this because on the one hand, we have an
Speaker 1: obligation to fact check and to cover any candidate with
Speaker 1: a jaundiced eye, with a sense that they can't just
Speaker 1: get away with the big lie saying something over and
Speaker 1: over until we all accept it. It's our responsibility to
Speaker 1: point out when something is just factually in accurate, untrue.
Speaker 1: I think that you know, famously, the Huffington Post declared
Speaker 1: that they weren't going to cover Donald Trump as a
Speaker 1: true candidate that we're gonna keep, They're going to relegate
Speaker 1: him to the entertainment section. And I remember arguing at
Speaker 1: that point, we need to cover Donald Trump like a
Speaker 1: like we would cover any other candidate. We need to
Speaker 1: scrutinize this policy proposals. It's very difficult, and I do
Speaker 1: think that that that reporters, I think in this campaign
Speaker 1: are faced with a candidate that is unprecedented that nobody's
Speaker 1: we We have ways that we cover candidates. There's a
Speaker 1: rhythm of a campaign, but with with Trump, uh, much
Speaker 1: of that rhythm has just been thrown off because he's
Speaker 1: not running what what most people would call a campaign.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no yard signs, Um, there is, there
Speaker 1: is no advertising. How do we we have to we
Speaker 1: actually do have to rethink the way we cover a
Speaker 1: presidential campaign when the candidate himself is not behaving like
Speaker 1: a candidate. Not only not behaving like a candidate. But
Speaker 1: of course, Walter Cronkite had that famous moment when he
Speaker 1: spoke out against the Vietnam War. When do you have
Speaker 1: a moral imperative to speak out against something that is
Speaker 1: seems so contrary to the principles upon which this country
Speaker 1: was founded. It took Walter Cronkite a long time to
Speaker 1: get to that point, right. So, um, I think that
Speaker 1: a lot of people might say that, you know, a
Speaker 1: blanket ban on Muslim immigrants already cross that line. But
Speaker 1: I think that you can point out where Trump or
Speaker 1: Clinton I've gone through the lines of what is constitutional
Speaker 1: and what is democratic without necessarily denouncing them. One of
Speaker 1: the Times reporters he's are our Supreme Court reporter wrote
Speaker 1: a story about all of the ways that Trump's proposals
Speaker 1: are anti democratic and anti constitutional, and in so doing
Speaker 1: he spoke only to conservative constitutional scholars. He didn't speak
Speaker 1: to one liberal in the entire story. And that story
Speaker 1: was incredibly widely read. It was extremely successful in getting
Speaker 1: its message out. But I don't think anybody would read that,
Speaker 1: as you know, Walter Cronkite creed a cour It was
Speaker 1: just at LIPTOC going through the proposals and measuring them
Speaker 1: up against what we know to be what the the
Speaker 1: tenets of the of the Bill of Rights. But of
Speaker 1: course Lyndon Johnson said famously, if we lost Walter Cronkite,
Speaker 1: We've lost the war. And today, does any institution have
Speaker 1: sort of the moral heft to be able to say
Speaker 1: something and have it really affect public opinion, because so
Speaker 1: far it doesn't seem to. You know, I I actually
Speaker 1: think it would have to be kind of a truth
Speaker 1: power moment where a conservative came out against Trump. But
Speaker 1: then again, so many conservatives. Someone was going to say,
Speaker 1: Bill Crystal, hello, No, I mean well, then Robert Kagan story,
Speaker 1: uh that that came out, and and Max Boot It's
Speaker 1: so in fact, some of the most eloquent writing against
Speaker 1: Trumpism has come from conservatives. All those have done is
Speaker 1: show just how far apart the Republican power structure. The
Speaker 1: Republican intelligentsia is from so much of the Republican base. Um.
Speaker 1: What we have seen is people that we used to
Speaker 1: you know, routinely call up to get a sense of
Speaker 1: where are conservatives these days? We found out that they
Speaker 1: have no influence whatsoever. And I would argue it's not
Speaker 1: just the Republican base, it's this new base of populism
Speaker 1: that we've seen bubbling up throughout this camp paint. What
Speaker 1: we learned in the rise of Donald Trump is that
Speaker 1: there is a whole new quadrant. It's the socially conservative,
Speaker 1: economically liberal voter. The person who feels like a white
Speaker 1: working class is besieged and they don't want special treatment
Speaker 1: going to Gaze and African Americans and Latinos, but they
Speaker 1: do want their social security, and they do want their Medicare,
Speaker 1: and they don't particularly uh, you know, want government to
Speaker 1: shrivel up and die. So it is the populist quadrant,
Speaker 1: the social conservative economic liberal. Um. Uh that Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: candidacy is unearthed when make America Great Again is fundamentally
Speaker 1: a nostalgic, backward looking sort of message. Let's take America
Speaker 1: back to when it was last great, and presumably that
Speaker 1: means when they were you know, when the demographics were different,
Speaker 1: when they was different. A friend of mine said, when
Speaker 1: he sees that on a on a baseball hat, he
Speaker 1: sees make America white again. Well, you know when, um,
Speaker 1: when Donald Trump sat down with one of the Times
Speaker 1: as UH diplomatic reporters, UM foreign policy reporters David Sanger,
Speaker 1: and David Sanger mentioned, so you would say that your
Speaker 1: policies are kind of America First, and he said yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And now ever since then that interview, he's been using
Speaker 1: the term America First. Never once has he googled America
Speaker 1: First to understand the historic context. We still have no
Speaker 1: evidence that he understands, you know, Charles Lindbergh and the
Speaker 1: America First Committee that tried to keep the United States
Speaker 1: out of World War Two. He seems to be a
Speaker 1: historic in his sloganeering, at least in a sense that
Speaker 1: maybe the most anti Semitic thing he ever says exactly
Speaker 1: it is. But I'm not sure if he has any
Speaker 1: idea the anti Semitic undertones of of America First. Well,
Speaker 1: fascinating conversation. Jonathan Weissman. I guess I won't see on Twitter,
Speaker 1: but I'll see on Facebook. That's right, I am on
Speaker 1: I'm on Facebook. Thanks so much for talking with us.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's it's it's upsetting, but but a really
Speaker 1: important conversation. So thanks, thanks so much, Jonathan, Well, thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. So after we recorded this interview,
Speaker 1: we were surprised to see Jonathan Wiseman started tweeting again.
Speaker 1: We asked him about his change of heart, and he
Speaker 1: told us that a recent piece about the Iran nuclear
Speaker 1: deal in the Wall Street Journal had him itching to
Speaker 1: communicate online with other journalists, and Facebook just wasn't doing
Speaker 1: the trick. He wrote to us that Twitter in Washington
Speaker 1: is much more of a conversation between journalists and that
Speaker 1: that was the audience he was seeking. His one tweet
Speaker 1: about the Iran deal got a hundred and eighty six
Speaker 1: thousand impressions and reminded him that Twitter is still a
Speaker 1: powerful medium of communication. And also, to his surprise, he
Speaker 1: says that his Twitter bullies had nothing to say. He's
Speaker 1: tried to be more judicious in his use of Twitter,
Speaker 1: he told us, but he still hasn't heard anything from
Speaker 1: the higher upsite Twitter about what he went through Jonathan said,
Speaker 1: Twitter can root out hate speech, but it chooses not to. Also,
Speaker 1: don't forget to pick up a copy of Jonathan Wiseman's
Speaker 1: excellent novel Number four, Imperial Lane, which comes out in
Speaker 1: paperback in January. How big is this problem? Is it
Speaker 1: simply an isolated incident a pack of anti Semites getting
Speaker 1: ahold of one person on social media? Or is it widespread?
Speaker 1: And what other kind of bigotry is being unleashed online?
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about that coming up. By the way,
Speaker 1: if anybody out there is wondering who this disembodied voices,
Speaker 1: this guy named Brian Goldsmith, let me ex plane briefly.
Speaker 1: Brian and I have known each other for a very
Speaker 1: long time, gosh, maybe ten or fifteen years. Brian I
Speaker 1: started working for you in two thousand four as a
Speaker 1: summer intern on the Today Show. Wow. Brian, by the way,
Speaker 1: is only thirty four years old. But the reason why
Speaker 1: he's here is he's got one of the sharpest political
Speaker 1: minds I know. Plus I happened to find him really
Speaker 1: amusing sometimes you and three or four other people, and
Speaker 1: so that's why he is my ED McMahon, Can you
Speaker 1: do an ed McMahon laugh. Ha ha ha, No, not
Speaker 1: so good. I think you need to go home and
Speaker 1: work on that. I hadn't practiced my Ed McMahon laugh.
Speaker 1: Boy started almost as genuine as the real Ed mcman laugh.
Speaker 1: If we were Ed mcman and Johnny, we would go
Speaker 1: out and have like ten martinis after this each. Sounds
Speaker 1: good to me. Yeah, now let's get back to the show. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the story about Jonathan Weissman is so upsetting, and we
Speaker 1: wanted to get a broader perspective on what's happening visa
Speaker 1: vi anti Semitism and social media and also just around
Speaker 1: the country and around the world. So Richard Cohen is
Speaker 1: president of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama. Hey, Richard,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for talking with us. Sure, Katie, Hey Richard,
Speaker 1: it's Brian Um. I'm sure a lot of people have
Speaker 1: heard of the Southern Poverty Law Center but may not
Speaker 1: want to admit that they don't know what it actually
Speaker 1: does or why it exists. Can you share a little
Speaker 1: bit about the history of that organization and and what
Speaker 1: you do today. I appreciate the opportunity to you know,
Speaker 1: the Southern Partarty Law Center is founded in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: forty five years ago. Uh, really to make the promise
Speaker 1: of the newly enacted civil rights laws, the Voting Rights Act,
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Act a reality in the Deep South,
Speaker 1: you know nowadays is you know, kind of organizational motto
Speaker 1: is fighting hate, teaching tolerance, and seeking justice. The project
Speaker 1: that monitors white supremacist activity. That's kind of our arm
Speaker 1: that fights hate. Right now, we focus primarily on issues
Speaker 1: of recent immigrants, the rights of children. Uh, we have
Speaker 1: a lot of work trying to push back against the
Speaker 1: problems of mass incarceration. Really the full gamut of civil
Speaker 1: rights issues. Richard, was there an aha moment when you said,
Speaker 1: this is my calling, this is what what I want
Speaker 1: to dedicate my life to. You know, when I was
Speaker 1: a junior in high school, way back when my my
Speaker 1: Civics teacher, you know, challenged me, he um, he made
Speaker 1: me read in brief Supreme Court cases. This is in
Speaker 1: the eleventh grade. What year was that? Killing me? Katie?
Speaker 1: Stop it stop. I think I'm probably older than you are. No, No,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sixty one. So that would have been in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, seventy two. So really sort of a
Speaker 1: very tumultuous time in our nation's history. I mentioned one
Speaker 1: of the things too, you know, the first democratic the
Speaker 1: first uh uh convention that I watched was the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight convention. I was thirteen years old, and of
Speaker 1: course that was the convention where the police are rioting
Speaker 1: in the expression whole world of watching, and you know
Speaker 1: I was. I was mesmerized by it even as a
Speaker 1: little kid. And you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: stood out of the person who stood out the most
Speaker 1: for me was Julian Bond, who really came to national
Speaker 1: attention then. And you might remember, although he was too young,
Speaker 1: his name was placed into nomination, you know, in the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court it excuse me, for the vice presidency. And
Speaker 1: of course Julian was the first president of the Southern
Speaker 1: Poverty Law Center. I think about those days when I
Speaker 1: was thirteen years old and think about it today, and
Speaker 1: of course I'll think about Julian's legacy. He was such
Speaker 1: a close friend and we lost him last year. You know,
Speaker 1: I suppose that was as much in a moment for
Speaker 1: me as anything else. Do you have any trouble attracting Wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I want to know if Katie's older than me. I'm
Speaker 1: two years younger. I'm younger. Richard. You're killing me. Hey, listen,
Speaker 1: you know I would have dated you in high school.
Speaker 1: You would have been a senior when I was a sophomore.
Speaker 1: What can I say? Yeah? I think that's probably a lie,
Speaker 1: but we'll move on. Why were you were a cheerleader
Speaker 1: in high school? Why? Yeah? What do you? What do you?
Speaker 1: What does that say? Is that? Is that an indictment
Speaker 1: of me or Richard? Because Richard went to Columbia First
Speaker 1: of all, I like smart guys. He went to Columbia
Speaker 1: and he went to UV A law school. Richard, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you would have dated in high school. Um,
Speaker 1: do you have any trouble attracting really smart, ambitious lawyers
Speaker 1: to Montgomery, Alabama and work for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Speaker 1: You know, we're lucky. There are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who have a lot of passion, you know, who go
Speaker 1: to great schools and want to join our cause. So
Speaker 1: you know, we don't have a hard time recruiting people.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we have a hard time keeping them for very long, uh,
Speaker 1: just because they want to move to a big city.
Speaker 1: But you know, we've been incredibly lucky to be able
Speaker 1: to draw new talent to our cause. And you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have any secret formulas at the Southern Privorty Loss,
Speaker 1: and we have any patents or copyrights. All we have
Speaker 1: is talented and passionate people. It's really what's sustained us
Speaker 1: for forty five years. I guess you sometimes wish business
Speaker 1: weren't so good, right in terms of the kind of
Speaker 1: things that you're dealing with. Yeah, we've seen a real
Speaker 1: explosion of extremism in in recent years, and you know,
Speaker 1: unfortunately the rhetoric surrounding you know, this year's presidential campaign
Speaker 1: has amplified it. Brian Goldsmith is here. I know that
Speaker 1: you all have talked on the phone together and we
Speaker 1: both talked to Jonathan Weisman. What did you make of
Speaker 1: the whole Jonathan Weisman Twitter story. Well, it's an example
Speaker 1: of the fact that at so much on Twitter as
Speaker 1: like a drive by shooting. You know, they're very, very
Speaker 1: few barriers to entry to get a Twitter account. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not no real systems of verification and whatnot, and
Speaker 1: so that anonymity breeds you know, ugly conduct. Why do
Speaker 1: you think Twitter doesn't follow its terms its own terms
Speaker 1: of service on hate speech. Look, we have a lot
Speaker 1: of experience with the digital industry, and you know, they
Speaker 1: like to pay lip service to their terms of service.
Speaker 1: So we're opposed to hate. We don't like misogyny. But
Speaker 1: the reality is that, you know, it's a pain in
Speaker 1: the butt for them to enforce those terms. Well, when
Speaker 1: you've talked to executives at Twitter, or you've you reached
Speaker 1: out to various social media platforms, I mean, are they embarrassed?
Speaker 1: What what's their explanation for for not policing it. I
Speaker 1: think they have no good explanation for it. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: takes you know, the media to expose them. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we want one time wrote a story about iTunes that
Speaker 1: caught their attention and led them to pull all of
Speaker 1: their hate music off their site, which is really important.
Speaker 1: I commend you know, Tim Cook for doing that. I
Speaker 1: know that you use the term hate speech or hate music.
Speaker 1: How do we define what that means? What's protected but
Speaker 1: offensive speech under the First Amendment, and what crosses the
Speaker 1: line to a point where the content should be removed? Well, look,
Speaker 1: none of this, none of the speech that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: is illegal. But of course these are private companies. They
Speaker 1: can remove speech that they find offensive if they want to.
Speaker 1: It's not like the government doing it that would that
Speaker 1: would amount to censorship. So we're not talking about illegal speech.
Speaker 1: We're talking about ugly speech, offensive speech that violates the
Speaker 1: term terms of service of these of these organizations. And
Speaker 1: typically the kind of speech that we're talking about is
Speaker 1: that which, you know, vilify someone for their race, their religion,
Speaker 1: their sexual orientation or not or vilifies entire groups. So again,
Speaker 1: it's not a question of whether the speech is illegal,
Speaker 1: because it's not. The question is is it ugly enough
Speaker 1: to violate the terms of the service of these private organizations.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like you are making some progress that
Speaker 1: you are exposing some of this hateful behavior or speech
Speaker 1: or the use of these platforms to the companies that
Speaker 1: oversee them or own them. And they've been fairly responsive
Speaker 1: except for Twitter. Well, you know, Twitter hasn't moved as
Speaker 1: quickly as some of the others. Most of these, you know,
Speaker 1: high tech companies are run by liberal minded people, and
Speaker 1: you know, if you can get their attention, you know
Speaker 1: you can make progress. You know, we've gone to the
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley and with people from Google, from Amazon, from
Speaker 1: from PayPal, and you know, we're making some progress there,
Speaker 1: but you've got to get on their radar. These are big,
Speaker 1: giant companies, and uh, you know this is oftentimes not
Speaker 1: a high priority for them. Tell us about a personal
Speaker 1: experience you've had where you have been so discouraged or
Speaker 1: hurt or depressed about language, or a situation that you've
Speaker 1: witnessed and wanted to wanted to fix, you know, Katie,
Speaker 1: To be honest with me, sometimes it's a little bit
Speaker 1: like blood on the operating room floor. Uh. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: hear so much hate speech that I don't want to
Speaker 1: say I'm used to it, but I guess what I
Speaker 1: would say is nothing particularly shocks me at this point, unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you about the role, Richard, of social
Speaker 1: media in kind of empowering or fueling this kind of
Speaker 1: hate speech or these kinds of organizations or movements. I
Speaker 1: know that Stormfront, which is a leading neo Nazi portal,
Speaker 1: had a hundred and forty thousand registered members in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight and now it has over three hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: I mean, what role does social media have and expanding
Speaker 1: the numbers and the intensity of some of these individuals.
Speaker 1: I think it has multiple roles First, you know, it
Speaker 1: makes it easier to find kindred souls. Second, you know,
Speaker 1: the people you're talking to, most of them share your views,
Speaker 1: and you know, you you get encouragement, you get validation,
Speaker 1: and I think that, you know, kind of ramps up
Speaker 1: the intensity. Some of these people eventually get frustrated, uh
Speaker 1: and enough talk and act out. Dylan Ruth was an
Speaker 1: example of that, you know, in his manifesto he said,
Speaker 1: and someone needs to take action. I guess it's me.
Speaker 1: And you know, so that was the final step. Who
Speaker 1: are these people? Do they feel disenfranchised? Alienated? Are they
Speaker 1: workers who have been sort of laid off? I mean,
Speaker 1: are there is there a common thread among some of
Speaker 1: these people in terms of what's binding them together other
Speaker 1: than just hate and intolerance. Well, you know, I think
Speaker 1: that most of the people in the white supremacist movement,
Speaker 1: most of the people who are foot soldiers at least,
Speaker 1: tend to come from somewhat marginalized backgrounds. They look for reasons,
Speaker 1: perhaps outside of themselves, to explain their failures, and they
Speaker 1: glom onto a powerful narrative. You know, you're here, you
Speaker 1: are You're Dylan Roof, You're an unemployed kid with no
Speaker 1: future you can you can think about that, or you
Speaker 1: can suddenly decide that you're a warrior for the white
Speaker 1: race and you're going to strike a blow for freedom.
Speaker 1: I think that some of the people who were attracted
Speaker 1: in this country to the siren song of Isis are
Speaker 1: in the same position. There's kind of a lack and
Speaker 1: that they they're they're searching for an identity, uh, and
Speaker 1: suddenly they're offered one by this seemingly invincible, powerful group
Speaker 1: that is going to you know, change their lives and
Speaker 1: give it meaning. You said earlier that you thought extremism
Speaker 1: has exploded and hate speeches on the rise. Is that
Speaker 1: just because technology and access to technology is more widely
Speaker 1: available or do you think that says something deeper about
Speaker 1: our society and the direction that we're moving in. I
Speaker 1: think it says something about global trends. Really, Um, what
Speaker 1: we've seen over the past decade has been you know,
Speaker 1: the increasing diversity of the United States. We've seen the
Speaker 1: same thing in Europe, increased immigration, and our country is
Speaker 1: having has had a backlash to that. You know, President
Speaker 1: Obama in many ways is the symbol of the country's
Speaker 1: changing diversity, but he's also been you know, kind of
Speaker 1: a ferocious target of its backlash. Also, I would say
Speaker 1: in the past you know, half dozen years, at least
Speaker 1: past seven or eight years. You know, the dislocations in
Speaker 1: the economy caused by globalization, the worldwide recession has has
Speaker 1: pushed people to look for answers and has increased stereotyping.
Speaker 1: So I think we're looking at some some real global trends,
Speaker 1: some macro trends, and you know, and those things are exacerbated,
Speaker 1: you know, by the ease of communications that that exists
Speaker 1: in the modern world. So you see it happening all
Speaker 1: over Europe obviously and here in the Iided States. I
Speaker 1: think possibly exacerbated or probably exacerbated by Donald Trump's candidacy.
Speaker 1: Have you seen a correlation between his popularity and the
Speaker 1: amount of hate speech that you're seeing either online or
Speaker 1: in other forms. Absolutely? Uh. You know. First, you know,
Speaker 1: usually in the white supremacist world, you know, they don't
Speaker 1: get involved in politics. It's like a pox on both
Speaker 1: their homes. Both parties are irredeemably corrupt. Trump, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, hasn't been embraced by the white supremacist you know,
Speaker 1: people like David Duke have called him, you know, the
Speaker 1: glorious leader. So you know we're having that. You know,
Speaker 1: suddenly he's their champion. Another thing, you know, we did
Speaker 1: a survey Katie. Uh. You know our schools around the country,
Speaker 1: teachers around the country. You know, we have a program
Speaker 1: that provides free educational resources to every school in the nation.
Speaker 1: We asked the teachers, you know, what impact had the
Speaker 1: election had in your school. More than half the teachers,
Speaker 1: two thousand of them responded and talked about you know,
Speaker 1: Mr Trump talked about how they had been increase in
Speaker 1: bullying in their classroom and increase in in kind of
Speaker 1: ugly rhetoric. Uh, kids who were scared, kids who thought
Speaker 1: they would be deported. One of the things most depressing
Speaker 1: to me, and this this was depressing, I would say.
Speaker 1: A teacher wrote us and said, look, you know when
Speaker 1: people said stuff in the past, my kids in the
Speaker 1: past said things that were out of line, they were
Speaker 1: off color. I'd rebuke them and they shut up. Now
Speaker 1: when they say things. They asked me, Hey, why can't
Speaker 1: I say that the future president of the United States
Speaker 1: is saying that? Wow? When you told me sort of
Speaker 1: the Raison Detra of the Southern Poverty Law Center to
Speaker 1: make sure the Civil Rights Act the Voting Rights Act
Speaker 1: were implemented and followed. I couldn't help but wonder, Richard,
Speaker 1: where we are now compared to back then, Because, as
Speaker 1: you know, the Voting Rights Act has been old back
Speaker 1: in certain ways, and it seems like the race relations
Speaker 1: in this country are as fraught as ever. So when
Speaker 1: you look back from n to two thousand sixteen at
Speaker 1: the trajectory of these things, what do you what do
Speaker 1: you come up with? Well, it's remarkable, frankly, how much
Speaker 1: progress the country has made since those days. And it's
Speaker 1: depressing also that we see so often, especially in recent years,
Speaker 1: to be taking a giant step backwards. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: the fight for justice is one that every generation has
Speaker 1: to wage. Uh. And you know, it's it's it's it's nothing.
Speaker 1: It's not anything where people of goodwill can rest on
Speaker 1: their laurels. There are always new battles to fight, and
Speaker 1: there are always forces that are trying to hold us back.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, you gave us some very depressing
Speaker 1: sort of statistic trends. So what do you do about this?
Speaker 1: What do you do about the increase in hate speech? Is?
Speaker 1: How do you counter it? I know that the state department,
Speaker 1: has a whole Countering Violent Extremism department to try to
Speaker 1: come up with alternative narratives for people online. But how
Speaker 1: do you how do you nip this in the bud
Speaker 1: and look, it takes a full court press, right you
Speaker 1: have to. It takes, you know, work by people in schools,
Speaker 1: people in churches, community leaders are political leaders. There's not
Speaker 1: one magic bullet, you know. For us, again, it's reflected
Speaker 1: on our organizational motto. We try to expose the people
Speaker 1: who are who who who have hated their heart. And
Speaker 1: I think that some of the things I'm talking about
Speaker 1: our pollyanish. But we're people who have hope and people
Speaker 1: who believe that, you know, as Dr King said, the
Speaker 1: moral ark of the universe may be long, but it
Speaker 1: bends towards justice. That doesn't mean that justice is inevitable.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that it's going to happen without our efforts.
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, I think you have to
Speaker 1: have hope in order to continue this kind of struggle.
Speaker 1: Richard Cohen, thanks so much for talking with us, and
Speaker 1: thank you for the great work that all of you
Speaker 1: do with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Thank you, Katie.
Speaker 1: It's so nice to end such a depressing topic on
Speaker 1: a positive note, because I do think people are basically
Speaker 1: good and kind. They're just some bad apples that give
Speaker 1: us all a bad name. Thanks to the whole team
Speaker 1: at Your Wolf, including Chris Bannon, Bretta Cone, and the
Speaker 1: Reverend John Delore for helping to produce our show. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Mark Phillips for our theme music, and thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. So maybe you think we're kidding when we
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