Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of Quest Love Supreme,
Speaker 2: Quest Love.
Speaker 3: What is up? Crew?
Speaker 4: See? We have made Bill?
Speaker 5: How are you? Everything's good?
Speaker 6: Left on the street, remains on the street. Everything's good.
Speaker 6: I can't complain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was about to say, I commend you. I
Speaker 2: haven't told you yet, but uh, you guys handled that.
Speaker 2: Uh Elmo discovers racism bit.
Speaker 6: Autumn's been working real hard on that, and uh do
Speaker 6: we did some COVID town halls. We did we did
Speaker 6: race town halls and it's been going pretty well, this
Speaker 6: partnership with Seeing It.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's cool, all right, all right, So we also
Speaker 2: got a fine take Alo.
Speaker 4: In the house. What's going on?
Speaker 5: New smoke coming out?
Speaker 4: Anything?
Speaker 5: Anything coming up?
Speaker 7: Or I mean, I've been working on a lot of
Speaker 7: stuff that's about to come out. Mainly I just been
Speaker 7: bumping the CARDI and Meg joint.
Speaker 4: That's been my.
Speaker 8: Text.
Speaker 3: Thanks, I gotta admit.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And Steve, you're doing all right? I mean, sugar Steve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought we were your friends now so I
Speaker 2: can address you by your Christian name.
Speaker 5: Were you and I are back at work now? How
Speaker 5: does it feel. We get tested every day, so we're safe.
Speaker 8: Y'all go rabbit test, y'all trump? Oh my god, how
Speaker 8: y'all get the rabbit test?
Speaker 5: I got tested. We get tested every day, yo.
Speaker 8: And you get your results? And how how short.
Speaker 6: Time your brain?
Speaker 2: No one, I admit, I gotta admit, okay. So there's
Speaker 2: like four different nurses that do it. The idea of the.
Speaker 5: Sexy nurse, who are called the essendon nurse.
Speaker 2: Because she wears these like really weird stiletto heels.
Speaker 5: Like everyone everyone fights to be in her room.
Speaker 2: He's also the person like, god damn, she damn nearly
Speaker 2: cleans your brain out like.
Speaker 5: She her bedside manner is too rough.
Speaker 2: So I like the the other gentle nasal tester.
Speaker 5: But yeah, we get a test every day.
Speaker 9: Like to answer your question, sony wow, I asked our
Speaker 9: guests if she gets tested a celebrity thing.
Speaker 2: It's always listen, it's always It's always customary that we
Speaker 2: say hello to each other first, so that people know that,
Speaker 2: you know, we don't bicker.
Speaker 5: How are you like.
Speaker 8: Oh, I'm good.
Speaker 9: Somebody should know that I am sweating because I am
Speaker 9: very excited about our guests and that's why I'm sweating.
Speaker 5: That's good. Well, yes, let's get to our guests.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome our guest today. She is a
Speaker 2: four time Daytime Emmy Award winner.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Yes, he's a lawyer a journalist of course. She is
Speaker 2: host of her own true crime series and call Investigation Discovery.
Speaker 5: Future best selling author.
Speaker 2: This fall, she has a book called i Amb's Truths,
Speaker 2: a memoir of identity, justice and living between two worlds.
Speaker 2: That Laya is extreme. We're all excited, but why is
Speaker 2: Mega s excited about this? Not to be outdone your
Speaker 2: first so I'll say fiction or your first novel will
Speaker 2: also be out in twenty twenty one, entitled Summer on
Speaker 2: the Bluffs, which has nothing to.
Speaker 5: Do with Curtis Snow on the Bluff. When I saw that, I.
Speaker 2: Was like, wait a minute, that has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with Curtis Snow's snow on the Bluff. She is also
Speaker 2: I like to think of myself as a chicken farmer
Speaker 2: as well, because of where I'm quarantining. She's a fellow
Speaker 2: chicken farmer from the Boogie Down Bronx. But she's based
Speaker 2: you know, well known and loved as a member one
Speaker 2: fifth of the fiery, passionate, informed and impinionated ladies UH
Speaker 2: known as the Crew from the View.
Speaker 5: Let my fellow Q lessers also know that the five
Speaker 5: of us have.
Speaker 2: Very good for We generally agree on most things around here.
Speaker 2: Can you guys imagine if like me, Steve and Laya
Speaker 2: were kind of like Megan, Abby will be in it anyway.
Speaker 5: Gentlemen, please welcome to you all as Sonny hostin. Please
Speaker 5: thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, OK, I have one question for I just I
Speaker 2: want to get the first question out before like you
Speaker 2: grow upload right now?
Speaker 5: No not. Does it get exhausting.
Speaker 3: If I'm being honest, you know, it gets exhausting for
Speaker 3: a lot of reasons. But I think it's it's very.
Speaker 10: Difficult to maintain your composure when you're talking about things
Speaker 10: that people generally feel uncomfortable talking about, and you know
Speaker 10: you're talking about them in front of three million people,
Speaker 10: and you know.
Speaker 3: You have to come back and talk about them again.
Speaker 3: So you can't burn bridges, but sometimes you want to.
Speaker 3: You kind of want to not only burn them, you
Speaker 3: want to blow them up. And it's also hard as
Speaker 3: a woman and a woman of color, when I know
Speaker 3: that there are all these tropes out there all the time,
Speaker 3: angry black woman, too emotional, irrational, And I know because
Speaker 3: I hear from our viewers that they feel that I
Speaker 3: represent them, and so I do not want to be
Speaker 3: a poor representation of the people. So I have to
Speaker 3: think about all that when I'm there a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like for a lot of viewers of
Speaker 2: the show, especially pre COVID, I will say that there's
Speaker 2: a majority of the people that I know, especially like
Speaker 2: where Steve and I work. Steve and I work at
Speaker 2: thirty Rockefeller Plaza, So I think oftentimes people think like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: I'm cool roots the roots in a mirror, so I'm
Speaker 2: not racist, or I'm not you know, or those things
Speaker 2: where it's like, well, you're friends with your coworkers, so
Speaker 2: thus you're on the right side of history. I often
Speaker 2: feel as though I feel like you and Whoopee might
Speaker 2: be the only point of view of a person of
Speaker 2: color or a woman that most of Middle America or
Speaker 2: I want, and I don't want it to just say like, oh,
Speaker 2: only housewives watch the view, like anyone who's home during
Speaker 2: those morning the afternoon hours watches.
Speaker 4: It, but we all home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say that I often feel
Speaker 2: as though people channel into YouTube for opinions that they
Speaker 2: might otherwise not know about because they don't have friends
Speaker 2: that they're close to. So I feel like there's an
Speaker 2: added pressure on you. But when the when the cameras
Speaker 2: are off and the show is done, how awkward is
Speaker 2: that walk back to the dressing room for the five
Speaker 2: of you, especially if it's unsettled.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it depends on the day, you know, in all honesty,
Speaker 3: because we know we have to Yeah, I mean, we know,
Speaker 3: we know we're going to work together the next day,
Speaker 3: and we may have had a really uncomfortable conversation. And
Speaker 3: what a lot of people don't know is, you know,
Speaker 3: we're totally unscripted. We don't know what anyone is going
Speaker 3: to say, we know the topics, we don't even know
Speaker 3: the questions that are coming at us. So after it
Speaker 3: blows up and we're giving our honest feedback, especially during
Speaker 3: these times like COVID and the pandemic and this presidency
Speaker 3: and you know, this administration, and I think what's become
Speaker 3: a racial reckoning, tempers are flaring and and sometimes it's
Speaker 3: hard to you know, look at your colleague and not
Speaker 3: be emotional and upset and wondering what where where did
Speaker 3: that come from? Most times, though, I'll be honest, we
Speaker 3: we reach back out to each other. It may take
Speaker 3: a day, it may take two days, but sometimes it's immediate.
Speaker 3: We will text each other, we will call each other
Speaker 3: and say what was that. We we have that relationship
Speaker 3: with each other.
Speaker 8: Now we've done that, guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, not.
Speaker 8: What we've done. We've we've done that.
Speaker 3: Happens.
Speaker 9: You have to because at the end of the day,
Speaker 9: it's kind of like another family too.
Speaker 8: So you know this.
Speaker 9: You don't always like each other. You do love each other,
Speaker 9: and you want to make sure that you know that, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we're dysfunctional like every other family, you know.
Speaker 3: So this is what it is. And imagine a family
Speaker 3: that you didn't choose and a family that is We're
Speaker 3: all very different, different ages, different backgrounds. We are as
Speaker 3: different as you could be, all thrown together.
Speaker 9: I watch you maneuver with the age thing, and that's
Speaker 9: I see you, to see you and whoope, because that's
Speaker 9: an interesting in there, because y'all have very different backgrounds
Speaker 9: and very different.
Speaker 8: Views at times.
Speaker 9: A lot of times you get this the same, but
Speaker 9: sometimes your experiences and her experience is coming to and
Speaker 9: I watch you, you know, gracefully go in your mind
Speaker 9: to me, I go, you go, that's my elder.
Speaker 8: Let me listen to her.
Speaker 3: And then absolutely absolutely, you know, I think at least
Speaker 3: that's how I was raised. You know, you're speaking to
Speaker 3: someone of a different generation. You do that with respect.
Speaker 3: Even if you disagree, you just disagree respectfully. Not everyone
Speaker 3: was raised that way, but that's how I was raised. Oh,
Speaker 3: how I comport myself?
Speaker 5: How how hard is it?
Speaker 2: Especially when you have to give so many teachable moments
Speaker 2: in sound bites within these like eight to nine minute increments,
Speaker 2: and the five of you have the platform.
Speaker 5: Like I'll say right now, the five of us.
Speaker 2: Have a rhythm or energy that we didn't have maybe
Speaker 2: the first twenty episodes where we.
Speaker 5: Were talking on top of each other that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't say anymore, it's my rhythm, silence, no whit.
Speaker 2: But oftentimes, well, you've been there for two years now, correct?
Speaker 3: Four?
Speaker 8: Four?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, four, I believe it or not?
Speaker 4: Right, has been two years long.
Speaker 2: So even in being there for four years and new
Speaker 2: blood comes in and you know, and oftentimes, you know,
Speaker 2: I think that often when producers or executive producers are
Speaker 2: looking for someone to fit in, they're thinking about ratings,
Speaker 2: they're thinking about who who's controversial, who's rebel rouser. So
Speaker 2: you kind kind of have to wonder, like who's there
Speaker 2: just to be the SoundBite of the moment on social
Speaker 2: media or who's there to really make a teachable moment
Speaker 2: to teach America and teach each other about how you
Speaker 2: feel as a human, Like how hard is it to
Speaker 2: talk in sound bites that are sustinct and to the point,
Speaker 2: and also trying to make a teachable moment, Like do
Speaker 2: you ever feel as though you know, I mean, obviously
Speaker 2: I'm trying not to make this about Megan, but I'm
Speaker 2: just saying, like, do you ever that there will be
Speaker 2: a teachable moment for her?
Speaker 8: Where there have been some I'm sorry, go ahead, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Mean there have been some, but I almost feel like
Speaker 2: sometimes it's nine steps forward and then.
Speaker 3: Mm hm.
Speaker 2: As as far like how concerned you about making a
Speaker 2: teachable moment in which the person really understands and not
Speaker 2: in that way where it's just like, oh, you're an
Speaker 2: exception to the rule, you're the good one.
Speaker 5: But yeah, you know, Iran getting.
Speaker 3: When I when I am thinking in the moment. I'm
Speaker 3: a quick thinker. I think pretty quickly on my feet.
Speaker 3: I think it's my training as a lawyer. But I
Speaker 3: know what my job is, and I know my job
Speaker 3: is to teach my job. You know, when you have
Speaker 3: that kind of platform, you have to teach. And I'm
Speaker 3: not only trying to teach or inform my colleagues. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to inform someone in you know, somewhere someplace in
Speaker 3: the country that hasn't hurt that kind of point of view.
Speaker 3: Like you mentioned earlier that I'm sometimes the only person
Speaker 3: of color that they that they've seen that they that
Speaker 3: they can engage with. And people do engage on social media,
Speaker 3: that's absolutely sure, and so I try to do that.
Speaker 3: I will tell you that it's pretty difficult, especially when
Speaker 3: it's a topic that I know is of great important
Speaker 3: right and I know what I say is gonna be
Speaker 3: all over the media. I know people are gonna interpret
Speaker 3: it and misinterpret it. I think it's pretty difficult. Our
Speaker 3: show does a really good job of at a break saying, Sonny,
Speaker 3: did you say what you needed to say? Megan, did
Speaker 3: you say what you need to say? Whoop, did you
Speaker 3: say what you need to say? And if you're watching,
Speaker 3: oftentimes what we will continue the conversation. And that's because
Speaker 3: during the break we've said, we didn't get that out,
Speaker 3: we didn't get that straight. I need to correct myself.
Speaker 9: But it's waiting. Why is she always last? I'm like Megan,
Speaker 9: if you don't get in there in the second, I
Speaker 9: think she.
Speaker 3: Feels I think she feels most comfortable waiting to hear
Speaker 3: what everyone is saying, because she really is. Uh. You know,
Speaker 3: she's the youngest on our on our show, and I
Speaker 3: really believe quest to your initial question, that she is
Speaker 3: a work in progress, Like she is really thinking things through.
Speaker 3: She's going through a lot of changes. We're talking about,
Speaker 3: you know, the death of her father, her hero, being
Speaker 3: pregnant for the first time, married, newly married, having you
Speaker 3: in her life, having like me is you know, those
Speaker 3: who are a lot of changes, with a lot of
Speaker 3: in front of the public at that age, in your
Speaker 3: early thirties. And and she's really she's learning a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of things. I think she's questioning a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of things. While she's formed some opinions,
Speaker 3: they change mind changed. Sometimes I hear things and I think, okay,
Speaker 3: you know, I've may never agree with that, but I
Speaker 3: can understand where you're coming from. And that's what our
Speaker 3: show is about. I think it's it's changed all of us.
Speaker 3: Joy will tell you that all the time she's been
Speaker 3: on the show, from the very beginning, except a couple
Speaker 3: of years she got fired, and she's a changed person
Speaker 3: because of it. She's a changed person. And each host
Speaker 3: does change you in ways that is very surprising. It's uh,
Speaker 3: you know, I understand more about conservative women than than
Speaker 3: I ever have or even cared to.
Speaker 7: Really, what is it that you think you understand now?
Speaker 7: What is the show helped you understand that you didn't before?
Speaker 8: You know?
Speaker 3: One of the things that I grew up in the
Speaker 3: South Bronx, right, so, and I grew up with a
Speaker 3: certain group of people. I didn't grow up in the
Speaker 3: middle of the country, although I did go to law
Speaker 3: school in the middle of the country. So my experience
Speaker 3: is more varied than most people. But my close friends
Speaker 3: tend to mirror my opinions. We agree with each other
Speaker 3: most of the time. Now, all of a sudden, I'm learning, Okay, Well,
Speaker 3: if you have never, let's say, experience, it's the kind
Speaker 3: of poverty I experienced. You take for granted a lot
Speaker 3: of things and it takes someone to say, you know what,
Speaker 3: not everybody has health care, so you feel sick, you
Speaker 3: immediately get to go to the doctor. I've had the
Speaker 3: occasion in my family someone's sick. We don't have health insurance.
Speaker 3: We don't have the ability to go to the doctors.
Speaker 3: So we're sick and we go to work and we
Speaker 3: get other people sick. So we're not being reckless, so
Speaker 3: to speak, because we want to be We need to
Speaker 3: feed our families, and that's Those are the kinds of
Speaker 3: exchanges that we've had backstage, you know, where people are like,
Speaker 3: that's reckless, that's reckless. I'm like, no, that's poverty. And
Speaker 3: I can understand why she may feel that way. Someone
Speaker 3: one of the hosts may feel that way because it's
Speaker 3: just not in her experience. She doesn't have the bandwidth.
Speaker 8: America.
Speaker 3: She's learning it, you know.
Speaker 9: It's interesting watching Megan learn how great America isn't like
Speaker 9: through you guys.
Speaker 3: She's she's she's really she's learning things and we're learning
Speaker 3: from her as well. So it's good to have have
Speaker 3: someone who just has a different opinion.
Speaker 2: It's funny you say that because I think in my
Speaker 2: second year thirty Rock, like I think like maybe one
Speaker 2: death and one major sickness. I had to like sit
Speaker 2: out for like more than a day, and the first
Speaker 2: time I was like really really sick, like with the flu,
Speaker 2: they were kind of like, you know, well, why the
Speaker 2: hell are you in? Like you could have got a
Speaker 2: sub to sit in for you. And you know, I
Speaker 2: came from an upbringing where like I mean, your limbs
Speaker 2: could be hanging off, yep, you still like you still
Speaker 2: work where it worked it and they couldn't understand that mentality,
Speaker 2: you know. And meanwhile, like you know, one of them
Speaker 2: will have the sniffles and then like run immediately to
Speaker 2: the ninth floor to like the nurse's office. I'm like,
Speaker 2: let's get a cleanex like like I'm learning the cultural
Speaker 2: difference and whatnot. Well, you mentioned the South Bronx. That's
Speaker 2: I know, that's where you were born. Could you give
Speaker 2: us a brief synopsis of what like your formative childhood was,
Speaker 2: like like the type of household you.
Speaker 3: Grew up in, you know, I think my childhood was
Speaker 3: a lot like so many of us. My parents were teenagers.
Speaker 3: My mom was seventeen when she got pregnant. My dad
Speaker 3: was eighteen. They got married, but she had to get
Speaker 3: a ged. You know, she had all these dreams of
Speaker 3: going along school. Actually my father wanted to go to
Speaker 3: medical school. It didn't happen for them. He had to
Speaker 3: find a job. Got they got married. She stayed at
Speaker 3: home with me, and you know, there were plenty of
Speaker 3: days with no My father actually is here visiting me
Speaker 3: from North Carolina because my son just graduatedrom High school.
Speaker 4: He said, woo to North Carolina. I'm Boosboro. Yeah, Town
Speaker 4: Greens was my hometown.
Speaker 5: That's what I was.
Speaker 3: Really, he's right here. He drove ten hours because he
Speaker 3: can't get on a plane. He's in the seventies, which
Speaker 3: wasn't gonna miss his grandson's graduation even though it was virtual.
Speaker 3: We couldn't go New York. Ye. Yeah. And he he
Speaker 3: he said to me yesterday, he said, uh, we were
Speaker 3: worried about the power going out. And I said, that's okay.
Speaker 3: I'll just I'll just put some hot water on the stove,
Speaker 3: you know, if it gets cold, and I'll heat up
Speaker 3: the room. And he was like, you remember that. I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: I remember that because there were a lot of days
Speaker 3: when we didn't have we didn't have water, we didn't
Speaker 3: have food.
Speaker 4: Open up the oven heat did do that. That was
Speaker 4: I did that.
Speaker 3: You know that. There's a lot of days. But we
Speaker 3: always had love. That was the thing, like, we always
Speaker 3: had love. My parents worked. It was hard for them
Speaker 3: to get a job. And I will say for us,
Speaker 3: education was really important. For them, it was it was
Speaker 3: the game changer. They felt that that was a game changer.
Speaker 3: So we didn't watch a lot of TV in our house,
Speaker 3: but there were a lot of books, and it was
Speaker 3: sort of you know, my mom's from Puerto Rico, so
Speaker 3: I think a part of it was. And so Spanish
Speaker 3: is my first language, but it was Spanish and English,
Speaker 3: same household, books and work hard even though we don't
Speaker 3: have a lot, you know, she would make my clothes,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. But we had love and we
Speaker 3: worked hard and things would get better. That was sort
Speaker 3: of the vibe growing up. And I didn't even realize
Speaker 3: we were that poor.
Speaker 4: Are they still married?
Speaker 3: They're still alive. They're not married, but they date, which
Speaker 3: is really awkward.
Speaker 9: They were wait a minute, Sunday, I didn't get to
Speaker 9: that part of the book. I'm just at the part
Speaker 9: with a divorce and that was shocking.
Speaker 3: Wait, yeah, it's so awkward. He's at the house now
Speaker 3: she lives here.
Speaker 8: So how long have they been seeing each other? Yes,
Speaker 8: I would not like that. I wouldn't like.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 4: I have so many questions, how do you do that?
Speaker 3: So ridiculous?
Speaker 4: Really feel okay? Man, he want that old thing back.
Speaker 9: Can I just tell you though, it's funny in reading
Speaker 9: your story, Sonny, because so many parallels and that way.
Speaker 8: My parents are the same way.
Speaker 9: They don't go together, but they're best friends even though
Speaker 9: they've been divorced for thirty years. It's just funny of
Speaker 9: reading your story because you're an only child too, so
Speaker 9: it just affects you really differently, differently.
Speaker 3: I was devastated when they got divorced. I was I
Speaker 3: was upset, like my whole world blew up. You know,
Speaker 3: they blew up my world. And now they have the
Speaker 3: nerve to be at my house mooching in the kitchen.
Speaker 3: It fishes me off. I'll be honest with you. It
Speaker 3: was a break for me.
Speaker 5: It was a break.
Speaker 2: So during the time period that you grew up in
Speaker 2: the South Bronx, what were your teen years into of course,
Speaker 2: I mean our our podcast is music heavy. I'd be
Speaker 2: remiss it if I didn't ask about I mean, you
Speaker 2: grew up in the birthplace for where hip hop was
Speaker 2: actually born.
Speaker 5: Yeah, in nineteen.
Speaker 8: Broken Last Memoir like she's h like a.
Speaker 5: Verse, like party jams and those things, and.
Speaker 3: I really did, I really did. I mean break dancing
Speaker 3: was kind of big back then.
Speaker 8: As well.
Speaker 3: Crazy Legs was out there. I remember going to the
Speaker 3: Tunnel and seeing Slick Rick perform with Dougie Fresh. I
Speaker 3: was I just I loved music. I loved loved music
Speaker 3: because you.
Speaker 8: Were allowed to go out.
Speaker 3: Because I was worrying because I wasn't necessarily allowed to
Speaker 3: go out, but I went out.
Speaker 4: I went out.
Speaker 3: I snuck out sometimes. You know, I was a little
Speaker 3: bit of a rule breaker. I wasn't really allowed to
Speaker 3: go out because also, you know, I was I was young.
Speaker 3: I was twelve in high school, in sixteen in college.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I was like yo, issue, yeah, and so but
Speaker 8: your parents.
Speaker 9: My parents are more like you know, my mom was
Speaker 9: kind of like strict, but at the same time she's like, well, dang,
Speaker 9: your friends are going out, so maybe you could spend
Speaker 9: the night out. And that's when you spend the night
Speaker 9: at the house. Then you go to the club, right, No, parents,
Speaker 9: My parents, no, they were like, you're too young. And
Speaker 9: I looked young too. I looked rad young.
Speaker 3: So it was kind of, you know, a sneaking out
Speaker 3: type of thing, trying to make myself look older. Bounces
Speaker 3: in like you know, they said, bounces back in the day,
Speaker 3: picking people to get in. They knew what I looked like.
Speaker 3: I'm sure I looked sixteen twelve, but it was it was,
Speaker 3: you know, I I loved music, I loved hanging out
Speaker 3: with my friends, breaking night, you know, that kind of
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. But I will tell you when
Speaker 3: my parents after my uncle, my uncle got stabbed during
Speaker 3: an altercation and I saw it. I was with him
Speaker 3: when it happened, and my mother said he was almost killed.
Speaker 3: He later died as a competent. I did, yeah, and
Speaker 3: it was it was horrible. My family decided, you know,
Speaker 3: we can't live with this kind of violence around us
Speaker 3: all the time. So they kept on trying to get
Speaker 3: an apartment in Manhattan. But because they're an interracial couple,
Speaker 3: they couldn't get an apartment. They would go together, and
Speaker 3: you think about it, I mean, you know, redline is
Speaker 3: such a problem and racial bias and housing is such
Speaker 3: a problem. But this is the seventies and they could
Speaker 3: not get a place to live together. But interracial marriages
Speaker 3: had just been sanctioned by the Supreme Court in sixty seven.
Speaker 3: They got married in sixty eight, so you know, seventies,
Speaker 3: there weren't that many people that were married from different
Speaker 3: races then. So my mother went on her own and
Speaker 3: filled out an application in Manhattan, and she changed her
Speaker 3: name from Rosa to Rose, and she changed She used
Speaker 3: to go by her maiden name, which is Besa. Her
Speaker 3: father's a Spanish Jew, and she changed it to Come.
Speaker 3: She used my father's last name Coming, so she became
Speaker 3: Rose Comings. And if you look at her, she doesn't
Speaker 3: look of color. And she got an apartment in Manhattan
Speaker 3: and we move moved out the Bronx, and when my
Speaker 3: dad and I showed up, you could imagine the sts.
Speaker 3: So I got the opportunity when I was going to
Speaker 3: high school, I lived in Manhattan in a better neighborhood
Speaker 3: and was able to hang out at the clubs in
Speaker 3: Manhattan too, So that was that was the upshot. But
Speaker 3: I split my time because my fam most of my
Speaker 3: family was still in the Bronx.
Speaker 9: I mentioned after in the book and the memoir you
Speaker 9: when you tell that story about your uncle, because sorry,
Speaker 9: it was so good. I made a couple of notes,
Speaker 9: and they said that you said that it marked the
Speaker 9: beginning of having to straddle multiple worlds, which to me
Speaker 9: started to make sense as a viewer of.
Speaker 8: The view and the way you handle things.
Speaker 9: And you just talked about how it becomes natural and
Speaker 9: necessary to juggle motherhood, career, loving and knew and old friends,
Speaker 9: and how when you moved to Manhattan your old friends,
Speaker 9: and the Bronx was like, oh, you knew right.
Speaker 3: They still trip on me. It's so funny. They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: you fancy now still to this day because I have
Speaker 3: the same friends, I've any friends.
Speaker 8: Getting jumped on the subway, I was like, sonny, I
Speaker 8: got that.
Speaker 3: I did. I got jumped on the subway.
Speaker 9: Tell the guys this story please, because I had the
Speaker 9: same experience I did.
Speaker 3: You did. It's horrible so that you experienced, Yes, it's horrible.
Speaker 3: I used to have to take the subway, two subways,
Speaker 3: two trains from where I lived to this private school
Speaker 3: my father insisted on sending me to on Park Avenue,
Speaker 3: and it's like I had never experienced anything like that.
Speaker 3: You know, it was certainly not my world. And but
Speaker 3: he wanted a better life for me, so they enrolled
Speaker 3: me in this this private school with these fancy uniforms.
Speaker 3: But everybody else getting dropped off, you know, being driven
Speaker 3: there and I'm taking the subway and I got the
Speaker 3: ouf and on, and you become a target immediately. You're
Speaker 3: you're just a target, so like I know, street ways.
Speaker 3: But they knew that I was somehow different. And this
Speaker 3: group of girls would always get on the stay train,
Speaker 3: always got a six train and it was about six
Speaker 3: of them, and they would just taunt me, Oh you
Speaker 3: this use that. Look at where'd you get those shoes?
Speaker 3: Look at that uniform where you go to school? Blah
Speaker 3: blah blah blah. It was just oh, but that was constant,
Speaker 3: you know, and I have very long hair. My hair
Speaker 3: was like waistless, and they would say, you know, uh,
Speaker 3: look at that hair, that's why you think you're cute.
Speaker 3: And it was constant. It was for about three or
Speaker 3: four months, and I realized we must all gone to
Speaker 3: school in the same area because we were on the
Speaker 3: same train at the same time trying to get to school.
Speaker 3: And I would try different cars and they would just
Speaker 3: find me, and they find me, and I think it
Speaker 3: was just like their their you know, their morning fun,
Speaker 3: quite frankly. And then one day they were quiet and
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, maybe it's over. I literally they
Speaker 3: literally we get off of this at this at the stop.
Speaker 3: It's a sixty eighth Street, Manhattan, and they don't me.
Speaker 3: They take one of my like my braid and just
Speaker 3: cut it off, just one wow. So I got one
Speaker 3: long grade and just nothing, I mean, And I was
Speaker 3: so traumatized. And I had never really looked them in
Speaker 3: the face, because that's New York real. You don't look
Speaker 3: at the people in the face because now you're challenging someone.
Speaker 3: So I would hear them and say, but I would
Speaker 3: just just cursory glance. So, you know, I ran to
Speaker 3: the school. The school called the police, and they kept
Speaker 3: on saying, do you want to identify them? I was like, one,
Speaker 3: I don't really, I didn't look them in the face.
Speaker 3: And two can you imagine if I identified them? You know,
Speaker 3: then I got to get on the train again. It's
Speaker 3: just not a good ride. And so I spent the
Speaker 3: next you know, I would say, six months avoiding taking
Speaker 3: the train, walking to school, you know, walking miles to school,
Speaker 3: taking the bus, pretending to be ill. I don't have to.
Speaker 3: You know, my cousins were like, you know, trying to
Speaker 3: take me to school. It was it was it was
Speaker 3: an interesting you know, you're straddling two worlds, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: that's that's I think so many of us. We call
Speaker 3: it code switching now, but I think many of us
Speaker 3: are sort of used to doing that. And I'm used
Speaker 3: to doing that on the view too. I mean, there
Speaker 3: are times I got to tell you, I feel like
Speaker 3: my husband explodes, explode and yelling at.
Speaker 8: The TV and you can't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like falling back into a certain code,
Speaker 3: but I just know that it's not. It won't serve
Speaker 3: anybody well to do that.
Speaker 8: But the theme is is that you constantly do this.
Speaker 9: And even when you were describing the intricacies of being
Speaker 9: from a Puerto Rican side of the family and a
Speaker 9: family who is from the South, and the difference between
Speaker 9: being the light skinned cousin and then the greeta like, yeah,
Speaker 9: the way you broke down and understood early your position
Speaker 9: and even though it upsets you, but you were like
Speaker 9: I get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I get it. It's interesting when you, I think,
Speaker 3: when you live between worlds like that, you know, like
Speaker 3: my father's family, he was the first one that didn't
Speaker 3: marry a black woman. And on my mother's in my
Speaker 3: mother's family, she was the first one that didn't marry
Speaker 3: somebody that was either Latino or white quite frankly, so
Speaker 3: they were you know, so I was a unicorn. And
Speaker 3: on my father's side, they never accepted my mother. They
Speaker 3: didn't really like it, and because he was like, you know,
Speaker 3: cream of the crop and why he had to marry her.
Speaker 3: And I think that happens with some southern families and
Speaker 3: it's understandable giving our history. And on my mother's side
Speaker 3: of the family they accepted him, but it was more
Speaker 3: like for me, I was always negrita, negrita, negrita. Even
Speaker 3: in Puerto Rico negrita and Spanish people will tell you
Speaker 3: that that's a term of endearment, but I don't think it.
Speaker 4: Is just niggles on it.
Speaker 3: So it sounds like a little bit about the eye.
Speaker 3: That's what it sounds like to me. And it always
Speaker 3: felt like that. And they were like, it's a term
Speaker 3: of endearment. I'm like, but it's raise based, it's color base.
Speaker 3: I don't like it. And I would say all the time,
Speaker 3: don't call me that, you know, but they but they would.
Speaker 8: Ever stop when you said no, not when I was
Speaker 8: a kid.
Speaker 3: They don't dare now, but you know, no when I
Speaker 3: was a kid. No, It's like that's a term of endearment.
Speaker 3: Just take it, just take it. And then you still
Speaker 3: hear it in the Latino community, you know. And then
Speaker 3: on my father's side, it was always like, you know,
Speaker 3: they hated my mom or didn't like my mom, hate
Speaker 3: his strong work. But it was like, you know, most
Speaker 3: little girl, the pretty little girl, pretty light skinned girl,
Speaker 3: the girl with the good hair. And it's like, so
Speaker 3: you don't like the marriage, but you are exalting the product.
Speaker 4: Of the marriage, product of it, right.
Speaker 3: That doesn't make any sense. So it was it was
Speaker 3: sort of I was. I grappled with that my whole life.
Speaker 3: I didn't I didn't quite understand it. And even today
Speaker 3: I write in the book about I was with Anna Navarro,
Speaker 3: Donald Lemon, I was with Anna Navarro, I was with
Speaker 3: Don Lemon, Candy Carter, and I think just yeah, we
Speaker 3: were eating lunch to get Candy used to be she's
Speaker 3: now the executive producer at Tamman Show, but she was
Speaker 3: my executive producer at the View and Candy's African American.
Speaker 3: Y'all know Anna Navarro, and y'all know Don.
Speaker 4: Because he's been lately, he's been. He didn't turn into
Speaker 4: Don Lemon Pepper as of late.
Speaker 3: It's real black now. I'm always gooping on him. I
Speaker 3: think he had a transformation in Ferguson when we were
Speaker 3: there and he got killed up. We were both there,
Speaker 3: but he uh, you know, we were talking and Anna
Speaker 3: was like, my real name is Asuncion, and Anne was
Speaker 3: kind of like, you know, I I thought you was Spanish.
Speaker 3: I was really and and she only seemed to figure
Speaker 3: it out when j Lo's mom and I would talk
Speaker 3: speaking in Spanish and.
Speaker 8: I should know that your viewers we have we observed
Speaker 8: that as well. I'm glad.
Speaker 3: I was like, how how would you not know that
Speaker 3: you were with me at CNN? I mean, I've done
Speaker 3: hits for CNN Espanion. I don't I don't understand that.
Speaker 3: And I think for her it was more like because
Speaker 3: I was always so vocal about the black community and Trayvon,
Speaker 3: and she kind of thought, well, she's just black. Like
Speaker 3: she couldn't be anything else. And then so we kind
Speaker 3: of got over that, and she said, but I apologize
Speaker 3: to you because I don't know. I just I didn't
Speaker 3: see you as a multi dimensional person. And then Candy
Speaker 3: said the same thing. Candy was like, well, I owe
Speaker 3: you an apology too, because she told me one day.
Speaker 3: I kept on wondering why when we were booking shows
Speaker 3: like MLK shows and you know, other other shows, they
Speaker 3: never asked me for my connects. I was like, why
Speaker 3: don't the book has come to me? I mean, I
Speaker 3: know a lot of black people. I was like, y'all
Speaker 3: can't find anybody. Why don't you come to me? Let
Speaker 3: me open up my rolodex. And she kind of mentioned
Speaker 3: to me one day she was like, well, you're not
Speaker 3: really black. I was like, so, Whoopy's the only black
Speaker 3: person on the set? I was. It was just very
Speaker 3: surprising to me. And her opinion was she saw me
Speaker 3: as more Latina. And so you have these two women,
Speaker 3: one's black, one's Latina, I'm both and they are sort
Speaker 3: of erasing me from both community, from both sides, from
Speaker 3: both sides. And then Don Lemon, Donna and I've been
Speaker 3: friends in a really long time, probably maybe twenty years
Speaker 3: or so, and he's just he was like, welcome to
Speaker 3: Sonny's world, because I mean that's you know, he's dealt
Speaker 3: with his own issues, I think, being a black man
Speaker 3: from the South and a gay man, so he's traversing
Speaker 3: very worlds and his fiance is white, so he certainly
Speaker 3: has to deal with a lot of different different issues.
Speaker 2: Well, once again, how exhausting is it?
Speaker 4: Very exhausting?
Speaker 5: So what are family gatherings like now for you?
Speaker 6: Because my dad make it out in the kitchen.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, I just mean of it.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a point where if a light shines
Speaker 2: with you, or if there's a success in your life,
Speaker 2: then you'll see a lot of people's tunes start to change.
Speaker 2: And I guess maybe I've just started to come to
Speaker 2: grips with how to even deal with that. I mean no,
Speaker 2: I was always like a family black sheep. And then
Speaker 2: once you once you make it, then it's like because
Speaker 2: of the mirror jay Z's comeing to do.
Speaker 3: To get those calls.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, like with those do you
Speaker 2: attend you know, family reunions and those things.
Speaker 3: Or yeah, I didn't for a while. I didn't for
Speaker 3: a while, and then my my father's mother passed and
Speaker 3: I saw everyone for the first time at her funeral
Speaker 3: in a long time, and I missed them very, very,
Speaker 3: very much. When my mother's mother passed, you know, unfortunately
Speaker 3: we get together with weddings and funerals a lot of families,
Speaker 3: And when my mother's mother passed, I realized how far
Speaker 3: apart I had sort of become from, you know, both
Speaker 3: sides of my family, just in terms of trying to
Speaker 3: work hard and like you said, kind of be in
Speaker 3: the black sheet, you know the other I think it's
Speaker 3: brought us closer now. I think their passing has brought
Speaker 3: us closer because now more than ever, I think we
Speaker 3: need our families. I think we need our support systems.
Speaker 3: And when you are the one that makes it, I
Speaker 3: feel a certain sense of responsibility to help the others
Speaker 3: in my family that just haven't been able to do
Speaker 3: as well. You know, I got cousins in prison, I've
Speaker 3: got you know, other cousins that just can't afford to
Speaker 3: put their kids through school. And so I've stepped in
Speaker 3: the gap in the in those places because I just
Speaker 3: I think when one of us makes it, we can
Speaker 3: really make a change. For our families. So I have
Speaker 3: done that. I've taken it upon myself to make sure
Speaker 3: that that I do that.
Speaker 7: So how exhausting is that because as a black person,
Speaker 7: that's the other side of it, to be one the
Speaker 7: one who made it?
Speaker 2: Like a lot of people, What is your relationship with
Speaker 2: the word no? And I'm not asking as the host
Speaker 2: of this podcast, I'm I.
Speaker 3: Need this woman, you know I am. I am not
Speaker 3: great at it. I've become better at no. I'm certainly
Speaker 3: good at know when I think that it isn't good
Speaker 3: for the person asking. You know, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: help you if if it's going to help you destroy yourself.
Speaker 3: You need you need money for your next fix, You're
Speaker 3: not going to get it for me. But I do
Speaker 3: have trouble saying no when I know I really shouldn't
Speaker 3: pile one more thing on my plate. I try to
Speaker 3: make the time and self care I think is really important,
Speaker 3: and I don't, I know, realize that I don't spend
Speaker 3: enough time doing that because you know, if mommy unravels
Speaker 3: or wife, everything unravels, the whole falls apart.
Speaker 9: And I started sat there, what is your self care things, Sonny?
Speaker 9: Because you do your fighting fights all day. You're a
Speaker 9: whole and a whole mom, and then.
Speaker 3: You and then you fight my chickens. I got fifteen.
Speaker 5: I started a place that once had seven. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: then raccoons I didn't.
Speaker 2: Know how like vile foxes and raccoons like they've done.
Speaker 3: They go, they they come right underneath. They even have
Speaker 3: things called chicken moles that just they just like to
Speaker 3: eat chicken and like you know, attack chickens. Well we have,
Speaker 3: we've we lost a few at first. And then my
Speaker 3: husband he's really handy and can fix anything. He put
Speaker 3: like the steel gauge mesh underneath the coop, underneath the
Speaker 3: chicken run and so we were good for a while.
Speaker 3: And then we decided they free range because we look,
Speaker 3: we live outside the city. Uh, we were letting the
Speaker 3: free range. And then we had a hawk attack. We
Speaker 3: had a hawk incident. Chickens, chickens were flying everywhere. I
Speaker 3: couldn't believe it.
Speaker 8: I was, that's everywhere now, ridiculousness.
Speaker 11: Yeah, man, chickens got chickens, got them coming from above,
Speaker 11: from underneath the side.
Speaker 3: From where they say hawks are supposed to be hunt.
Speaker 3: They supposedly hunt, and uh, that solitary hunters. But there
Speaker 3: were there was more than one hawk. My vet said,
Speaker 3: it's possible that there was like a mother hawk teaching
Speaker 3: a baby hawk. But anyway, no, I mean, but I'm
Speaker 3: in west Chester County.
Speaker 8: That's by you, right A mirror? Is that you.
Speaker 3: Too out here.
Speaker 5: Too? Yeah?
Speaker 9: Can I just say, speaking of hawks, Sonny, I want
Speaker 9: to you to share with the guys your initial list
Speaker 9: for a mate.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 9: Uh, And I know that because Sonny hawked down. She
Speaker 9: howked down on her husband. Manny, I know that Bill
Speaker 9: and you will find this fast.
Speaker 3: I did. I did. I found him in church. I
Speaker 3: say we met in church.
Speaker 5: He said, we didn't meet in church?
Speaker 8: You did meet him?
Speaker 3: You didn't meet in church? No?
Speaker 8: You No, you saw him in church.
Speaker 3: Met there.
Speaker 4: Okay, what are you saying?
Speaker 3: Our souls met there?
Speaker 4: You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Well, well, what happened. What happened was that my mother
Speaker 3: said that my problem was that I didn't go to
Speaker 3: church enough. That's why I couldn't meet any good men.
Speaker 3: Because I was a serial dater. I was. I was
Speaker 3: dating a lot of athletes and musicians and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: I won't tell you, so I won't tell you which one,
Speaker 3: but here goes my husband peeking, poking in his head.
Speaker 3: Hey church, did meet a church?
Speaker 2: He just said, that's right, sweetheart, marriage man, Okay, okay.
Speaker 3: He knows. So I decided I was training for a marathon,
Speaker 3: and I was in my sweats, like you know, training outfit,
Speaker 3: and I ran into a church just to kind of
Speaker 3: just jones on my mother, just to you know, goofin
Speaker 3: her and call her back and say, yeah, I met
Speaker 3: the priest in the church. And I sat in the
Speaker 3: back and these two fine men walk in, and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, nice looking men in the church. And
Speaker 3: my husband goes to church every Sunday, but he goes
Speaker 3: to church in a suit, and so he had a
Speaker 3: suit on. And it turns out that the church was
Speaker 3: across the street from Johns Hopkins University, where he was
Speaker 3: in medical school. But I didn't I didn't know that,
Speaker 3: you know, because I was kind of new in town Baltimore.
Speaker 3: And uh. I did stay at the church and I went,
Speaker 3: you know, listen to everything, and then I follow him
Speaker 3: outside of the church. Of course, does she.
Speaker 4: Meet him yet meet him? She's still in the stalking process.
Speaker 3: No, I met him in the church. So then I
Speaker 3: U after we met in the church. Then I followed
Speaker 3: him to the bagel shop and I approached him and uh,
Speaker 3: I said, Hi, I'm new in town. And I said,
Speaker 3: wasn't that she wasn't this a sermons? The homily so
Speaker 3: beautiful in the church, And he was like, you were
Speaker 3: in the church? I said I was, But he just
Speaker 3: kept on looking at me because I had a ridiculous
Speaker 3: outfit on. I mean I had I was sweaty, I mean,
Speaker 3: I look crazy. But I was in the church, and
Speaker 3: he was a little bit dismissive. But he had everything
Speaker 3: I wanted because I always wanted a man of faith.
Speaker 3: I found out at the bagel shop that he was
Speaker 3: in medical school, so he had something he wanted to do.
Speaker 3: You know, he was he was on a track of
Speaker 3: having a career. I wanted someone to smoke, spoke more
Speaker 3: than one language that was important to me. Found out
Speaker 3: that he was born in Spain. His mother's from Spain,
Speaker 3: his father is from Haiti, so he spoke Spanish. Spanish
Speaker 3: was his first language. Then check, then so I got
Speaker 3: three checks. Now, then I said, well where are you from?
Speaker 3: Because I was like, you know, maybe he's from a
Speaker 3: corny place and maybe he won't have like a vibe.
Speaker 3: He was like, I'm you know, I was born in Spain,
Speaker 3: but then we moved to New York. So I was
Speaker 3: like check check shack, you.
Speaker 5: Know, the same day.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's so good. Then he said, uh. We
Speaker 3: started talking about where he was, you know, went to
Speaker 3: school where. Then he pledged, he was like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: a member of Camp Alphas. I was like, I was like,
Speaker 3: oh Jesus. I was like, it's just so good. And
Speaker 3: I did well, We'll say I. I always said that
Speaker 3: my husband had to be over six feet tall because
Speaker 3: I'm not short. Uh he he. He did not meet
Speaker 3: that that that one qualification, but I didn't really notice
Speaker 3: it then because I was all I saw was shininess
Speaker 3: because he's very good looking in the face, and he
Speaker 3: walks real tall and he's real muscular. I really didn't
Speaker 3: notice the height until later, so I had to give
Speaker 3: that up. I'm right, I'm taller than him if I
Speaker 3: have heels on, yes, I am.
Speaker 8: Mh one to know, Sonny.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I've never noticed. I never noticed. But I called
Speaker 3: my friend and I was like, I met my husband.
Speaker 3: He don't know it yet, and she was like, oh,
Speaker 3: so he must do this. He speaks Spanish, he's from
Speaker 3: New York. He's this and he's what is he six four?
Speaker 5: I was like, you're like you in the face.
Speaker 3: I was like, he's real good in the face. The
Speaker 3: grill is working. I was like, everything is good. But
Speaker 3: I don't think he's over six feet. But we did
Speaker 3: meet in church.
Speaker 2: It sounds one of those Rudy Bud This is one
Speaker 2: of those Rudy Bud moments.
Speaker 5: Yes, of course.
Speaker 2: I guess your entry to where you are now starts
Speaker 2: with law school.
Speaker 5: Will you can you say that.
Speaker 2: Is it that you're that you're the manifestation of your
Speaker 2: parents uh dream to become that professional?
Speaker 5: Like are you the result of that?
Speaker 2: How did you even get how did you have interest
Speaker 2: in in justice?
Speaker 3: And it was my mother. I actually wanted to be
Speaker 3: a broadcast journalist and my mother freaked out. She was like,
Speaker 3: what is that castle? Castle? And I was like, this
Speaker 3: is you know, you put the news on TV. But
Speaker 3: you got to think in the eighties, there weren't you know,
Speaker 3: this wasn't like Oprah. You know, Oprah wasn't who she became.
Speaker 3: And I think in New York there was like Carol Jenkins,
Speaker 3: but there there just wasn't a lot of representation. I
Speaker 3: mean there still isn't, but there just wasn't a lot
Speaker 3: of representation in media. And she thought that the best
Speaker 3: way to financial security, especially for a woman, law medicine,
Speaker 3: law medicine. She became a teacher, and she was like,
Speaker 3: you gotta you need to become a lawyer. She's like,
Speaker 3: you like to talk a lot, you like to argue
Speaker 3: a lot. You got all a's that's what you got
Speaker 3: to do. And so I took the LSATs. What was
Speaker 3: fascinating was I loved law school, but I would not
Speaker 3: have thought of it if not for my mother, because
Speaker 3: I did argue all the time, and I felt terrible,
Speaker 3: Like when I saw the inequity, it bothered me. It
Speaker 3: bothered me, but I wanted to tell those stories as
Speaker 3: opposed to fighting for it in the courtroom. And I
Speaker 3: think it was certainly my mother because she lived a
Speaker 3: dream deferred because that's what she wanted to do.
Speaker 5: Right Is that just a myth our parents sold us?
Speaker 2: Because now there are I have I have to say
Speaker 2: that outside of the entertainment profession, a.
Speaker 5: Lot of my friends are those.
Speaker 2: Medical students and those law students. Either I played a
Speaker 2: spring fling twenty years ago, like the roots did something
Speaker 2: and then I got to know them professionally whatever, and
Speaker 2: none of them seemed to be living.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about it, talk about it.
Speaker 2: Is that a lie that America has taught us? Because
Speaker 2: what's weird is when I last went to.
Speaker 9: Cuba, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: When Cuba, my connect there told me that parents grew
Speaker 2: in their kids to be in the hospitality.
Speaker 5: Uh. Because when you're a driver, when you're.
Speaker 2: A taxi driver, especially with the way that the economy
Speaker 2: is there, you can. You can you're rich like a
Speaker 2: guy like Cuba and rents a driver for a week
Speaker 2: and that's damn near like a year's worth of pay.
Speaker 5: For doctors, none of the doctors, right, because.
Speaker 3: They get paid the same thing as socialized medicine.
Speaker 11: Right Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like is do lawyers kicking the dough as we've
Speaker 2: been hold and fed?
Speaker 3: This way, you can make a significant amount of money
Speaker 3: as a lawyer. I know when I first got out
Speaker 3: law school, I went to a law firm, and I
Speaker 3: mean I was making a ton of money. I hated
Speaker 3: working there. I didn't like it what I was practiced.
Speaker 3: I was practicing litigation, medical malpractice, insurance defense, and so
Speaker 3: you it wasn't necessarily boring, but you're basic. We sold
Speaker 3: to the highest bidder, right, so you've got these corporations
Speaker 3: that can pay you to defend their their maldeeds, their
Speaker 3: their misdeeds. And I just felt like I didn't go
Speaker 3: to law school and do as well as I did
Speaker 3: to defend this. I just I didn't feel good. It
Speaker 3: didn't It didn't feel right. But you can't. You can't
Speaker 3: do quite well. And I think we we have been
Speaker 3: and you know, medical doctors they don't do as well
Speaker 3: as they used to do because of insurance companies. But
Speaker 3: it's it was a it's sort of a solid living, right,
Speaker 3: It's like a safe it's a safe job. It's a
Speaker 3: safe job. And I mean, my husband's a surgeon, he
Speaker 3: loves it. But both of his parents and doctors as well.
Speaker 3: Sister's a doctor. You know, it's sort of the family
Speaker 3: business in a sense. But his parents are immigrants, and
Speaker 3: that was the dream, you know, you got you become
Speaker 3: a doctor. You're gonna and go to America. You're going
Speaker 3: to do really well. And they did. But I think
Speaker 3: I don't think that as people of color, we had
Speaker 3: we had the My parents at least felt as people
Speaker 3: of color, we didn't have the ability to dream like that, Like,
Speaker 3: you're going to try to do what after we've struggled
Speaker 3: and skimped and you know, saved to put you through school,
Speaker 3: that's what you're gonna do? You want to be on TV?
Speaker 3: It just it made no sense to them that that
Speaker 3: that's like a recipe for failure. You could fail doing that,
Speaker 3: but if you go to law school and do well,
Speaker 3: you can get a job. It's like punching a ticket.
Speaker 3: It seems that's the safe way to do it.
Speaker 5: Sounds like somebody.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 8: But in a remix though, Now, Sonny, it's funny. I
Speaker 8: was listening.
Speaker 9: I was talking to a girlfriend who whose son is
Speaker 9: in college, and she was kind of a conversation with
Speaker 9: him about how we were Traditionally we are told to
Speaker 9: go to college, and these kids these days are like, no,
Speaker 9: wait a minute, I don't necessarily have to go to
Speaker 9: college because I can. I learned how to code to
Speaker 9: do this, I can do this. So do you feel
Speaker 9: like at the same youtub yeah, we're all being now it's.
Speaker 8: Another era of reprogramming, right.
Speaker 3: It definitely is another error. I mean, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: raising these these generations z kids seventeen and fourteen, about
Speaker 3: same age as nineteen. Right there. You know, they are
Speaker 3: different because they have so much information at their fingertips.
Speaker 3: They're not looking through encyclopedias. And I feel it's double
Speaker 3: edged sword because my son, who's very bright, will like
Speaker 3: say something and I'm like, where did you get that?
Speaker 3: And he thinks like he he thinks he can. He
Speaker 3: knows more about, you know, an orthopedic injury than his
Speaker 3: father because he googles something, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Like he knows a little better than I do because
Speaker 3: he googles something. So they have they have this cavalier
Speaker 3: attitude I think sometimes for its information. But I do
Speaker 3: think that they realized that the world is pretty broad,
Speaker 3: and you know that they can there are a lot
Speaker 3: of opportunities for them. He even mentioned at one point,
Speaker 3: you know, not everybody needs to go to college. But
Speaker 3: I will tell you my reaction was, you need to
Speaker 3: go to college, because I still think that if you can,
Speaker 3: and not everyone can because it's too it's overpriced and
Speaker 3: it's not accessible to everyone. And I don't think everyone
Speaker 3: was meant to go to school, you know, to go
Speaker 3: to college. You don't necessarily need it, But I think
Speaker 3: if you can, it's education can still be an equalizer.
Speaker 3: I do believe that it can still be an equalizer.
Speaker 3: At least it was for me, and it can provide
Speaker 3: tremendous opportunity. And a lot of it is socialization, the
Speaker 3: people that you meet there.
Speaker 4: That's the big part.
Speaker 8: It really is a network.
Speaker 7: But now even that's being redefined that now that everyone
Speaker 7: is doing we're all doing it from home now. So, yes,
Speaker 7: what is college in twenty twenty twenty one? You know
Speaker 7: what I mean, It's a different thing.
Speaker 3: It's a different thing. Well, I'll tell you. My son
Speaker 3: decided to take a gap year instead of starting college
Speaker 3: because he was, like my husband was dancing up and
Speaker 3: jumping up and down because he didn't want to pay
Speaker 3: the money anyway. But it's like for virtual and for us,
Speaker 3: you know, I thought, well, why should he go to
Speaker 3: a college and sit in a dorm room and you
Speaker 3: know not and be alone in the dorm room and
Speaker 3: then all the classes were going to be virtual and
Speaker 3: he was going to eat in his dorm room. There
Speaker 3: was really not the real college experience. So he decided
Speaker 3: to take a gap year because of I think.
Speaker 4: Is everybody's gap year. This is all of us is.
Speaker 8: Did y'all see that episode of black Ish that's like
Speaker 8: a whole thing for black people now, even though we're
Speaker 8: doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the gap year.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: When he first mentioned it to us, we were like,
Speaker 3: you are nominally Obama, that's what you're not going to do. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I was a little I was a little uncomfortable with it,
Speaker 3: but it made sense after a while.
Speaker 6: It's like high school extended.
Speaker 2: But also think I think that I think gen Z
Speaker 2: is also the first generation that you know, my parents
Speaker 2: were definitely the product of you know, safety and security and.
Speaker 5: Getting a good job and da da da da fall
Speaker 5: back on that sort of exactly.
Speaker 2: I think that gen z on will go with their
Speaker 2: first instincts, their first passions, and yes, roll with it,
Speaker 2: because yeah, you and I.
Speaker 5: Basically like the same thing.
Speaker 2: Like my dad had plans for me to do something
Speaker 2: way different, and you know, I had to hide for
Speaker 2: a long time that I was in a rap group
Speaker 2: and all this other stuff.
Speaker 4: No about it, They about it. They've been gen Z.
Speaker 7: They've been watching they've been watching police snuff videos since
Speaker 7: they was twelve, so you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: They you know, I mean it. Yeah, they told me.
Speaker 9: Wait, so let me ask you all a question on
Speaker 9: the sense of that, because since they're reprogramming, reprogramming the
Speaker 9: whole way we're supposed to think now, even on the
Speaker 9: subject of like race and sex. I was gonna ask Sonny,
Speaker 9: how you feel about that, because it's interesting. I was
Speaker 9: just I was watching I don't know, if y'all watch
Speaker 9: this show, I may destroy you or whatever it's said.
Speaker 4: I'm waiting for it to finish. I was gonna just
Speaker 4: take them all day.
Speaker 8: Okay, Well, there's just an episode.
Speaker 9: It's just interesting the way that they're redefining uh, sex,
Speaker 9: sexual assault, things of these nature. And they were talking
Speaker 9: and it was an episode where the girl was having
Speaker 9: sex with someone willingly and he took the condom off, right,
Speaker 9: and so she was like, you assaulted me right now
Speaker 9: rewind ten fifteen years ago, we would just be like
Speaker 9: that motherfucker is an asshole, fuck you, right, But now
Speaker 9: these kids are like, no, that's assault, and it's just
Speaker 9: everything is different, like this language from sex, race, everything
Speaker 9: is just do you find yourself since you're on TV
Speaker 9: every day playing this catchup game of.
Speaker 3: Trying to absolutely absolutely how do you think. You know,
Speaker 3: I try to remain enlightened. You know, I'm trying. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to plug in all the time and get the
Speaker 3: information and make sure that that I'm growing along with
Speaker 3: with every movement. I will say, you know, I think
Speaker 3: it's really difficult to parent during these times because you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's your it's your worst nightmare. That yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: some of you know, your your your child's accused of
Speaker 3: assaults or your child is assaulted or not understanding you know,
Speaker 3: the new societal norms. I spend a lot of time
Speaker 3: talking about consent, talking about what assault is, talking about respect,
Speaker 3: talking about you know, they go to very progressive school though,
Speaker 3: so the school covers a lot of those issues, which
Speaker 3: which is good. But I spent a lot of time
Speaker 3: trying to be informed and try to and making sure
Speaker 3: that they are informed because I think people are very
Speaker 3: awake to their rights, which is a good thing and
Speaker 3: to be ever changing. You know, we got into an
Speaker 3: argument like this on the show, but like what is PC.
Speaker 3: I'm like, you know, in my view, you know, people
Speaker 3: used to be able to say whatever they wanted to
Speaker 3: other people, and now people are like, nah, I don't
Speaker 3: say that to me, and I think respect is at
Speaker 3: the core of so many things, and I've been making
Speaker 3: sure that my kids really fundamentally understand other people's rights
Speaker 3: and respect that, because that's where I think we're just missing.
Speaker 3: We're losing a lot in terms of our respect for
Speaker 3: each other. And we know it comes from the top.
Speaker 3: We know what we're seeing lately, but that's a fundamental problem.
Speaker 5: If I heard correctly, you said that your kids are
Speaker 5: seventeen and fourteen. Yeah, yeah, it might be the norm
Speaker 5: right now, but if you can go back to like
Speaker 5: twenty and sixteen, November of twenty sixteen, how did you
Speaker 5: explain to them suddenly what was happening?
Speaker 2: Like I can't even imagine viewing the world, especially coming
Speaker 2: from where they came where they were, Yeah, a formative
Speaker 2: age coming.
Speaker 5: Up in the Obama years.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In no way am I ever saying that that was
Speaker 2: a rosy time either. But it seemed like a more
Speaker 2: manageable time, and it seemed like we were headed in
Speaker 2: the right direction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean it's what was wonderful, wasn't it
Speaker 3: That I felt it was wonderful that my children had
Speaker 3: for their first for their cognitive years, they saw black president, right.
Speaker 3: I thought it was wonderful.
Speaker 2: You know, how do you expel life to them now
Speaker 2: that the rugs seemingly been pulled from underneath them, or
Speaker 2: even not even twenty sixteen, like the idea of the riots.
Speaker 5: And how do you how do you explain that to them?
Speaker 3: Well, my children, probably because of their mommy, are are
Speaker 3: very are social activists and their advocates. You know, my
Speaker 3: son was involved in a sit in at a school
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago. They're very well read. In fact,
Speaker 3: it was part of his It got so much press
Speaker 3: that it had to become part of his college essay,
Speaker 3: and when he was interviewed, almost every college interview brought
Speaker 3: brought it up and brought up this question, you know,
Speaker 3: like what made you want to become an activist? And
Speaker 3: his answer really was that he felt that there was
Speaker 3: a backlash to the fact that there was a black president.
Speaker 3: And my kids were very very noticeably shape by the
Speaker 3: back what they perceived as a backlash. And my daughter,
Speaker 3: who she's only fourteen, but she said she feels that
Speaker 3: this sort of you know, there's like a pendulum that swings,
Speaker 3: and that there were people in our country that felt
Speaker 3: that Obama being president for eight years, took the pendulum
Speaker 3: too far, and they wanted to bring it all the
Speaker 3: way back. And that was a really interesting perspective that
Speaker 3: I hadn't even thought of that way, that that's why
Speaker 3: we're seeing these extremes, because they thought that that was
Speaker 3: that extreme. So I will say, I don't even know
Speaker 3: that I had to reconcile it for them. I think
Speaker 3: because they have so much information and they're so interested
Speaker 3: in the information, at least my children, they formulated their
Speaker 3: own opinions early, very early. I remember in November twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: I was bereft, was very upset, and you know, they
Speaker 3: were like, how could this happen? He's such a joke,
Speaker 3: he said horrible things. Who would vote for him? There
Speaker 3: were things like that. You know, they were like, but
Speaker 3: he didn't. He didn't really win. Like they were trying
Speaker 3: to really make sense of the process. Even then, even
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen, Well.
Speaker 2: It should be noted that you at least had your
Speaker 2: parents cake and you ate it too. By stepping into
Speaker 2: the television journalism world, starting with Core TV and.
Speaker 5: Ley Factor.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like okay, so what was factor that you
Speaker 2: should take this to.
Speaker 5: A higher level and kind of get to.
Speaker 2: Your dreams, Like, what was the what was that moment
Speaker 2: where you were where I obviously you were like, you know, well,
Speaker 2: I am going to pursue the journalism.
Speaker 3: Man, Yeah.
Speaker 12: It was.
Speaker 3: And I write in the book that I always know
Speaker 3: when I'm in the right place, when it feels like home,
Speaker 3: when it feels right, when I'm comfortable, it feels good.
Speaker 3: The law firms didn't feel good, The Justice Department felt good.
Speaker 3: It felt like I was doing the good work, making
Speaker 3: good trouble. But then after I had my first child,
Speaker 3: I was really blowing in the wind, and I went
Speaker 3: back and went to another law firm making a lot
Speaker 3: of money, which was stupid to go back to a
Speaker 3: place I knew I wouldn't feel like home, and I
Speaker 3: was searching. But in the back of my mind, I
Speaker 3: have to tell you, I knew that I needed to
Speaker 3: follow my passion. And I went to a meeting of
Speaker 3: lawyers and had the good fortune of meeting a television
Speaker 3: producer there from Court TV, who said, you've got to
Speaker 3: you know, you should be on television. And I took
Speaker 3: that opportunity and I seized it, and I really never
Speaker 3: let it go. I just I just never let it go,
Speaker 3: and I just kept on doing it, and I kind
Speaker 3: of got discovered that way, which is unusual, right. You know,
Speaker 3: you meet you meet a television producer, and you're on
Speaker 3: TV the next week, and then it never it never
Speaker 3: goes away. And I feel like that's because it was
Speaker 3: my true calling and it was something that I was
Speaker 3: supposed to do. But I also had the benefit of
Speaker 3: being married to an orthopedic surgeon who could pay the
Speaker 3: bills and who could hold it down, hold it down
Speaker 3: for me, and who was willing to do that because
Speaker 3: he basically had a talk and I was like, I
Speaker 3: think I'm leaving this law firm and this has been
Speaker 3: a dream of mine and I want to do it.
Speaker 3: And he basically said, all right, let's talk tonight. Got home,
Speaker 3: pulled up budgets and pulled up savings accounts, and he
Speaker 3: was like okay. And he had just started his own practice,
Speaker 3: and he was like, well, you know, and we had
Speaker 3: just bought a house and we just had a baby,
Speaker 3: two babies at that point, and he said, I can
Speaker 3: hold it down for about three years. You think you could,
Speaker 3: You think you could make it in three years? You
Speaker 3: have to make what you now three years and I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think I can. I said, then do it all right? Communication,
Speaker 3: that's significant, right, that's significant. Now, I don't know that
Speaker 3: a lot of people with you know, so he may
Speaker 3: have been.
Speaker 11: He may have been short, but he wasn't short on
Speaker 11: cash and the.
Speaker 4: Moral to this story and.
Speaker 9: To the baby journalists out there too, Sonny, not to
Speaker 9: say that you were also like still doing the work,
Speaker 9: like you were going to NABJ. You was doing some
Speaker 9: of the stuff that to say, all these other baby
Speaker 9: journalists are doing too.
Speaker 3: Yes, you gotta do it, you gotta do it. And
Speaker 3: I continue to do it. I continue to go to
Speaker 3: an I go to n h n h J I do.
Speaker 3: I continue to go to the I go to local meetings.
Speaker 3: I go. You got you have to you have to
Speaker 3: do it. You have to do the work, you know.
Speaker 3: I I text people what do you think about this?
Speaker 3: What do you think about that? You know? I mean,
Speaker 3: now I have it just a wonderful circle of of
Speaker 3: you know, other sister girl journalists who you know, we're
Speaker 3: we're actually on this text chain and we go back
Speaker 3: and put political journalists as well. We go back and forth.
Speaker 3: You know, can you review this from me? What do
Speaker 3: you think about this position. What do you think about that?
Speaker 3: And it's uh, you know, Joy Read has been.
Speaker 8: I was just about to ask you how was that?
Speaker 9: I was about to say, how was that Zoom party?
Speaker 9: First week she broke them records? I just oh my god.
Speaker 9: And then had a good time the first show that
Speaker 9: she did with all the black mayors, I was like, oh,
Speaker 9: they couldn't wait to do her episode.
Speaker 8: They was like, girl, what you need us.
Speaker 3: For watching together? It was so amazing. You know, we
Speaker 3: pop champagne with Joy after, you know, And she's been.
Speaker 3: She's been great. She's not only a friend but an inspiration.
Speaker 3: You know, she's doing such amazing things, amazing work. But
Speaker 3: I have that circle that I can still depend on
Speaker 3: and count on. And I say, young journalists, you've got
Speaker 3: to keep that network tight and and help each other.
Speaker 3: It is important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, since you're probably the only person that I know
Speaker 2: of that I'm in conversation with that is any proximity
Speaker 2: towards the Fox building?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have to ask, all right, in general?
Speaker 2: Is it is there general modus operandi that they believe
Speaker 2: what they're saying or they know better, but will still
Speaker 2: say toxic talking points for the sake of their bottom line,
Speaker 2: which is and specifically you know, I know that you
Speaker 2: were a pundit. I don't even want to paint that
Speaker 2: you were oftentimes you were debating against Yeah, what you know?
Speaker 2: First of all, how do they find do they find
Speaker 2: legitimate people that have yeh, like, how.
Speaker 5: Did how do backgrounds?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they found they found me on Court TV. They
Speaker 3: saw me on COURTV. Yes, there are some legitimate people.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean Chris Wallace is there. I actually
Speaker 3: think he's one of the finest journalists out there today.
Speaker 3: I thought Sheef Smith was great as well, and I
Speaker 3: worked with him. I thought he was he was excellent.
Speaker 3: I think it's a mixed bag over there. I think
Speaker 3: there are some people who are saying these irresponsible things
Speaker 3: that aren't as talented as they should be, and they're
Speaker 3: doing it for ratings and for their bottom line. I
Speaker 3: also think there are some that really believe that, that
Speaker 3: are indoctrinated and truly truly believe it. My experience there
Speaker 3: was that you'd walk in the building and there was
Speaker 3: a collective there were collective points that they wanted to
Speaker 3: make that day, collective points like on whiteboards. These are
Speaker 3: the three points and themes that everyone is going to
Speaker 3: cover in their shows in various ways. Pundits are going
Speaker 3: to talk to it, guests are going to speak to it,
Speaker 3: the anchors are going to pontificate about it. And they
Speaker 3: were marching orders. That's when Ales was there. Maybe different now,
Speaker 3: but those were the marching orders, and everybody marched to
Speaker 3: those orders. It was it was like sort of a
Speaker 3: monolithic view, and that was Roger Ayles's view, and then
Speaker 3: they would have a couple of people like me, maybe
Speaker 3: Wan Williams to kind of mix it up a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but by and large, I think it's a mixed bag,
Speaker 3: and that some people just do it for ratings, but
Speaker 3: they all and and if you're doing it, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: for just ratings, you've sold your soul. You know, you're
Speaker 3: just you're just inauthentic, You're you're even worse than the
Speaker 3: people that really believe it, right, And and then there
Speaker 3: are people that I believe, really believe it. I do.
Speaker 2: So knowing the fight and the struggle that we have
Speaker 2: in the next four months and what's working against the
Speaker 2: fight and whatnot, you know, how do you see where journalism,
Speaker 2: be it news sources, be it the blattosphere, be it podcasts,
Speaker 2: be it talk shows, discussion shows, which there are plenty
Speaker 2: of now on television. How do you how do you
Speaker 2: feel as though how effective that they will be?
Speaker 3: Oh, well, very effective. We know that we know Fox
Speaker 3: has been extraordinarily effective, and we know there are other
Speaker 3: programs that are extraordinarily effective. I will say this, I
Speaker 3: think that there's a difference between journalists and punditry, right
Speaker 3: journalism and commentators, journalists and commentators, and it's the line
Speaker 3: is so blurry for people intentionally, so that the media
Speaker 3: and network news and cable news, we all have to
Speaker 3: be very careful, I think, and letting people know that
Speaker 3: this is a piece of commentary, This is an opinion piece,
Speaker 3: This is an op ed as opposed to these are
Speaker 3: the yes, these are the facts. Network Yeah, I'm finding
Speaker 3: you know, by and large. And I was talking to
Speaker 3: a couple of my journalist's friends, TJ. Holmes, I don't
Speaker 3: know if you know him, and Robert Roberts and and
Speaker 3: Pierre Thomas. You know, these are journalists and they're really
Speaker 3: concerned about that too. Lindsay Davis, who moderated one of
Speaker 3: the debates, I think she was really our best mind
Speaker 3: operator that we've seen in the debates she had that
Speaker 3: fly white suit. But you know, journalists need to continue
Speaker 3: doing that job, just the facts, man. And I also
Speaker 3: think there is an important space for shows like my show.
Speaker 3: I mean, when I'm not reporting on something, I am
Speaker 3: giving my opinion. The View is an opinion show, and
Speaker 3: we make it clear that these are our opinions. These
Speaker 3: are our views. There's a really important place for that
Speaker 3: to have that lively discussion so that you can hear
Speaker 3: those views but then make your mind up yourself. I
Speaker 3: tried to be very fact based in my arguments on
Speaker 3: the view, not emotion right, because fact trump emotion. No
Speaker 3: pun intended every single time, every single time you come
Speaker 3: at me with your emotional argument, I'm going to tell you,
Speaker 3: but these are the facts. Boom boom boom boom.
Speaker 8: Can tell you the best example.
Speaker 9: I'm sorry, I don't mean, I'm just going to tell
Speaker 9: you the example that that was that conversation between Tip
Speaker 9: I want to say, Tiffany.
Speaker 8: Cross is Tips Gray Cross and Whoopy Goldberg.
Speaker 9: About why we need and I know you've been very
Speaker 9: vocal on their needs black female VP.
Speaker 3: And the not woman of color black. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yes, because of course MS duck Wader will make a
Speaker 9: great Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 8: And she would excellent, and she would.
Speaker 3: But we need a black agenda. We need a reconciliation
Speaker 3: for the black community. You know. One thing that's really
Speaker 3: fascinating to me about this, this discussion of black VP
Speaker 3: and I have been very vocal, I was we were
Speaker 3: the first group to write an op ed in the
Speaker 3: Washington Post about the need for uh. We started that conversation.
Speaker 3: It was I wrote it with Tiffany I wrote it
Speaker 3: with Angela Raie, Amanda Seals, Brittany Packet Cunningham, who's brilliant,
Speaker 3: Latasha Brown, one of the co founders of Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 3: and we got together. We're on a thread talking God,
Speaker 3: we got to make this happen. And we all agreed,
Speaker 3: and I reached out to you know, Donald Brazil, minyet more,
Speaker 3: all these people, and we you know, we have a
Speaker 3: we have a Black women think tank, we really do,
Speaker 3: and it was we need He's promised this black Supreme
Speaker 3: Court justice. That's great, but you're not getting the black
Speaker 3: Supreme Court justice unless you have the Senate. Okay, So
Speaker 3: that's that's a lusory promise. What we need is representation
Speaker 3: at the table at the table in the White House,
Speaker 3: and because black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party,
Speaker 3: brought Joe Biden to the barbecue, resurrected his campaign in
Speaker 3: South Carolina. Oh, I've spoken to her as well. We
Speaker 3: deserve that seat at the table. And for people to
Speaker 3: say somehow that it's not about race and it's about
Speaker 3: the most qualified. We've been hearing that argument all the time.
Speaker 3: And the other thing is every single voting block with
Speaker 3: power has a lobby and makes demands before they will
Speaker 3: provide their vote. Right, So you've got the gun lobby,
Speaker 3: you've got the evangelicals, all those boots will say we
Speaker 3: will support you. Maybe not their gun lobby now, but
Speaker 3: we will support you if you give me this. Why
Speaker 3: is it when black women say we will support you.
Speaker 3: We will organize, we will bring our husbands and our children,
Speaker 3: and our sisters and our parents to vote during a
Speaker 3: global pandemic risking our lives. But you must give us
Speaker 3: this representative in the White House. We are somehow asking
Speaker 3: for too much. We're not doing anything else that any
Speaker 3: other voting block with power does. So I just I
Speaker 3: don't understand why there's been such pushback with that demand,
Speaker 3: because it's not a request. It's not a request, it's
Speaker 3: a demand that any other strong voting block makes. And
Speaker 3: now is the time because once he's in the White House,
Speaker 3: I mean the black agenda, what is really the Black agenda?
Speaker 3: And if you've read Joe Biden's agenda, it's okay, it's
Speaker 3: a little squishy, it's not as specific as it should be.
Speaker 3: And you know, he has he's an imperfect candidate, and
Speaker 3: he has a lot to atone for when it comes
Speaker 3: to the treatment of Anita Hill, and it comes to
Speaker 3: the crime bill, and it comes topiration that has a
Speaker 3: lot to atone for. And I think, because you know,
Speaker 3: no other candidate in the past fifty years Democratic candidate
Speaker 3: has one without the Black vote, he needs to win
Speaker 3: overwhelmingly because if not, the current occupant in the White
Speaker 3: House is going to have to be you know, it's
Speaker 3: not going to walk it out. Black people got to
Speaker 3: risk their lives to vote now, got to stand in
Speaker 3: line because of COVID, because of all the attack on
Speaker 3: on on mail and voting. And I don't think people
Speaker 3: are going to be as energized with Tammy dug Worth
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 4: Know, I'm concerned.
Speaker 5: I think Vice President and yeah, either in the Senate
Speaker 5: or as Attorney general or.
Speaker 3: You know, you know, I think that Kamala We've seen her.
Speaker 3: She is certainly the prosecutor in chief. I know her.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, California is a lock for Democratic senator.
Speaker 3: I'm not concerned about Kamala being in the Senate. I
Speaker 3: think she can be much more effective as vice president
Speaker 3: and I'd like to see her debate Vice President Pence.
Speaker 3: I think she's a really strong candidate in terms of
Speaker 3: being ready to occupy occupy the oval because not everyone
Speaker 3: you know is Joe Biden is not immortal, and I'm
Speaker 3: not an agist, but he is going to be seventy eight,
Speaker 3: and what he needs to think about is not the
Speaker 3: next four years. He needs to think about the next
Speaker 3: eight and the next twelve because in three and a
Speaker 3: half years, the Trump administration has undone eight years of
Speaker 3: what the Obama administration did or was allowed to do. So,
Speaker 3: you know, you need someone that's able to kind of
Speaker 3: step in and I just don't know that, you know,
Speaker 3: and step in and run because she has run the
Speaker 3: AG's office, you know, she she she has the experience
Speaker 3: to run. Out of all the candidates that I've seen.
Speaker 3: I think she has she has the experience to run
Speaker 3: a country. That's just my take.
Speaker 7: What are your thoughts on Valve Demis. I thought she was.
Speaker 3: I've interviewed val I think she's great. I think if
Speaker 3: you look at How's law enforcement record, it's a little problematic,
Speaker 3: it's a little problem. It can be.
Speaker 13: More than who's yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3: I mean if you if you look at Kamala's I've
Speaker 3: read Kamala's book, and the thing is, you know, you
Speaker 3: get the black prosecutors get a certain rap talk. Yeah,
Speaker 3: black prosecutors get a certain rap right, because unfortunately, there
Speaker 3: is the problem of mass incarceration. We know that black
Speaker 3: men are twice as likely as white men to get arrested.
Speaker 3: We know about broken window policing, and so that's a
Speaker 3: systemic problem. And when you're prosecutor, you have to enforce
Speaker 3: the law. Laws are changed through legislation. Prosecutors don't get
Speaker 3: to change the law. What you do get to do
Speaker 3: is you get to make you have prosecutorial discussion. So
Speaker 3: you know, when I was a prosper, there were if
Speaker 3: I saw someone, a cop comes to me and he's
Speaker 3: got a confession. But the mugshot shows that the guy
Speaker 3: has two black guys. I'm not taking that case to trial.
Speaker 3: Even if I think, huh, you know, he probably did it.
Speaker 3: If I only have that confession and he's been beaten
Speaker 3: up to get it, I have the discretion to say,
Speaker 3: this is not how you get to police. If you
Speaker 3: look at what Kamala did, she really was instrumental in
Speaker 3: changing the way things were done in California, to her credit,
Speaker 3: working within that system, because sometimes you can't just blow
Speaker 3: up systems, you have to work within it. So I
Speaker 3: often say, you know, the black prosecutor. Prosecutor is the
Speaker 3: person with the most power in the room. People think
Speaker 3: it's the judge. He ain't the judge. People think, oh,
Speaker 3: I got to get a good defense attorney. You need
Speaker 3: a prosecutor on that side of the table in that
Speaker 3: courtroom to make the right charging decisions, to make the
Speaker 3: right recommend you know, sentencing recommendation. That's what you need.
Speaker 3: I will tell you that in my time as a prosecutor,
Speaker 3: I didn't charge people who you know, I put people
Speaker 3: in drug diversion programs. I looked at the whole person.
Speaker 3: Because I'm from those neighborhoods. I know the decisions that
Speaker 3: people make are not just because they're inherently bad. I know,
Speaker 3: you know some of them are born in poverty. I
Speaker 3: know what goes into all of this. So I think
Speaker 3: that However, when you look at val Deming's record, there
Speaker 3: were a lot of problems in her police department, but
Speaker 3: she had the ability to change that and a lot
Speaker 3: of those changes didn't necessarily happen. So I think she's
Speaker 3: a great candidate, but she's you know, she's going to
Speaker 3: come up if he chooses her that it's going to
Speaker 3: be a little problematic when it comes to her history
Speaker 3: with law enforcement, considering the reckoning that's going on now
Speaker 3: in our country.
Speaker 8: But that's Sonny. You did the same thing for me,
Speaker 8: for with Amy Klobash. Are you just.
Speaker 3: Like but that's interesting? Do you know that before I
Speaker 3: interviewed her, people say it was cross examination. I single
Speaker 3: handedly undid her campaign, and her campaign was very upset
Speaker 3: after her appearance on our show. I mean, she was
Speaker 3: never questioned about her prosecutorial background in the way that
Speaker 3: Kamala was. She was never questioned about it until she
Speaker 3: came on the show. And do you know how I
Speaker 3: found out about it. They buried her team had buried
Speaker 3: that case my Burrell's case. Black activists d m me
Speaker 3: dm me on social media and said, we hear that
Speaker 3: Amy's going on the show. Can I send you some
Speaker 3: documents about a case? I said sure. And sometimes I
Speaker 3: don't even look at Twitter. I don't even look at everything,
Speaker 3: you know. I just happened to be looking at it
Speaker 3: and I read my husband will tell you. I mean,
Speaker 3: I was up all night. I couldn't I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh my god. And you know, I
Speaker 3: think her campaign felt that I ambushed them. And I
Speaker 3: heard there's a CNN document or HBO Max documentary now,
Speaker 3: and CNN told some of their reporters that they can't
Speaker 3: believe they got scooped by a talk show host, which
Speaker 3: was kind of infuriating because I am a legal journalist
Speaker 3: federal prosecutor, So I was like, what are they talking about? Yeah,
Speaker 3: come on now, and you work on CNN, so I'm
Speaker 3: gonna need them there. And I worked there, and you
Speaker 3: know it is the number one talk show in the country. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that part, But I was surprised that I was the
Speaker 3: first journalist to bring it up. But everybody's bringing up
Speaker 3: Kamala's record. So black women do get examined in a
Speaker 3: in a way that is very different than white women,
Speaker 3: especially during this time when of vetting. And I think
Speaker 3: Valerie Jarrett just came out with an initiative for the
Speaker 3: media called something like we have we have her back,
Speaker 3: and they're saying, if he picks a woman, especially a
Speaker 3: woman of color, media, you are to profile and report accordingly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you are to do your jobs professionally and ethically. And
Speaker 3: I think it was really important for her to say
Speaker 3: that because I do not think that Kamala I don't
Speaker 3: think that representative bass. I don't think that Stacy Abrams
Speaker 3: got got about Deming's got appropriate treatment in the media.
Speaker 3: I really don't believe they did.
Speaker 2: Can I ask oftentimes when I do watch news programs,
Speaker 2: sometimes I just wish that And I know that we're
Speaker 2: supposed to you know, when they go low we go
Speaker 2: high end quote.
Speaker 4: Fuck all that.
Speaker 5: But I'm just saying that, you know, can't we and we.
Speaker 2: As in whoever we we is in twenty twenty, why.
Speaker 5: Are we playing as dirty or as devious.
Speaker 4: And I don't mean as effective even yeah, as effective
Speaker 4: and as.
Speaker 2: Effective as It's almost like we already know that we
Speaker 2: already know what's in line to sure another.
Speaker 5: Four years in November.
Speaker 2: And it's kind of like watching those old you know,
Speaker 2: dully do right Snuffley with where you know our future
Speaker 2: is on this uh conveyor belt headed towards a mule
Speaker 2: sawt thing. And it's it's why can't we play as dirty?
Speaker 5: Why can't we you know that's too loaded of a.
Speaker 3: No, it's not for me, you know, Joy Behar and
Speaker 3: I talk about this all the time. She's like, when
Speaker 3: they go low, we need to go low. She's futilistic, right,
Speaker 3: I tend to disagree. I just think it's it's I
Speaker 3: do I think that with facts on your side, with
Speaker 3: the law on your side, you don't have to play dirty.
Speaker 7: But it's like truth, come on, man, Like truth now
Speaker 7: is everyone, you know, the dangerous thing, Like everyone picks
Speaker 7: their own facts now, like it's not even.
Speaker 5: Is the winner?
Speaker 7: Yeah, and even kind of to your point earlier, Sonny
Speaker 7: about you know you were talking about, you know, the
Speaker 7: difference between journalism and entertainment. I think that's kind of
Speaker 7: a big, you know, kind of problem because you know,
Speaker 7: I mean I was a journalism major like in college,
Speaker 7: and you know, one of the things I see now
Speaker 7: and a lot of other like writers have talked about
Speaker 7: it of just kind of you have the conflation of
Speaker 7: journalism versus entertainment, where one is often masquerading as the other,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean, Like we don't have a
Speaker 7: twenty four hour news cycle because of journalism. That shit
Speaker 7: is entertainment, you know what I mean. It's not it is,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean. So I think that is
Speaker 7: where the kind of going lower thing comes in, because
Speaker 7: it's like you kind of have to use we're not
Speaker 7: playing the same rules don't apply anymore like as they
Speaker 7: as they used to.
Speaker 3: Everything aim has changed, that is true. But I just
Speaker 3: don't I think that if everyone is cheating, then you
Speaker 3: truly have the devolution of society, Like there has to
Speaker 3: be these standards and and and that's the that's the problem,
Speaker 3: you know. I don't think we can I certainly think
Speaker 3: we can combat, Like if you're going to go low,
Speaker 3: I can be pugilistic and hit you back. I don't
Speaker 3: know that I need to go lower, you know, I
Speaker 3: just I believe that, yeah, I can hit back, But
Speaker 3: I agree, I don't agree that you need to resort
Speaker 3: to trickery. I don't think you need to and the rules.
Speaker 3: I don't like that.
Speaker 5: I just so Kanye is not scaring you right now.
Speaker 3: For Kanye, I mean.
Speaker 8: From but he hasn't.
Speaker 9: Can't do that with somebody with mental illness, Like that's okay.
Speaker 3: Maybe.
Speaker 4: Be true, can be true?
Speaker 14: Suffering that yeah, really really suffering. He's really suffering. And
Speaker 14: I think what's important, what's really unfortunate is.
Speaker 3: That you know, he's not getting the help he needs,
Speaker 3: right and he can't. He's not getting it.
Speaker 9: And it's hard to help a grown person with a
Speaker 9: lot of money and power to like that's the whole
Speaker 9: thing you.
Speaker 3: Do institutionalized, like Sonny, you can, you can clear this up.
Speaker 9: But he literally has to physically hurt himself or somebody
Speaker 9: for him to be forcibly hospitalized.
Speaker 3: Correct, Yes, he has to be a danger to himself
Speaker 3: or others in California.
Speaker 5: Rob, I don't.
Speaker 8: Know he is.
Speaker 3: He is, just I mean it is. And think about
Speaker 3: his old music, right, I mean, oh, I mean you
Speaker 3: know I could listen to it. I thought I thought
Speaker 3: it was like masterful, some of it was masterful. And
Speaker 3: now you look at him and you're like, he is
Speaker 3: really suffering. My son was upstairs, he was working out
Speaker 3: and he was listening to I can't remember. The song
Speaker 3: was like building They're building tunnels up underwall.
Speaker 4: Nia Men.
Speaker 3: I noticed Nigga here with that ship, like he's sick.
Speaker 3: I think he.
Speaker 7: I think he is exactly who he has always been.
Speaker 3: I think so. I think.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying that. I'm not negating any of that.
Speaker 4: I'm not.
Speaker 7: I'm not I'm not negating any of that. I'm just
Speaker 7: saying just in my very limited view of him. And
Speaker 7: as I've always said this, before he started all this
Speaker 7: stupid Trump ship, you know when people always ask me,
Speaker 7: because you know, we work with each other very early,
Speaker 7: you know, on in his career, before you know, he
Speaker 7: was Kanye Kanye. And the thing that I've been always
Speaker 7: telling people for years, you know, when people talk about
Speaker 7: the old Kanye versus the new Kanye, the thing I
Speaker 7: would always say is, like, listen, man, Kanye is the
Speaker 7: same dude he has always been. It's just now he
Speaker 7: has much more power, influence, and a bigger platform to
Speaker 7: be who he is. He's just become more of who
Speaker 7: he already was. So by my estimation, there is no
Speaker 7: old Kanye, New Kanye. It's the same dude, just with
Speaker 7: much more resources, you know, at his disposal Kanye.
Speaker 8: Sick Kanye though I don't know what.
Speaker 2: Kanye then, yeah, facts.
Speaker 3: He's gotta be sick. I mean if you saw that
Speaker 3: that I don't know what campaign speech whatever was, I mean,
Speaker 3: someone is such Yeah, he was in such pain. I
Speaker 3: was like, oh my gosh, it's interest.
Speaker 9: In the way it's resulting in this this racial thing.
Speaker 9: Because even in that speech, the way he was treating
Speaker 9: that black girl versus that it.
Speaker 3: Was, I just couldnt believe that he's, well, that's not
Speaker 3: I don't Yeah, I believe he's I think, just don't believe.
Speaker 4: I don't get into it. Is it well sick.
Speaker 7: You don't have to believe that he's well, just believe
Speaker 7: that he's Kanye.
Speaker 8: I believe that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what the fuck it is.
Speaker 7: And like, we ain't got time for this silly shit now, bro,
Speaker 7: Like come on, man, no, we are we are.
Speaker 3: Less than one hundred days from the election, and and
Speaker 3: and we we I think as a community desperately need
Speaker 3: Joe Biden. Even though he may be an imperfect candidate,
Speaker 3: we need him to win. And someone even you know,
Speaker 3: working against that, even sick is problematic.
Speaker 8: We look at the way we came together on that.
Speaker 8: That was beautiful.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I'm about to get here and argue with
Speaker 4: my people.
Speaker 9: No, that's that's how funny be on the view. I
Speaker 9: ain't gonna argue with what'll be on TV.
Speaker 4: We'll do it, I know, I know, take it to
Speaker 4: the group chat.
Speaker 2: I will say that. Uh it's it's before we let
Speaker 2: you go. It's really endearing to watch you guys via
Speaker 2: your social media platforms during game night. I'm very envious
Speaker 2: these monopoly games, like for real, Like it's my dream.
Speaker 2: I I live with a bunch of people who believe
Speaker 2: in going to bed at like nine pm. Oh they
Speaker 2: go to they go to bed early, they wake up
Speaker 2: at five in the morning and meditating all that stuff.
Speaker 5: And you know, like I just want one.
Speaker 2: I want one good game night where I can flip
Speaker 2: over the monopoly table if I'm losing.
Speaker 8: Like is that what the family? Or is that what?
Speaker 5: Ye whatever?
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 5: We tried game nights, but you know everyone's.
Speaker 3: At your house. No, we we get we get a
Speaker 3: little crazy. We're competitive by nature competitive everybody. My father
Speaker 3: I posted yesterday we had a game night with my father.
Speaker 3: He started trash talking about ten minutes is a game.
Speaker 3: I was like, you haven't played Clue in a minute?
Speaker 3: Are you trash talking? He's like, yeah, yeah, keep on playing,
Speaker 3: keep on playing. It's just it's just kind of a
Speaker 3: family dynamic that we have. Oh we play Clue. Let
Speaker 3: me just just ignorant. But it's been such a wonderful
Speaker 3: thing for us because you know, Manny usually leaves very
Speaker 3: early in the morning to see patients. I usually leave early.
Speaker 3: The kids are you know, they're athletes, so they're they're
Speaker 3: constantly running. This has been the first time in years.
Speaker 3: The one silber lining for us is that we are
Speaker 3: home together, and we've been home together for months and uh,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, thank you, he's cut, he's cute. I know,
Speaker 3: it's so ridiculous, those two, but I I love that we,
Speaker 3: you know, we've all been able to spend that time together.
Speaker 3: And like, the kids are serious about family game Night.
Speaker 3: They're like, Thursday night is family get Like they decide
Speaker 3: when we're going to play, and they decide what we're
Speaker 3: going to play.
Speaker 8: The top three games because we need some new suggestions.
Speaker 3: For this and I would say probably it's a toss
Speaker 3: up between Pictionary and you.
Speaker 4: Know, about to say.
Speaker 7: Tules were stacking. The only thing is you got to stack.
Speaker 7: The only thing is you stacked with the same sweet.
Speaker 7: So if it's a draw too, I can stack a
Speaker 7: draw to, but you can't put a draw.
Speaker 4: Four on top of draw to it.
Speaker 5: I go get it with it.
Speaker 3: Draws the same.
Speaker 4: That you use this niggas that used to read with
Speaker 4: their fingers under the word.
Speaker 3: The family game night.
Speaker 4: It's good.
Speaker 6: That one.
Speaker 4: That's good for the coffee table book.
Speaker 2: What is the one thing that you've adjusted to since
Speaker 2: March or during the quarantine that you haven't before that
Speaker 2: you're that's now part of your regular repertoire.
Speaker 3: I've started I've always cooked it, but I cookle up more.
Speaker 3: And I will say I started walking and running again.
Speaker 3: You know, remember I said I used was training for
Speaker 3: a marathon when I when I met my husband in church.
Speaker 3: It's been a long time since I. I have done
Speaker 3: it consistently, and I find that, you know, the one
Speaker 3: thing that kind of does give me a little self
Speaker 3: care is to try to exercise a little bit a little.
Speaker 3: I don't like to sweat that much, honestly, but running
Speaker 3: or walking a couple of miles a day, it's uh,
Speaker 3: it feels that feels good, and it's something that I
Speaker 3: just almost didn't make the time for before. Didn't just
Speaker 3: I don't know, I didn't I stop doing that. So
Speaker 3: I would say that that's different for me a little
Speaker 3: bit of what it's fantastic. It's probably award winning if
Speaker 3: I entered it into something.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about it.
Speaker 15: Yes, uh shoulder, Yeah, you can sit well, and I don't.
Speaker 3: I certainly can make that everybody that's my usually Thanksgiving
Speaker 3: and Christmas, I throw that, you know, into the mix,
Speaker 3: but I will make it especially for you.
Speaker 9: Okay, Well, Sonny, just ask you a quick technical question. Way,
Speaker 9: y'all are taping the view, so are you you're still
Speaker 9: at They just.
Speaker 8: Gave y'all one background.
Speaker 3: I know they just looked it up, didn't they, Because
Speaker 3: it wasn't always like that, like y'ating we're still at home.
Speaker 3: What they did was when they realized that we would
Speaker 3: we would be doing this all season and probably likely
Speaker 3: into next season as well, they brought equipment into our homes.
Speaker 3: I mean, people had has Mad suits on. It was
Speaker 3: really impressive. And ABC basically set trucks with equipment and
Speaker 3: people and has Mad suits to everyone's home. And no,
Speaker 3: they put them in, like they built these kind of
Speaker 3: mini studios and each host home and so we have
Speaker 3: a big screen behind us. It's not a green screen,
Speaker 3: it's actually a huge monitor that that we have a
Speaker 3: picture of where we generally the background of where we
Speaker 3: generally sit on the show.
Speaker 12: It's so, and then we have our lighting, and I
Speaker 12: mean they basically made sure that we could continue doing
Speaker 12: the show remotely.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's been a couple of little glitches
Speaker 3: because it's hard because you don't want to speak over
Speaker 3: each other, and so it's it's a little bit difficult.
Speaker 3: But we do not have monitors. We have prompter. Now
Speaker 3: we have feedback where we can see each other. The
Speaker 3: first month we didn't have that and then it just
Speaker 3: they came in fixed it. And you know, we interestingly enough,
Speaker 3: we used to be you know, sort of like number one,
Speaker 3: but they would break out syndicated and non syndicated, and
Speaker 3: now we're number one across the board in all of
Speaker 3: daytime TV.
Speaker 8: And imagine this week.
Speaker 3: I know everyone's like, I can't believe you on vacation,
Speaker 3: but I think it's because we're we are at our
Speaker 3: best when we are just talking about the issues, even
Speaker 3: the uncomfortable Ones. Yes, that's where we're at our best.
Speaker 3: That's when people are at their best when they when
Speaker 3: they talk.
Speaker 9: Sonny, I have to thank you because and I'm gonna
Speaker 9: thank you from all the people that I know that
Speaker 9: watch every day, from my dad to my best friend Fadija,
Speaker 9: because although I know it's a heavyweight, you carry it
Speaker 9: so classy and so beautifully.
Speaker 3: And I just really saying that.
Speaker 8: As I really appreciate you.
Speaker 9: I told you this at a mere DJ to Oscar
Speaker 9: party Ones, and I wanted to say something to you,
Speaker 9: and I walked up to you and I was like,
Speaker 9: I want.
Speaker 8: You to know you and I appreciate you because we do.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. One quick thing I will tell
Speaker 3: you is that I was diagnosed with diverticulitis, stress induced diverticulitis,
Speaker 3: which is like an information of the intestines and stuff.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I was.
Speaker 5: I was.
Speaker 3: I got really sick last last season, and last season
Speaker 3: was a tumultuous season for us. I lost like twenty pounds.
Speaker 3: I couldn't eat everything I ate BYuT of my stomach.
Speaker 3: So I went to the GI doctor and he said
Speaker 3: he usually sees that in what I have in seventy
Speaker 3: plus year old women and then seventy plus and he said,
Speaker 3: but it's stress induced. Are you under an extraordinary amount
Speaker 3: of stress? And I was like, no, I'm not. I'm fine.
Speaker 4: I'm only on the number one talk show stress, I argue.
Speaker 3: No stress.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I realized that it is a heavyweight because I attribute
Speaker 3: that to the fact that there are things sometimes that
Speaker 3: I would like to say. And I'm sure all of
Speaker 3: you understand this. There are things that I would sometimes
Speaker 3: like to say that will result in my losing that platform,
Speaker 3: and I think it's too important of a platform to
Speaker 3: lose for our community, and so I do not say
Speaker 3: those things. But when you internalize and internalize, you could
Speaker 3: end up with stress induced but diverticulitis. So I say
Speaker 3: that as an example because I really think it's important.
Speaker 3: If you're not on television token to three million people,
Speaker 3: you really have to talk it out right. You've got
Speaker 3: to get all of that stuff out. And I think
Speaker 3: now it's more important than ever to do that, not censoring.
Speaker 3: I'm not censoring myself, but I'm trying to keep it
Speaker 3: classy at all times.
Speaker 7: Well, Sonny, I will cordially invite you to the Quest
Speaker 7: Love supreme group chat where you can say all the problematic,
Speaker 7: to say.
Speaker 4: All you can't say for the white people. It's like therapy.
Speaker 4: It's like therapy. It's like therapy. Hey, group chat is
Speaker 4: the new social media.
Speaker 9: So we're gonna need to do a trade do I'm
Speaker 9: gonna need to get get into that good.
Speaker 8: Lights geting a loud group chat.
Speaker 9: She in with all her fling that's good Light.
Speaker 3: The women she named, I was like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: I forgot to say Jamel Jamel Hill's loud.
Speaker 4: She don't like y'all about the same. Y'all got the
Speaker 4: paper bag?
Speaker 5: Yeah we can't.
Speaker 3: We got, we got. It was Jeorge j Alicia Alicia Garza.
Speaker 9: My girl from CBS assistant for a girl sometimes that
Speaker 9: what's her name?
Speaker 8: She is so sharp with the short haircut. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we we do. We do. We keep. And what's
Speaker 3: great is sometimes when they see me on the show
Speaker 3: and they see that, I'm really, you know, drinking my
Speaker 3: tea because I'm like, if I get in to this
Speaker 3: last week like this last week, it was like, yeah, job,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna lose my job. I can't lose your job,
Speaker 3: right there?
Speaker 5: Can?
Speaker 3: I ask you?
Speaker 5: Is it possible. Is there a line to be crossed
Speaker 5: on the view?
Speaker 2: Ros o'donald said directly on the show, not like things discovered.
Speaker 13: I believe there are lines, and I always a line
Speaker 13: for black people, well, and always there's a line for everybody.
Speaker 4: I don't have a question.
Speaker 16: Since we're talking about this in this time that we're
Speaker 16: in right now, where seemingly everybody has an opinion, we're
Speaker 16: all encouraged to speak, speak up and speak out at
Speaker 16: this point, certainly, And but on the other side of
Speaker 16: the coin, you say the smallest thing wrong, your job
Speaker 16: is at risk, your life is at risk, everything. So
Speaker 16: how do you navigate that, especially since it's your job
Speaker 16: to speak your mind in front of so many people
Speaker 16: every day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I try to navigate it very carefully while
Speaker 3: being authentic. Becau See, I don't really believe in what
Speaker 3: people are calling cancel culture. I don't really believe that
Speaker 3: that is that. I think it's accountability culture. You don't
Speaker 3: get canceled just for giving your opinion. You don't get
Speaker 3: canceled for, you know, having an opinion that's different. You
Speaker 3: get held accountable though, for saying things that are racist,
Speaker 3: for saying things that are misogynistic you could get and
Speaker 3: doubling down on them and not apologizing you can get
Speaker 3: held accountable for those things. So I kind of disagree
Speaker 3: with this. There is oh, there's a cancel culture for
Speaker 3: giving your opinion. No, I think people are, for the
Speaker 3: first time in a long time, being held accountable for
Speaker 3: their actions. But because of my platform, I am very
Speaker 3: careful about what I say, making sure there's fact based
Speaker 3: and how I say it, because I also think there's
Speaker 3: something to be said about dealing with your colleagues gracefully
Speaker 3: and respectfully so that you can go to battle with
Speaker 3: those same people the next day without hurt feelings and
Speaker 3: things like that, and without people feeling personally attacked, feeling
Speaker 3: like they've been disrespected just because of their view right.
Speaker 3: So I think it's more that it's that people are
Speaker 3: now finally being held accountable for saying the quiet part
Speaker 3: out loud and other people saying I don't like that.
Speaker 3: You know that that's racist or that's sexist, or that's this,
Speaker 3: and if the person rather than say, you know what,
Speaker 3: teach me, what do you mean by that? Why do
Speaker 3: you take it that way, the person's like, no, it's
Speaker 3: not and yeah, blah, blah blah. That's different. I think
Speaker 3: that's I think that's someone that can't learn. That's just
Speaker 3: my take.
Speaker 4: I don't know. Okay, don't you disagree.
Speaker 3: It's fine you disagree.
Speaker 4: No no, no, no, no, no, I don't. I don't
Speaker 4: think I necessarily disagree with you.
Speaker 7: I just think it's you know, when we talk about, like,
Speaker 7: you know what cancel culture is, because I mean, because, right,
Speaker 7: I mean essentially what you're saying is like, well, yeah,
Speaker 7: I mean, no one gets canceled. They just you know,
Speaker 7: you might lose some money and you go away for
Speaker 7: a little while and then you just come back and rebrand, right,
Speaker 7: But you're being.
Speaker 3: Held accountable on that particular thing that you did.
Speaker 4: You say, you're being held accountable.
Speaker 7: But I guess the part for me is that, you know,
Speaker 7: a big part for me is like there's never like
Speaker 7: when we're like now in the era that we're in
Speaker 7: where we're talking about just rebuilding everything, like we're talking about,
Speaker 7: you know, defunding the police and abolishing prison like all
Speaker 7: these programming, right, So there's always I'm like, I'm with it,
Speaker 7: like we can let's bot police, nigga, let's get it on.
Speaker 7: But there's always there's never a discussion about what redemption
Speaker 7: looks like. And so my thing is that you know
Speaker 7: what I mean, Like, so at what point, you know
Speaker 7: my problem with you know, what people call is cancel culture.
Speaker 7: If you cancel someone, they no longer have an incentive
Speaker 7: to change, if you if cancel culture, or if holding
Speaker 7: someone accountable means we like we were just joking about
Speaker 7: you losing your job. If you've lost your job, then
Speaker 7: at that point it's like, well fuck it, Like you know,
Speaker 7: I don't already lost my job, lost my name Google
Speaker 7: you Google search me, and everybody talk.
Speaker 4: This is what defines me now, so hell, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean.
Speaker 7: So I think that's the part that I think that
Speaker 7: I think gets missed, you know what I mean? And
Speaker 7: particularly now you know, I think a big problem that,
Speaker 7: a point that I think is missed is that the
Speaker 7: audience today.
Speaker 4: Versus someone you know, twenty years ago, whatever.
Speaker 7: We have the high mind of social media at our
Speaker 7: disposal to help us break down very very complex concepts.
Speaker 7: So you know, if you were you know, twenty years ago, right,
Speaker 7: if you were a person that was assaulted or you
Speaker 7: you know, had questions about your sexuality or like how
Speaker 7: we were talking earlier about consent or whatever.
Speaker 4: I mean, who could you really talk to?
Speaker 7: I mean, you could maybe talk to your parents, You
Speaker 7: could maybe talk to you know, a friend maybe you
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying, just you know.
Speaker 8: Out there and everybody can chime in.
Speaker 7: Me get right now, like now, if you have questions,
Speaker 7: but whatever, you have world class counselors, psychologists, teachers, you
Speaker 7: know at your disposal, who have you know, who create
Speaker 7: and release content on their platforms daily to help you
Speaker 7: parse all of this information. So I think it's unfair
Speaker 7: to judge people now. I think it's unfair to litigate
Speaker 7: the present or litigate the past current understanding of the present,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean. And so when I see
Speaker 7: a lot of these things that happen when people just
Speaker 7: you know, when people just be saying some old dumb
Speaker 7: shit and they wouldever you know, to your point about educating.
Speaker 4: I don't ever see like education happen.
Speaker 7: It's always the first the first thing I see is
Speaker 7: always yeah, it's like get this now, they got to go,
Speaker 7: they counsel they've done, they say that, and there's never
Speaker 7: any room for education.
Speaker 3: Well, and that's why I refer to those that double
Speaker 3: down because I've seen situations where someone's held accountable and
Speaker 3: say ah ah, that was wrong. And then you have
Speaker 3: someone that says, you know what, I've met with this
Speaker 3: person and that person and I was wrong. I get it,
Speaker 3: and I get it now. See I believe in reject shin.
Speaker 3: So I don't I don't think that person loses their job.
Speaker 5: I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't agree with that. But the person that doubles down,
Speaker 3: and it's like, whatever, right, I mean, what do you
Speaker 3: do with that? Not gonna?
Speaker 4: Well you do?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean.
Speaker 4: Downtown, Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 8: About think about he's double down And I was just like.
Speaker 4: Wow, trip n.
Speaker 5: We we thank you for doing the show and and
Speaker 5: thank you for fighting a good fight.
Speaker 2: And you know we we feel your stress every episode.
Speaker 3: Thank you for thank you for feeling with me and
Speaker 3: having me. Y'all are great.
Speaker 8: This was wonderful and everybody get what I am the
Speaker 8: truth that memo.
Speaker 7: When the open back up, when the world open back up,
Speaker 7: I'm coming for a nice slice of that. I need
Speaker 7: ho hold, I need that. Uh, what's I need that? Comes?
Speaker 4: Yellow Rice? Yeah?
Speaker 9: I hate over, I hate the missions the SLA. Can
Speaker 9: you also find out why black women get fibrys. I'm sorry,
Speaker 9: it's in the book. Everybody read the books.
Speaker 8: She has them.
Speaker 3: But I'm just saying, yes, yes, there are there studies
Speaker 3: being done, but we're gonna talk about that.
Speaker 8: Thank you, thank you. I'm with you in the struggle.
Speaker 5: We be happy. Yeah, Sugar Steve, I'm paid, Bill and fine,
Speaker 5: take a love. This is quest Love, This is Quest
Speaker 5: Love Supreme, and we will see you on the next program.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much.
Speaker 15: Hmm.
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