Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic Cipher. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Ramsey's job.
Speaker 2: He is Ramsey's job. I am honored and privileged to
Speaker 2: work with him. I am q war. But I need
Speaker 2: to say that because I'm pretty lucky to, you know,
Speaker 2: share the airways with this gentleman as often as I'm
Speaker 2: allowed to so, And that is just thought I would
Speaker 2: say that out loud.
Speaker 1: I appreciate, thank you. I feel the same way. But
Speaker 1: for you listening to us, we have another good show
Speaker 1: in store for you today, not as heavy as some
Speaker 1: that's a good thing around here, and so stick around.
Speaker 1: We have a lot to talk about. We are going
Speaker 1: to be getting you caught up on some stories in
Speaker 1: the news. We're just gonna kind of do some quick
Speaker 1: hits because oftentimes on the show we end up complaining
Speaker 1: about the lack of time and the plethora of stories
Speaker 1: that are relevant to black and brown people and marginalized
Speaker 1: people in this country. And so we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: some of the bigger stories that have been in the
Speaker 1: news cycle. We're also going to spend some time discussing
Speaker 1: ways that white supremacy harms white people.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might think it's not your problem, but it
Speaker 1: is White supremacy is not good for anybody. No supremacy
Speaker 1: is good for anybody. We're all here together, okay, So
Speaker 1: we're definitely going to spend some time talking about that.
Speaker 1: I do want to welcome a new sponsor to the show.
Speaker 1: You'll hear a bit more about them a little later.
Speaker 1: But Thenknown Unknown Fashion House is joining our list of
Speaker 1: sponsors for the show, so we want to salute them,
Speaker 1: and again we hear a bit more about them later
Speaker 1: on today. But first and foremost, let's discuss some ebony excellence,
Speaker 1: shall we wi shall So this week's Ebny Excellence is
Speaker 1: sponsored by Hip Hop Weekly Media, and I'll be reading
Speaker 1: from that grapejuice dot net all right. Just weeks after
Speaker 1: making headlines for crushing King of Rock and Roll Elvis
Speaker 1: Presley's record for most gold certified songs among male vocalist,
Speaker 1: Chris Brown has logged in the Recording Industry Association of
Speaker 1: America's history books for planting R and B's flag and
Speaker 1: yet another uncharted territory. Believe it or not, only eight
Speaker 1: acts in the history of recorded music can boast having
Speaker 1: scored twenty or more multi platinum singles in America over
Speaker 1: their careers. The RIA qualifies multi platinum as two million
Speaker 1: or more sold in the United States and writing. Chris,
Speaker 1: with exactly twenty to his credit, is the only male
Speaker 1: singer in the group. Among all acts, his placement follows
Speaker 1: Lil Wayne, Beyonce, Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Eminem Drake, and Rihanna.
Speaker 1: This means that he unseated Elvis, I think in the
Speaker 1: third category now, which I think is special because Elvis,
Speaker 1: for many of you who don't know this, became popular
Speaker 1: for performing black music, and for Elvis to be the
Speaker 1: king of rock and roll has often been considered an
Speaker 1: affront or a whitewashing of what is indeed black history.
Speaker 1: You know. That's not to say that he wasn't insanely
Speaker 1: popular or anything like that, but that's like, that's like
Speaker 1: calling Eminem the King of.
Speaker 2: Rapid not to say that he wasn't talented exactly, he.
Speaker 1: Was popular talented, That's the word I was trying to say.
Speaker 1: So absolutely so, this is something that feels definitely like
Speaker 1: a qualifies for ebony excellence. So out to Chris bra
Speaker 1: for Breezy. All right, let's get to the news. All right,
Speaker 1: Like I said, it's not all heavy stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a it's an entertaining space that we're in
Speaker 2: sometimes sometimes, you know, and this is definitely one of
Speaker 2: those weeks.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, first and foremost Fox News. Fox News had
Speaker 1: to settle with dominion voting systems for seven hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty seven and a half million dollars, and I.
Speaker 2: You had something, I have plenty I want you to finish.
Speaker 1: So you know, in the second half of the show,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how white supremacy affects white people. Right,
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, here's a great example
Speaker 1: right here. Fox has occupied the far right, conservative me
Speaker 1: media facet of this country. There's some others, but they're
Speaker 1: much much smaller than Fox. And ever since Obama was
Speaker 1: elected to office, Fox has moved further right. Now, to
Speaker 1: anybody that can see with their eyes here with their
Speaker 1: ears and has a thinking brain, we can see that
Speaker 1: Fox was responding to a facet of this country, or
Speaker 1: vice versa, that was responded to Obama's blackness, right, not Obama's.
Speaker 2: Democratic Party routes, not Obama's politics.
Speaker 1: Politics, that's the word I'm trying to say. So that
Speaker 1: has culminated in this lawsuit is a direct lineage there
Speaker 1: right now. Again, to folks looking at this, they're just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well Fox News had some bad information, they got held accountable, whatever,
Speaker 1: That's not what we're talking about here. Indeed, Fox News
Speaker 1: knowingly went on the air with stuff that wasn't credible.
Speaker 1: They pushed lies about this company, and they push lies
Speaker 1: about the election.
Speaker 2: Now ramses settling. It's not an admission of guilt.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up, because here's what would
Speaker 1: have happened. Here's how far gone Fox viewers are now.
Speaker 1: Fox people that watch Fox are never gonna watch Civic
Speaker 1: Cipher are never going to listen to Civic Cipher.
Speaker 2: And if they do, they're going to jump into comments
Speaker 2: and trash us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's okay. Listen, man, we pulled from reputable
Speaker 1: sources here best you can do, right, and also we
Speaker 1: subscribe to the actual reality, actual shared reality that it
Speaker 1: includes all of the facts. But I'm glad you brought
Speaker 1: that up. So here's what happens no matter what. Here's
Speaker 1: here's the effects of white supremacy on white people. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're in this example. Will say that a huge base
Speaker 1: of Fox's viewership is white folks. Oftentimes their male oftentimes.
Speaker 2: Conservative so and then hyperconservative black folks benefit from But
Speaker 2: that's of such a tiny number, very very tiny. I'm
Speaker 2: just relative to the audience. It's because it's beneficial to
Speaker 2: them in some way, not even personal actually believe indeed
Speaker 2: the things that are being said.
Speaker 1: So here's what happens. Dominion biles a suit against Fox News,
Speaker 1: and they have all the receipts as we now know.
Speaker 1: Anybody that doesn't watch Fox News knows this. Anybody that
Speaker 1: does watch Fox News has no idea because Fox hasn't
Speaker 1: even mentioned this. Right, Dominion has all the receipts that
Speaker 1: shows that Fox knew that what they were saying was false,
Speaker 1: went on the air with it anyway because they didn't
Speaker 1: want to lose their viewership. Right, So they're tangled in.
Speaker 1: It's like a snake eating its own tail. Right. So,
Speaker 1: had that trial played out, then Fox viewers would have assumed,
Speaker 1: in my estimation, the same way they assumed when all
Speaker 1: of the court cases that Donald Trump was involved in
Speaker 1: during the election, lie stuff that he was trying to
Speaker 1: get off, that all of these judges are somehow corrupt
Speaker 1: and they're liberal, they're woke, and all this sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and that Fox would have not got a fair trial there.
Speaker 1: It's political, it's a witch hunt, blah blah blah. So
Speaker 1: had they gone to court and had to pay as
Speaker 1: a result of that, that's what their viewers would have
Speaker 1: taken from it. Fox. However, settling that splits the difference.
Speaker 1: So they don't have to pay one point six, which
Speaker 1: is what they were being sued for, but critically they
Speaker 1: have to pay something, and that paying of something is
Speaker 1: an admission. Now, if it was a dollar, if it
Speaker 1: was five million dollars something, that was just like, you know,
Speaker 1: not really newsworthy.
Speaker 2: It's seven hundred eighty seven million.
Speaker 1: Dollars and a half. Don't forget that extra five hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: So that is not nothing. That's called consequences. Now, is
Speaker 1: it what we would have liked to have seen.
Speaker 2: But we did? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well that's that.
Speaker 2: I'm said, that's right, because listen, man, what can we
Speaker 2: do for y'all to not take all those receipts and
Speaker 2: show them the people over three quarters of a billion?
Speaker 1: Run it all right? Run that?
Speaker 2: So, yeah, man, that is the settlement. The settlement amount
Speaker 2: says more than the receipts would have sure, because you're
Speaker 2: absolutely right. Their base, which has shown that they cannot
Speaker 2: be shaken, would have called it all nonsense, all of
Speaker 2: which hunt all made up, all fakeness exactly.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to get to their base. You hang on,
Speaker 1: So watch this. What we would have wanted I think
Speaker 1: me and Q are people that are kind of in
Speaker 1: the media space. You know, we would have wanted some
Speaker 1: accountability because it's not right to outlight lie to people
Speaker 1: for ratings. That's not the reason that we're in this space.
Speaker 1: I know that much. You know, when we tell hard truths,
Speaker 1: we do it. We'd have to eat crow, We have
Speaker 1: to apologize if we make a mistake on the show.
Speaker 1: We come on the next week and we say it
Speaker 1: on the same show with the same energy that officer
Speaker 1: was not wrong officer and read his name. You know,
Speaker 1: we've done that on the show, right. So it stands
Speaker 1: the reason that at least we would hold other journalists
Speaker 1: to that same standard. So we would have hoped that
Speaker 1: this would have sank that shit, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: or change the culture or whatever. We don't mind if
Speaker 1: you're a conservative, but don't lie and don't fear monger. Right,
Speaker 1: you can have your views, you can have your beliefs.
Speaker 1: But if they're based in a shared reality, then there's
Speaker 1: the potential to make progress. If they are not, then
Speaker 1: you are making it harder for us and for your
Speaker 1: white conservative viewer base, and they just don't know it
Speaker 1: yet because you're interested in short term profit. But here's
Speaker 1: another little silver lining in addition to that settlement amount.
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson was fired. Now I mentioned that we would
Speaker 1: talk about their base, right, Fox's base. Guess what they
Speaker 1: started calling Fox News after Tucker Carlson was fired woke.
Speaker 1: It's it's you you never can win with. And I
Speaker 1: saw this in a mad magazine one time. They said,
Speaker 1: you can't ever win with a bigot, right, they will.
Speaker 1: They will bend reality like Neo and the Matrix. It's
Speaker 1: the wildest thing. So that's intense, mad magazine. Fox being
Speaker 1: woke isn't that crazy. So let's let's go. So Tucker Carlson,
Speaker 1: for those that don't know, is a He's the most
Speaker 1: popular extreme right media personality.
Speaker 2: Are you going to leave out white supremacist? Know? I
Speaker 2: was waiting for you to throw that.
Speaker 1: He is.
Speaker 2: I per bigoted?
Speaker 1: Yeah, very very like if you want to, if you
Speaker 1: if you were in the mood to get angry.
Speaker 2: Extreme, maga, sensationalist.
Speaker 1: But I will say this, in his time slot, Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson has been number one the vast majority of the
Speaker 1: time vast It would be a rare, rare, instant instance
Speaker 1: where he would be number two. Now, Tucker Carlson, just
Speaker 1: so you know, existed in a time slot and in
Speaker 1: a space where if you take the entire news cable
Speaker 1: news media landscape and you look at everything that's out there,
Speaker 1: you have some media companies that lean a little bit
Speaker 1: more left, some of course, lean a little bit right,
Speaker 1: and then you have some that are more or less
Speaker 1: kind of center. In politically speaking, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of media companies that lean left, couple that are centered,
Speaker 1: and really it's just Fox on the right. And so
Speaker 1: if you take the country's population viewing population, okay, and
Speaker 1: you assume a fifty to fifty split, which isn't true,
Speaker 1: but you assume a fifty to fifty split, fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the people are going to consume media news media
Speaker 1: that is conservative leaning. Fifty percent is going to consume
Speaker 1: media that is what I say, conservative leaning, and then
Speaker 1: liberal leaning right. You have to then split the fifty
Speaker 1: percent that's leaning liberal among six news channels news companies,
Speaker 1: and then the other fifty percent you give it all
Speaker 1: the Fox. And so this is kind of the phenomenon
Speaker 1: that has allowed Tucker, Carlson and Fox to take up
Speaker 1: such so much of the oxygen in that space.
Speaker 2: That paints a very synonymous picture with the way that
Speaker 2: they vote as well the way that they show up
Speaker 2: right there. They are a monolith. They do show up
Speaker 2: with a singular voice representing a singular cause in mass
Speaker 2: and we are splintered in every direction that you can imagine,
Speaker 2: kind of cannibalizing each other over minuscule issues with very
Speaker 2: very low impact, while they, you know, swarm behind their
Speaker 2: movement and collectively support it. That part is kind of admirable.
Speaker 1: They are definitely organized, and they have no problem exploiting
Speaker 1: the gaps and there's no shame, and there is no
Speaker 1: problem on their end with cheating, rewriting the rules and
Speaker 1: real time moving the goalpost, anything.
Speaker 2: Like that would depend in that part, and I want a.
Speaker 1: Blind eye to it. No, let's do it now, come on.
Speaker 2: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was recently discovered to be
Speaker 2: accepting gifts or money things that would appear to be
Speaker 2: bribes from hyper wealthy friends of his. Once upon a
Speaker 2: time in US history, like when we were teenagers, that
Speaker 2: would have been like lead the news cycle scandal, Like
Speaker 2: a Supreme Court justice accepting gifts would have really like
Speaker 2: flip the country on its head, and people it would
Speaker 2: have been, you know, blown away. You know, it didn't
Speaker 2: even make the ticker. Once upon a time, someone saying
Speaker 2: just grab them by the you guys know the rest
Speaker 2: would have instantly disqualified them from consideration to sit in
Speaker 2: the highest seat in this land. That video came out
Speaker 2: during his campaign, not after he was present anyone, and
Speaker 2: then he won. Things like that would have caused his
Speaker 2: own party to insist that he stepped down. You got
Speaker 2: to resign, man, This is going to make us look
Speaker 2: too bad our country. There's a such thing as reaching
Speaker 2: new heights. And then there's what's happened to us so
Speaker 2: divided in extreme and our political beliefs that a very
Speaker 2: very large chunk of our humanity has just dissolved. You
Speaker 2: are with us or against us. There is no nuance,
Speaker 2: There is no middle. So you said that there's some
Speaker 2: that are center. They're right, it's just they're so far.
Speaker 2: Fox are so far right that normal rights seems center. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it pulls the left more towards the right too. Yeah. Weird,
Speaker 2: it's it's what we're going through with our current administration.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: All these things that we thought would happen for people
Speaker 2: who look faint, love, pray, believe like us didn't happen
Speaker 2: because even the quote unquote left have veered right to center.
Speaker 1: So now, uh, this is a great aperture into the
Speaker 1: effects of white supremacy on white people, because indeed, Fox
Speaker 1: News has lied to their audience. Fox News under reports
Speaker 1: stories that they need to know about and or over
Speaker 1: represents things that excite them right under the guise of
Speaker 1: being a news or a journalistic you know, enterprise or
Speaker 1: something like that, and they suffer as a result of it.
Speaker 1: And I think it's illustrated in their response to the
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson firing because again them calling Fox woke. You know,
Speaker 1: woke is like this bad word on the right. We've
Speaker 1: talked about this on the show before, and strangely enough,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, woke is what we would consider just
Speaker 1: kind of center left, and Fox News being called woke
Speaker 1: goes to show you just how skewed these people's perception
Speaker 1: of reality has become so again the effects of white supremacy,
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily always benefit all white people all the time. Now,
Speaker 1: some of you could make an argument that some of
Speaker 1: this is capitalism. We often make that argument here, but
Speaker 1: I think that this is kind of poking its head
Speaker 1: here and there. So let's move on to some other stories.
Speaker 1: Kim Potter, the officer convicted of killing Dante Wright, was
Speaker 1: released from prison after serving sixteen months of a two
Speaker 1: year sentence.
Speaker 2: The officer convicted, yeah, of killing Dante's dead, correct, Yeah,
Speaker 2: He's dead forever. And then the jury said, yes, she
Speaker 2: did it and she was wrong, yep. And then she
Speaker 2: served sixteen months in.
Speaker 1: Prison, and then she's serving arrest on house arrest. She's
Speaker 1: at home right now. I mean, we don't even have
Speaker 1: to go in. You know exactly how we feel about that.
Speaker 1: That can just be the headline. Let's move on something
Speaker 1: something that you do need to know about. President Biden
Speaker 1: formally announced his candidacy for president. He's seeking a second term. Terrifying,
Speaker 1: and so it looks like it's going to be him
Speaker 1: versus Donald Trump again, because terrify, These are the best
Speaker 1: two man. Listen terrifying. Now now Trump is under he's
Speaker 1: he has to go to court for a rape trial
Speaker 1: now too. That's that was awesome in the news this week,
Speaker 1: not just the the finance stuff. What is what is
Speaker 1: that thing that start mean Daniels stuff. He's also has
Speaker 1: like a rape trial he's dealing with too, And he's
Speaker 1: just in the news so much for going to court
Speaker 1: that it didn't even make headlines. But look it up
Speaker 1: at Sarah Promis and then little footnote just because of time,
Speaker 1: not because it's an actual footnote. Phil Jackson, Phil Jackson
Speaker 1: is give folks a brief overview of Phil Jackson.
Speaker 2: Phil Jackson, for those of you who are not sports fans,
Speaker 2: was the coach of the Michael Jordan era Chicago Bulls
Speaker 2: and then the Shaq and Kobe era Los Angeles Lakers.
Speaker 2: One of the most one of the winningest coaches in
Speaker 2: the history of sports, and all of his fame, wealth,
Speaker 2: and notoriety is tied directly to the success of historically
Speaker 2: talented black men that Phil Jackson.
Speaker 1: He said that he hasn't watched an NBA game since
Speaker 1: twenty twenty because of BLM logos and slogans, and he
Speaker 1: thinks games shouldn't be political. Now, I do want to
Speaker 1: mention that you and I have a much longer conversation
Speaker 1: about Phil Jackson that can be found on the Black
Speaker 1: Information Network Daily podcast. I implore you to check it out,
Speaker 1: and you can find it on any podcast app and
Speaker 1: it should be one of the recent episodes, depending on
Speaker 1: when you're hearing this. But suffice it to say for
Speaker 1: now that non black people telling Black people how to
Speaker 1: protest is a slap in the face. Non black people
Speaker 1: telling Black people how long change should take is a
Speaker 1: slap in the face. Shout out to James Baldwin for
Speaker 1: educating us the great ancestor that he is. And I
Speaker 1: think that it bears mentioning that a person who can
Speaker 1: be this close to Black people for such a long
Speaker 1: time for him to still be able to harbor feelings
Speaker 1: like this. This, This is the sort of person that
Speaker 1: looks at a Colin Kaepernick and says he shouldn't be
Speaker 1: doing that here, not accounting for the fact that Kaepernick
Speaker 1: and everybody who is black, our whole lives are political,
Speaker 1: and everybody who doesn't work in sports.
Speaker 2: Yeah, through that lens, Yes, our whole lives are political,
Speaker 2: but that political is a very loaded word when used
Speaker 2: in that context. You know, political use to describe something
Speaker 2: that's black. They don't cry no politics when they fly
Speaker 2: the flag and march out the military say that. They
Speaker 2: cry political when you say stuff like black lives matter.
Speaker 2: So let's be clear on what they mean when they
Speaker 2: say that.
Speaker 1: So now you're all caught up.