How The Culture Wars Weren’t Won (with Jane Coaston)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I’m Sarah Longwell, Publisher of The Bulwark and this week, we’re talking about the great war of western civilization, the woke culture war. The general of the culture war soon to be presidential candidate, Rhonda Santos, will probably run under the slogan America, where woke goes to die. And woke this is such a catchall villain that when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last week, DeSantis, Josh Holly, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page inexplicably blamed it on vokeness. Now, we wanted to get a sense of how voters across the political spectrum think about a lot of the big culture war buzzwords of our time.

And unsurprisingly, we found that people are talking past each other a lot. Now, I’m very excited. My guest today is Jane Coastin, opinion writer at The New York Times and one of the most concise of commentators on our political discourse today. Jane, thanks so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me.

So, correct me if I’m wrong, but your thesis on the culture wars is that they made great political sense because they are unwinnable and unlusable. Can you tease that out for us, especially in light of all the legislation we’re seeing around the country that do notch real wins and losses in some of these Culture War battles.

They do notch real actual wins and losses think it’s important to note that a forever war has casualties. If there’s anything that we have learned from our own actual forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that have killed hundreds of thousands of people. But what I mean by not having winners or losers, I mean that they can be fought forever because What would it mean to win the culture war? What would it mean if for Republicans to make a reference scripture if every knee bend it and every tongue confessed that Adam and Eve, if not Adam and Steve — Right. — that people smell might be doing that somewhere.

But there is no means by which you could tell that you were winning and you’re always losing, but you’re also always winning. I’ve referenced this before, but there’s this understanding, and I’m going to use the f word here, but I don’t mean it in this way. There’s an understanding in the study of fascism. That fascism’s enemies are always portrayed as being simultaneously overwhelmingly powerful, but also really stupid. That they are just fumbling idiots, but also they’re gonna kill all of you.

And I feel as if sometimes that’s how culture wars are performed. That the enemy in the culture war is evil, but stupid. They will beat you but you could easily beat them if you just try it a little bit harder. And so when I talk about how they are unwinnable and unreasonable, I mean that there’s no marker at which you could say We won. We did it.

I cannot think of the number of national review pieces that are ex indicates that we are winning the culture war. I I remember there was a poll I think in two thousand nine in which support for marriage equality ticked down slightly. And this is before marriage equality had reached, like, seventy five percent approval, which is what it has now. But it was like, oh, you know, we’re winning this war. Well, I mean, how did that go?

But I think it it’s interesting to me that the culture war has become everything is wrapped up into it. Every decision, even decisions that have nothing to do with culture, even decisions that seem completely untethered to the culture war, become part of the culture war. And ideas that were once believed to be on one side of the culture war could easily switch sides. I wrote a piece that came out this week about horny broach conservatism. This idea that there’s the so called barstool conservative who just doesn’t wanna be told what to do.

It’s fascinating to me that some on the right have claimed those peoples being on their side in the culture war when this is a particular side that’s pretty much like pornography is fine, having sex out of marriage is fine, abortion is fine, just don’t tell anyone what to do. And so, the culture war can take on new applicants. The culture war can

take on new topics. It is always growing and changing, but it never has to end. And isn’t that because culture is not a fixed thing? Right? So if culture is always changing, then there’s always a new front in the war.

Exactly. And there’s always something. I’m reminded of when I was in high school. I was in high school in the early two thousand Oh. My freshman year, the second week of my freshman year of high school was nine eleven.

And so the culture war I remember was people being very mad at sixty six over their opposition to the Iraq War — Sure. — and over being mean to George Jebi Bush. But also the culture war was about the over sexualization of teen girls, which has had been an ongoing concern for pretty much forever. You you had kind of the last vestiges of the moral majority. I was very upset about this.

But I have been track now by how culture has shifted in a sense. And now you see some on the right complaining that teen girls aren’t hot enough anymore. And that people aren’t sexy enough anymore. For instance, certain celebrities aren’t hot enough to be a celebrity as or models aren’t thin enough to be models. And it’s interesting how as the culture shifts, people find new things to be mad about.

It’s not that they’re wrong to be mad or right to be mad. It’s that there is always something to be mad about. Culture shifts. Do you remember when people were extremely mad after the Taliban massacre, which it turns out had nothing to do with bullying or tranche coat mafia but had to do with the fact that these two kids were evil assholes. That’s okay to say.

Mhmm. But there was a lot of people who were like, Marilyn Manson did it. In violent video games. Like, some of these culture wars, you know, I’m a world war two nerd. And so the way that I think about, like, ah, remember the battle of market garden.

I sometimes wonder if culture war veterans are like, remember the battle over video games. Like, when Grand Theft Auto came out, and people were convinced that that was going to cause — Oh, yeah. — undue suffering. And then we all moved on from whether caused undue suffering. So there’s always a new front in the war.

A

new front in the Bulwark. And then also, I mean, one of the things we we wanted to do with these focus groups is get them to sort of define woke and talk about what that means. But it always has struck me that the conversation around wokeness is very old wine, new bottle. So there’s both this idea that culture is always shifting, so there’s always a new front in the war. But also, like, I grew up fighting a political correctness while you were still in high school and I was a young conservative working at a conservative think tank, political correctness was very much a thing that sort of consumed people.

And Donald Trump ran on political correctness.

Like, like,

people are acting like around the scientists, like, invented this woke culture war. But what he did was he put a new word around a phenomenon that the right has been mad about for

Right. As long as I’ve been around. But a challenge, as I wrote this week, is that the right is always divided between whether or not they want to protect you from being told what to do by these evil PC people or whether they want to tell you what to do. It’s also interesting how political correctness really was this moment. Because it became so all encompassing that how we talk about speech and how we talk about speech that we find impermissible it became very in vogue to rail against political correctness.

And then there’d be the moment where the person on behalf you are railing says something that’s one step over the line. And then you realize, hang on a second. Actually, I have something that I also object to. And I think that that’s the challenge we have now with and we’ll get into whatever woke means because I’ve been struck by how some people think that woke has a very specific meaning, and I need those people to talk about how, why does woke mean there’s a black person in a movie. Right?

I remember when the trailer for, I think, whatever the most recent Jurassic World movie came out, and someone was like, a a woke picture. And it was literally an image of Chris Pratt, the star of the film, with an African American actress. And everyone was like, what’s what’s broke about that? And I do think that that’s one of the the fascinating things about the terminology is that now it seems it is a catchall term. Which I think only benefits some of the worst people in society because you can decry wokeness and people will think that you mean their woke up.

Totally. Like, you know, you mean something that you don’t want your kids to see in school. But for some other people, it means black people appearing in a place that they shouldn’t be? Yeah. So we were eager

to ask people to define this term. So we asked a couple of Republican groups the ways in which the country is becoming too, quote unquote, and we got a laundry list of complaints. Let’s listen.

Wonkyism is treating people as members of groups. We’re not treating people as individuals. We’re defining people by the groups there in a slight gender politics. It’s like identity politics. And I was just thinking about this the other day.

I was watching a TV show. I was watching survivor, actually. And survivor has a new rule where you have to have so many blacks, so many Asians, you have to have so many, what they call, minorities. Rather than the best candidates for the show. And we see this in movies all the time.

You’re not picking the best actors. You’re picking the black or the Asian or the gay person. So it’s this identity politics of forcing people to be thought of as members of groups rather than treating them as individuals. And that’s what aggravates me the most. Is we’re getting away from thinking of normal and as people, and we’re just classifying them according to the group there.

And that’s just I know, aggravates the heck out of me.

It seems like everybody’s leaning more towards what you call the Hollywood Liberals and, you know, what they think is okay. And if you dare speak out and say you don’t believe in something that they do, then they’re trashing you and It almost seems to me like, I still think that those Hollywood Liberal types are in the minority, but that’s what you hear about ninety other time in the news or social media and sort of to make you believe, you know, I don’t really know what I’m trying to say. I don’t know if that makes sense or not. But, yeah, that everybody has to believe this one way that that the very liberal believes or you’re just really shouldn’t have any beliefs at all? It means

the way they’re cramming the racism, homosexuality, transgender, and critical race stereotypes that way, you know, all of those things and they want everybody to believe because I’m white. They want me, you know, oh, I racist because I was born white. And, you know, I’m not I’m not racist, but I don’t like that cramp down my throat through every movie that you watch anymore, they gotta throw in all of their oh, I gotta try not to say these bad words. Homosexuals, mixed families. It has to be a white man, black woman, or black man, white woman.

You know, and, you know, the kids are really, you know, there’s a black one, a white one, and something in between. You know, I I’m just tired. As

a millennial, I feel like I see, like, what culture, like, all the time. I don’t know. I feel like, you know, I I’m, like, forced to accept other people’s beliefs no matter what, whether I agree with them or not, like, they’re just, like, the democrats seem to be just hammering it down her throat all the time, then, you know, you constantly have to agree with everything. I would say, like, oh, man. Like, transgender.

Nah. Like, you know, I don’t know if I’m supposed to be PC and you’re not, but, like, it’s, like, it’s a random way through it. I’m, like, I don’t care if you are, but, like, I don’t have to agree with them. Don’t get mad at me if, like, I don’t, you know. It’s it’s my I use

I

work at a very local company, Starbucks. And I just try and do my job. They’re all the time trying to push everything. And, you know, when they wanna

they

will, you know, give us a prize shirt to wear, you know, during pride week or month or whatever. And that is one shirt I chose not to wear. Nobody says anything to me. I just make that decision. I’m not gonna preach to anybody.

I work with people that think differently than I, but we don’t go there and, you know, just like with the vaccine thing, you know, you just I I was just gonna write it out I didn’t lose my job. I think that was a question. But just those things that I think if I had my brothers, I probably wouldn’t even get in the conversation. But if somebody asked, I probably would tell them my opinion. But

Again, I feel like we’re being silent. Okay. So there’s some not great stuff in there, but there’s a lot there. But, yeah, let me get into it. Yeah.

Let me Let’s start with really the most important point. Do you watch survivor? I do not watch survivor. Okay. Alright.

I watch survivor religiously. I love survivor. And I gotta tell you, there’s a lot of stuff thrown back in there, a lot of stuff that I don’t agree with. There’s a couple of things where I think people have a point. And I’m gonna take the most charitable view with folks and and and say, I was so I was watching survivor, and they have absolutely made an effort to make the casts more diverse.

Like, one of the things about survivor so writers like this comforting show where even though it sort of has evolved over time, it’s like very much the same in a lot of ways. And so Jeff Brooks is always the host is always saying, certain phrases all the time. And one of the things he does whenever people come in for challenges, he says, come on in guys. A few seasons back, he stops everybody. Lisa, does anybody object to me using the term, dies?

And a bunch of people say, no, and everybody is sort of shaking their head and then one person, one gentleman who’s gay and I think had a trans partner fire call, trans husband objected, said I do object to the term, guys. And Jeff Probst said, okay, I’m not gonna use this anymore. And he, like, changed that phrase that he used. And I rolled my eyes at this so hard and was like, are you serious? We can’t say guys anymore.

And so there’s a part of me. There’s a part of me that identifies with the annoyance that people feel over some of the evolving language that has been here too far harmless and suddenly they are being told that it is actually harmful. Because they’re a part of you that sort of understands like that piece of it or do you think these people are being very unreasonable.

I think I understand when people have a thing that they didn’t even realize that they were kind of just used to. And then the thing changes in some way, and they are annoyed by it. I used to write about college football and the NFL. And it is interesting to me whenever there is a rule change, how you’re like, oh, that sounds reasonable, and then you see it executed for the first time and you’re like, well, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. For instance, there have been rule changes that are supposed to protect the quarterback.

Which, you know, we’ve learned so much about CTE and you’ve seen horrifying injuries happen. And you’re like, that sounds great. Don’t need another Trent Green situation in my life. And then you see some of the penalties people get for what looks like just gently brushing the quarterback. And you’re like, well, this is ridiculous.

I mean, the challenge that we seem to have, whether it’s about survivor, which every time I am reminded that it is still going on, you cannot kill you cannot kill a CBS series. They will be airing blue bloods until the day after I die. But I I think that one of the challenges here, I mean, I I say this all the time about how to borrow what used to be on Pute MYRIDE, on MTV, If it’s like exhibit asked us, like, I heard you want a criminal justice reform. So I got you this weird survivor challenge language change. I feel as if a lot of this is because people and corporations specifically witnessed what has been happening over the last five to ten years.

And decided to react to it in the most small, ball way possible and didn’t make anyone happy. No one has been bettered by changes to how people talk unsurvival. Well, and I think that’s one of the things where I keep thinking about how we are asking culture to solve political problems. But no one wants to actually solve those political problems because it’s really hard and people make it mad at you. And then we ask culture to respond to them.

Or cultural entities to respond to them. And they are doing so in a way that feels to everyone overbearing and simultaneously insufficient. And so I I understand the annoyance, but at the same time, I’m thinking like, this seems like something that happened because something else bigger didn’t happen somewhere else. Well, maybe but, like, take the woman who they’re the last clipper. She’s talking

about the pride shirt. I totally am on her side. Like, I think it is would be so weird for an employer. I think it is weird. The way these companies are saying to people And you know what?

I got me, one of those gay marriages. I like the gay marriage. I like the gay. It’s great. It’s great.

But I am It’s weird to ask people, like, the pride month, like, my Uber suddenly has, like, a rainbow tail on it. Like, for an entire I’m, like, this feels like a strange way for our culture to

resign is just let us be married and exist. Yeah. That’s the thing. Is that, like, I think, again, it is an indication of corporations specifically attempting to respond with a cultural action when they’re not responding to, say, a political action, like Starbucks, for example, attempting to discourage people from unionizing or for folks, you know, you’re working eighty hour weeks and working all in the weekend, but you got a pride shirt. That’s great.

And so it reminds me after the murders of George Floyd and Ahmed Arbery and Breonna Taylor, people on Instagram started doing this thing of, like, I’m posting a black box that means I’m listening on racial justice. And I was like, that’s not doing anything. Civil asset forfeiture is not being stymied by your black box. We’re not getting the elimination of qualified immunity because of your black box. We’re I’m just annoyed with you.

I was struck because you haven’t mentioned this yet, and I understand why. But I was struck by the woman who and this is always a fascinating tell to me. I am the product of a interracial couple. And I am always struck by how there is a way in which people talk about mixed race couples I’m also in a mixed race relationship that they are a sort of plant by the media, that they aren’t real. That this isn’t a real thing that happens, that no one is in an actual interracial relationship.

Despite the fact that the number of people in interracial relationships has been skyrocketing dramatically over the last thirty years. But it’s a fascinating tell that somehow that woman listed homosexuality, trans people, and mixed race relationships. I was like, oh, oh, I see. Oh, I see. There is something about how our culture works that we cannot tell in which direction our cultural mowers move, whether they go from the bottom up or from the top down.

And I think that one of our worst inclinations as people is to assume that the only reason people are gay or trans or in a mixed race relationship is because they saw it in a movie or because the cultural overlords made it look like it was okay. You know, I I think that the lovings who had to go to court in nineteen sixty seven and go to the Supreme Court to challenge the state of Virginia for their marriage, I am pretty sure they did not do so because they saw it in the movie. And I’m always struck by this idea that you are having mixed race relationship shoved you down your throat. What? I’m like, what?

So the jammed My parents are just like hanging

out. So the jammed down your throat piece is is it’s always that I know it is. So obviously, I view myself. I’m at the perfect place in the culture. Like, I have the perfect position.

On culture. And I think everybody would agree that Sarah Longwell position is the perfect position on culture. I was in the bank yesterday, and there is a picture of a gay couple. Doing banking — Yeah. — there.

And there is kind of like a montage. There’s like a picture of a gay couple. And there’s like a a black guy who’s like a carpenter, I think. And it’s like a collection of people who do banking. And I think — Yeah.

— well, this would qualify to some of the people in this group by shoving it down their throats. Whereas I’m like — Right. — these are people who bank and the bank would like to show that many different people bank here, lest you be one of those people, and we’d like to see you reflected in it because we would like you to bank here. And so to me, that is a normal thing to do. Right.

Whereas I think forcing people to wear a pride shirt or the bank having a pride month I think that is like on the other side of things where I’m like, I think that some of the things they identified as shoving down their throat are just hey, these people exist and we’re gonna like show you that they exist. Yeah. Whereas there are things that I might agree, feel like kind of shoving things down somebody’s throat. And what’s

hard to it’s hard to tease that out? Right. I remember that there was a Wells Fargo out a couple of years ago. Now keep in mind, Wells Fargo was one of the companies that really screwed over people during the great recession and signed people up for credit cards and then signed up for took a ton of people’s money, but they also had this ad that was about, like, a lesbian couple adopting a deaf child. And I was, like, don’t don’t bring no.

No. No. No. Don’t bring this into this. And so I don’t like using that kind of cultural swordsmanship.

The argument that you aren’t going to do real things to benefit people, but you’ll do this kind of performative action. I don’t like that being included with there’s a biracial person on my television and I don’t like it because I don’t think it’s real. I don’t like the fact that that can all be called a Wokeness. And you could have someone who campaigned against quote unquote Wokeness, and someone would interpret that to mean I won’t have to see by racial people on television.

Right. We played, like, a pretty long section there of of those groups, and I think it’s very accurate of what we hear all the time, but you also hear, like, it’s sort of inconsistent. Right? People have different ideas very much of what woke means to them. And I had a reporter ask me one time.

They were like, just do people use the word woke in focus groups? And I was like, not really. Like, we had to ask them sort of for the purposes of this, like, what does woke mean to you? For people to say it and they and they all had a variety of different opinions and they’re all sort of it’s some like substructure of a culture war thing that particularly annoys them. This is allowed to exist under this umbrella phrase rug for them.

Actually, I’m gonna get into that a little more, but before you do, I wanna listen to the dams. Yeah. You know, and you’ll hear, I think, the disconnect between the way that the Republicans

were talking about, what woke is and what dem say woke is. The term woke means stay educated. And that’s all it means. Stay educated. But when you hear and it’s typically used by white Republicans, when you hear dumb sand, the woke generation they’re talking about black people and no one wants to address it.

I believe we have to talk first of all We need to talk. We need to understand one another. And I say this because of my foundation. We have a sand. It says in order for humanity to survive.

We must care for one enough. So we have to take the time to listen to each other and under stand each other. Don’t take a term that you know nothing about and run with it and use it in a way that’s demoralizing or condescending to the next person.

Governor DeSantis is the governor of Florida, then he loves throwing that term out when he wants to disparage something, and it really angers me to hear it, have a negative connotation. I don’t look at a negative way at all. I think awareness is important for change. So I don’t like how he uses that term and has made it negative. I don’t look at it as a negative thing.

Anytime you want to have a change, It’s like to mock you, oh, you’re so woke. It’s like to cut that dialogue out because it’s done a very condescending way.

Yeah. Like, a staff is coming from, like, you know, like a Caucasian type person. Like, you need to be more woke. Like, I guess, it’s in their delivery, their tone of how they’re saying this. So if it’s, I guess, just depending on the situation, you know, and and how they’re just presenting it to you.

You know, it can come off as rude. You know? It can come off as kind of like a they’re kinda trying to be kinda controlling. They’re trying to make you aware of something, but it’s kinda

like a privilege type thing. I would be proud to be called, whoa. Yeah. Do you think it would come out by the way? So the funny thing about this word is that the definitions vary widely.

And I think you know, for the Democratic group, they they didn’t so much wanna define, Woke is define, like, the way it is hurled

at them. Right? Right. And I I think that this also goes to the thing about how a culture war cannot be won or lost is that, like, now you hear some of those Democrats being like, hell yeah. Whoa.

Right. Jesus was woke. Jesus was the original wokester. Exactly. And, you know, screw you through these people.

People aren’t like, oh, oh, I’m so sorry about my willingness. I will repent. Like, no. That’s not how people react to things. Like, if you attempt to ban something, everybody’s more interested in it.

If you attempt to decry something, in general, people become like very defensive of it. Then you ask more questions and people might be like, oh, well, I don’t like this. I don’t like that. But using it as a cudgel doesn’t do what you think it’s going to do. It was notable.

There’s a number of people who hear it very

distinctly as a dog whistle. And it what’s interesting to me about the term woke, that’s what happens when it can mean so many things. On one hand, it is a racial dog. So on the other, for a lot of people it’s talking about like gender ideology or it’s talking about what’s being taught in schools or it’s about how they want to be able to say a certain thing and they feel like they can’t because it’s not politically correct. Or it’s about, you know, CRT or it is about race and it’s about, you know, a multiracial family on TV.

All of those things when you hear it, do you hear it as a racial dog whistle? Yes and no.

Because it is often used as a racial dog whistle because I think that that again when you use this term as an umbrella term, it becomes I now hear as a woman who doesn’t want to see biracial people on television. You might have meant something entirely different, but all I’m hearing is there are too many mixed race couples on my television and I don’t like it. Because, you know, I remember when I was a kid, woke was what the guys in the barbershop would say about how you needed to be worried about the fluoride in the water because you have to stay woke. Like, they won’t tell you about this. And so that’s how I heard it.

And then you had to stay woke because, you know, the FBI wanted to kill Martin, which is, okay, sort of actually true. And so this idea, like, wokeness was this conceit that you need to stay aware and stay awake. You need to keep your eyes open to how the powers at Bulwark prepared to mistreat you and mistreat people like you, generally African Americans. And it’s interesting now to see it become this catch all term when it will always to many African Americans always sound like they were right all along. They should stay aware.

They should stay awake. To the way in which power structures can be wielded against them. So

one of the things that I use the Focus Group’s force to help me think about messaging. And on this sort of idea that it is difficult for people to define woke and you learn a lot by sort of throwing out an open ended question about, like, what do you think is woke? You know, they were just saw this prominent anti woke activist Bethany Mandel She was asked on television. She has a book out about how, you know, woke up this is destroying children. And she was asked to define woke up on TV, and she kinda had like this brain free.

Because she couldn’t conjure a definition. And the dams rather than getting sort of mad or I think that they should just constantly when people say, like, oh, you’re woke. What’s that mean? What Tell me tell me what that means. Because I think that people will betray themselves pretty quickly in terms of what it what it means to them.

Yeah, I I think that asking people what they mean by something is often the best question any journalist can ask. I also think that it if I were doing democratic messaging, I would really focus on how this seems to be a actually from a lot of actual

Like, maybe the actual war that exists. Yeah.

The actual war or actual wars. I mean, many of the same people who decry Wokeness are currently proposing that we bomb targets in Mexico because apparently war is cool when it’s here. That sounds great. Or you think about so many of the issues people are struggling with in actual life and people attempting to tether that to some sort of wokeness issue, but not actually doing anything about it. Because again, culture wars should not be won and they cannot be lost.

That’s not the point. The point is not to do anything about any of these actual issues. The point is to have something to fight about on the Internet or on television. To the rest of our lives. Yeah.

So I would always say that, like, one, what do you mean? What does wealth just mean? And two, what does this have to do with any actual problem for people who

are on the Internet all the time. Right? Speaking of things that happen on the Internet all the time, I wanna talk about our second culture war buzzword, which is cancel culture. Now I know you hate it, but among our Republican groups, they had a very strong sense that Republicans exist in a world of fear with cancellation by the Liberals in their lives just around the corner at any moment. Let’s listen.

The left, they can’t really make their point as to why they believe that way. They just wanna scream in your face and tell you they don’t believe

in the things that you do. I

think there’s hotbeds. I mean, you know, abortion, hotbed, religion, hotbed, politics, hotbed. And it’s not that we can have political discussions anymore, we can’t. People aren’t happy if you don’t agree with them, especially in the liberals. You know, you you just can’t go out and have that discussion anymore because people wanna try to convince you.

Always have a rule of thumb at a party. You don’t talk politics. You don’t talk religion because you’re not gonna convince anybody to change.

It really is like a a problem like in families because people feel like a certain way, it it just it’s scary when you can’t have conversations. It’s like you’re not allowed in opinion. I mean, we’ve been like, net so much myself, but my husband, like, you know, really put, like, in a place from our granddaughter. It’s like it’s a crazy time. If you don’t, like, go along with what you’re supposed to to do, you’re just old and stupid, you know?

But I know that we’re not stupid.

I understand all of the things that everyone has said because we’ve experienced all of those things in our household as well with family members disowning us because of our political votes where they’ve gone vaccinations, COVID, school, like, all the things. We are participating and having all of that happen to us in our lives

too. So, like, people talk like this in the groups all the time, where they basically use the term canceled when they mean someone got mad at me for my opinion. Right.

I I am also curious in the family examples. I’m like, what exactly did you say? Like, Yeah. But again, this is why I think having these catchall terms is so difficult. Because, for example, when people talked about cancel culture to begin with.

It was these specific examples of the woman who tweeted something about how she was going to Africa, hope I don’t get aids. And by the time she landed, she had gotten fired from her job and everyone hated her — Yes. — on the Internet. Again, a lot of this is on the Internet. The words on the Internet should be added to all of this, or people who are wrongly accused of something and lose their jobs lose their career.

I generally don’t think of famous people in this way because I think that famous people have the unique way to always come back from pretty much anything. I think of people who it’s like, you were seen in a viral video doing something awkward and somehow lost your job because of it. But now it has become encompassing to me and someone didn’t like my opinion and they were mad at me for it. I have been canceled. I wonder who have these people canceled.

Against whom have they wielded the cancel culture, cudgel?

Yeah. There’s a fair amount of lack of self awareness oftentimes in the group’s I mean, but I gotta say, this to me is the kind of organic genius of Republican messaging because they’re able to provide sort of a pernicious term that people can tap into when they wanna describe things Liberals in my life do that annoy me. Then the family ones come up all the time in focus groups. And it’s a lot of it’s sad. You know, it’s like people who don’t talk to each other anymore.

It’s just a function of our political polarization. But like the woman here who was talking, our husband, it sounded like was having an argument with the granddaughter over, it sounded like immigration. And things got heated. She got mad. I think the granddaughter called him racist.

And that clearly hurt them, but like that was their definition of cancel culture. And that’s just like all over the Republican groups. This sort of grievance of people who’ll get mad at me for my opinion. But they’re so different from the democrats though. I wouldn’t listen to the democrats, and then I have a question and — Mhmm.

— because I I would say that the cancel culture stuff, unlike Wokeness where the dams were pretty resistant to letting Republicans get away with calling things woke, cancel a culture that Democrats were more sympathetic to this idea existing. I think I became concerned about

it many years ago before it even became to the point where it is at now. You know, I think things that should be canceled isn’t canceled and things that should stay in place. They’re canceling it. And for what reason, it makes no sense. You know, and I don’t get it.

I’m grateful that my children are no longer in school, they’re adults, but I feel bad for the children that are coming up in this era now because there’s a lot of things that they’re canceling that that shouldn’t be canceled, but the things that they’re letting fly back that need to be canceled.

If I don’t agree with something or if I’m prejudiced against something, I’m gonna try my absolute hardest to get as much people behind me to cancel something and not, you know, keep it going and not keep it alive. I think, you know, people who have been canceled in the past we’ve all been children. We’ve all been young and dumb at one time. And something that I say or do when I’m immature and young should not come and haunt me, you know, ten, fifteen years later down the road. In

the United States, murder has no statute of limitation. But rape does crimes against children. It depends on what you’ve done, I believe, and holding people accountable. And some things you just can’t say sorry for. But instead of canceling them, I think that People need to have time to look into it.

Some people will lie when you and a life travels faster than the truth. So in order to hold someone accountable for something horrific that they’ve done, in the past, you have to look into it. But we all make mistakes. We all fall short. And we’ve all done some things in our AS THAT WE WISH WE

WOULD NOT HAVE DONE. SO I FOUND IT INTERESTING THAT A LOT OF THESE PEOPLE ON SOME LEVEL, LIKE THEY BELIEVE IN HOLDING PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR WORSE moments, but they also have this instinct toward grace. And I think especially for older people — Mhmm. — you know, they think about their worst moments and if it had been captured on camera. Like, they grew up at a time when not everybody had a camera.

And so it sounded to me like a lot of them felt like people were being too hard on people oftentimes or that, like, we should have some room for people to make mistakes and be allowed to come back. I found their answers to be quite compassionate. On, like, where the Republicans felt like cancel culture was a thing that was visited on them. Right. Democrats felt like cancel culture is a thing that’s kinda real, and we

should be careful with how we wield it. Right. Exactly. And I think that that’s the thing is that, like, cancer culture, I think, strikes also at a personal level. But I am almost certain that there are certain things that have been deemed cancel culture that people are like, oh, yeah, that guy.

Absolutely. Like, Big Gilbert die recently where I’m just like, well, you know, you don’t have a legal right to have your cartoon and newspapers. Right. Is the challenge of these overarching terms. I was of like kind of the first generation on Facebook And I remember in about two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine where everyone was about to graduate from college, where all of these people I knew from high school took down so many of these pictures of themselves that they had taken drinking or doing something debaucherous.

And I just keep thinking about, like, imagine if if those photos come back, and we’ve seen so many examples of that happening to actual people. And I think that that is something that people see as so different than, like, Louis CK getting to perform again. Right. It’s difficult that we don’t have a diversity of terms to talk about the diversity of experiences that we have And we just have this way of talking about how do we move past either our own mistakes or the transgressions of other people which transcriptions have reached the bar where we don’t have to get over them. And how do we talk about that?

Yeah. Totally. Totally. Okay. Well, I wanna pivot back to Republicans for these last couple clips because they relate to sort of the biggest culture war, third rail, which is kids.

Right? Because a lot of us, you can sort of say, why I’m a grown up, but I can, you know, we’ll talk about — Yeah. — Transits user. But, like, it’s about the kit. And this is Ron DeSantis, I think, has put sort of the kids squarely at at the center of of how he’s talking about through wholeness.

So the Republican groups, once again, they have a laundry list of grievances over the way public schools are being run currently. Let’s listen.

That’s the problem with critical race theories. You’re now starting not just to teach facts, but to actually influence the interpretation of facts by giving an interpretation of facts. And that’s why I think parents do have a legitimate need to understand what’s being taught and have some influence over whether it’s input, influence control, whatever. I think we do need to know what our culture being taught because it’s quite possible that’s being flavored with a political agenda and it’s not just teaching facts.

I don’t like the recent culture of you have to address me the way I think you have to address me you have to believe whatever I believe and, like, my wife is a teacher, for instance, she’s a fifth grade teacher and she’s got students so that have to be addressed, like, certain ways, whether it be, like, by gender or by, you know, whatever everything they come up with. And if she addresses them differently, it’s pushed back on by the parents. And I don’t I don’t like that that’s the case now. When these other countries are teaching their kids, you know, how to actually do

something when we’re teaching our kids how to worry about what gender they are. You know, that kind of thing just

I went to a very big university here in Ohio, and I grew up in a really small town that was all Republican. And it was like mind blowing I mean, nobody ever pushed, you know, politics on us in high school. And as soon as I went to college, it was, like, everything was, like, so pushed on us in regards to how we should think. And thankfully, I never fell into the trap, but a lot of my friends did just from hearing their professors and other people talk. About what they should believe, you know, believe in.

Man, I think teachers should teach kids to think and not what to think. The indoctrination of you’re gonna be a little mini me because I’m a teacher and I’m in charge of you for eight hours a day is ridiculous. You know, a teacher’s hired to to help assist the parent, but the parents should be in full control what the kid sees, doesn’t see. And I I just don’t like where we’re at right now.

So

this has become like a very hot button, political issue. And I think that with a lot of this stuff, there’s a spectrum where people are in a sort a crazy place, like, oh, no. There’s litter boxes in schools. And then there’s like kind of a more reasonable place that I think got Glenn Youngkin elected in Virginia So the idea that parents should have a say in their kids education, that parents are concerned about some of what’s being taught to their kids at young ages in school. I’m sympathetic to the more normal argument on some of this stuff.

And I think that for a lot of swing voters that we do, we do a lot of groups with swing voters. This comes up a lot. And I I think that Ron DeSantis has decided to wage a very particular and aggressive kind of war to win over a sort of the crazy side of this debate. Mhmm. I sort of have always thought that it will resonate and play okay with swing voters if he can sound more young and ish come general election.

What do you think? Perhaps I think the challenge though, I I was struck by how there

was a person who referenced how their wife was a teacher — Yep. — and that if they didn’t use the correct pronouns for a child, the the kids parents would push back And I think that this is less parents versus schools than its parents versus other parents, which I am not a parent, and I would rather walk into the fires of hell than get in between two parents who have a fight over their heads. I I would lie down in front of a bus before I would face that. And so I think that It is telling to me that there’s this idea that kids are being indoctrinated, but of course, they are. I went to Catholic school, That was the entire point of Catholic school.

Was to indoctrinate us. That’s why you do it. But it’s what you’re being indoctrinated with what your parents want you to be indoctrinated renaded by. You are never ever getting the reading, writing, arithmetic schools that apparently people seem to imagine that they went to, they did not. There was an interesting op ed in the New York Times about a young girl who refused to say the pledge of allegiance.

And was basically assaulted by her principal for doing so. Now, it is not required for you to say the pledge of allegiance. It is a not a crime. The Supreme Court has ruled in nineteen forty three, one of the great decisions of that body that you don’t have to. BUT THIS WOMAN RECEIVED NONstop VITRIAL BECAUSE CLEARLY SAYING THE PLEGIA BELLEGENCE WAS VERY IMPORTANT TO PEOPLE.

AGAIN THAT IS A FORM OF INDOCRIDATION. We use it as a cuddle, but it does not necessarily mean that something is bad or good. I went to church so that I could be indoctrinated with the ethos of the Catholic church. I would imbibe the doctrine of Catholicism. Which some of that was great and some of it was, yeah, that’s great.

But I think that the the real battle here is between parents versus parents. And I think that so often, and I think that this is where Democrats fail a little bit. Democrats forget that Democrats are also parents then they have kids and that you can talk about how you want your kids to learn these different things. It’s not just evil teachers. Teachers are also parents often.

I think that we saw in twenty twenty two in a bunch of states in which a lot of Democratic parents were like, actually, I want my kids to have these books in schools. Actually, I want my kids to learn these things. I was also interested that, yo, schools in other countries are doing things so much better. We still have the best ranked universities in the world. Thousands of people come to the United States to study.

And many of the people’s educational experiences in other countries, I think people often use China as an example. China’s educational system is based on doing a very specific type of indoctrination. With regard to the Chinese party and with regard to kind of Chinese authority, over that country. And so it’s interesting to me that we don’t see the indoctrination that we like as indoctrination. That’s just how you should be educated.

But we see the indoctrination we don’t like as indoctrination.

Well, speaking of kids and things that people object to, the the last thing I really wanna talk about is the bill out of Tennessee banning drag performances on public property. And DeSantis has also really picked this up. He pulled the liquor license from a Florida hotel for hosting a drag show. It’s interesting how the voters in our groups when we asked about it jumped right to the protecting kids angle when we asked about it. Let’s listen.

So any consenting adult can do whatever they want, wherever, but I would not in the library, not in the school, nothing involving kids. I would stand for those people to have their rights to do those things. And then in exchange, I would expect them to support my rights to be able to you know, do things that don’t hurt them in any way. That’s

the thing I just seen too. They they was doing drag shows in like elementary school. There was a video of like, these kids in preschool and they had a drag going in there and doing a dance forum and it was like auditorium and everybody was in there. And I just looked at that. And I was like, that is crazy.

It’s like, what are they teaching? But now that they’re banning that, I love that. That’s that’s a great that they’re banning it?

I I guess it would depend on whether it’s,

you

know, it’s if it’s a nude or a sexualized show or something like that. But if it’s just something you’d see if somebody was transient walking on the street. I mean, you know, some people are gonna see that regardless. So, I mean, if it’s something that’s a sexualized So I definitely haven’t issue that. But it’s just I mean, hell not to minimize it.

But Peter Pan and plays was played by a woman for years. That doesn’t necessarily bother me, but something that would be content inappropriate. They have the right to their in that regard to, you know, share the thoughts, but they don’t have the right to stand in front of a bunch of kindergartens and have sometimes an actualized show.

What

do you make of the drag panic going on?

I think it’s the stupidest thing in the entire world. I think it is indicative of again how a culture will will Will Saletan seek a new front, especially because one, it is actually about trans people, but it has somehow decided that, like, yelling about drag queens is a way to yell about trans people in a way that doesn’t involve trans people, but we all know it does include trans people. You saw online how there was a very specific effort by Chris Ruffo to talk about how drag queens or trans strippers — Mhmm. — which is not what a drag queen is, but also it becomes a thing that we have to discuss when we could be discussing any other number of things. And especially because I think there has long been this idea that if a kid sees a drag queen, and I think that I have witnessed a drag queen story hour and a drag queen read a story and then that was pretty much it.

There was nothing sexualized. I mean, I believe that they were reading the very hungry caterpillar, which I don’t remember being a specifically erotic text. But I’d have to go back and check.

I can confirm. I do have kids again confirm. It is you know, let unless unless you’ve got a a food fetish. Maybe. It’s true.

It’s true. In which case, life must be complicated. I think that there is a sense that if you see a drag queen or a trans person because what I actually really got to say about the Tennessee bill, it’s incredibly vague So for one thing, it implies that it is about both drag queens and drag queens. And it’s written in such a way that could possibly if you were the worst cop in the world, could just include trans people. Mhmm.

And it’s also written in such a sense. Let’s see. Male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a preowned interest. Boy, I am not looking forward to the first court case in which someone has to argue about what the period interest was with regard to so many things. But I think that it goes back to this idea that I’ve seen so many times.

I wish people think that if you see an LGBT person, that that will make you LGBT, or that LGBT people were totally normal. And then they saw a drag queen or they saw Paris’ burning or I don’t know. They saw that that episode of Ellen where she’s reveals that she’s gay, and then that that just does it. And if you just avoid that, they’ll grow up to be straight and normal. Ron DeSantis I think it’s a distraction of an argument.

I think it’s an an anti trans argument disguised as an anti drag argument. But I think it’s also about this idea that children are these tabula razzes And if if they are shown anything, they will immediately become whatever they have seen. Now, again, I went to Catholic school. And I can tell you, it did not quite work that way.

Yeah. So first of all, I completely agree with the point you just made, but let me go to a place where it’s slightly more complicated. Which is on, like, the issue of non binary, and talking to kids about non binary. And the idea that there is no gender because you’re right. It all kind of like the drag queen stuff and the trans conversation and the sort of gender conversation around language in classrooms.

There are different elements of this debate. And that that one of the things that I really wanna get out of this episode is that the idea by providing these blanket terms really benefits Republicans in the culture war because it allows people to tag things that are on, the really crazy side of the spectrum, and things that are just I don’t know, we can have, like, very reasonable differences of opinion on, all under one big umbrella term that people can sort of lock into and that allows Ron DeSantis to essentially appeal to people

who don’t

want to see by racial couples as well as parents who are a little concerned that their kids are coming home and saying they identify as they when they’re six. Mhmm. Right? Like, they all under exist under the same sort of cultural banner. Right.

So I think that there’s things. I mean, I don’t so we’re talking about how old we are. Mhmm. I’m gonna ask you a couple of questions that are a little harder or I don’t know. Maybe a little personal — Right.

— and same same for me. Right? When I was coming out, there was so little visibility around lesbians that, like, there was just, like, nothing even to look to him once I was, like, okay. Odesbian, I could find a lot of cultural signals. You said I had to go looking for them.

But, like, there was Ellen and — Mhmm. — then spent my twenties and thirties in a culture for lesbians. Now, there’s all this non binary stuff which didn’t exist when I was younger. And I do find it, like, is very new. And I have this sort of, like, I want everybody to be happy, and I want everybody to be self actualized, and I want everybody pursue their truth, and I genuinely believe that.

And then there’s this other part of me that’s like, but I find the language vexing sometimes I think we are like, I’m still struggling to understand things that I know, like, my kids are are coming up in a totally different way. And maybe that’s just the way that the world works and there will always be kids saying to their parents and to their grandparents like, listen, you old folkies. You don’t understand. I I know the real truth about the world now. But I I mean, do you do you have sympathy for people who are sort of struggling with the newness of a lot of this and trying to figure out what the rights speed is for kids to engage with it?

Yeah. And especially because I think that this is a generational issue. And For example, one of the great benefits that kids now have, let’s say you’re eighteen years old. Right now. That means you were born in two thousand five, which is a wild thing to say.

But that also means that when you were ten years old, Virgafel, it went through the Supreme Court. Mhmm. And so when you were about six or seven is when Barack Obama came out in support of marriage equality. For the vast majority of your life, you have not had to experience In some ways, the overarching homophobia of a society aimed at eliminating you that so many people did. When I talk to older gays and lesbians who are in their fifties or sixties or seventies, there’s a real sense of, like, they just can’t believe it.

They can’t believe that we got here that we did this. But I also think that that means there’s something bonding about being on the vice of oppression. There’s something that brings people together to be like, no matter our differences, we are clearly all being hated by the same people. And so I think that for many LGBT people, there is a sense now that there’s less bringing people together. There’s less like, what are we fighting for and what are we fighting as?

And I also think that it’s worth noting here, like, I remember when I asked my mom in the way you think you’re being extremely subtle when you’re a kid. Like, what would you do if I were gay? I was, like, six or seven. And my mom said and I think about this all the time because my mom’s ma’am’s a very liberal woman who loves me very much. I loves my spouse very much.

And but she was like, I, you know, I’d be scared for you because your life would be harder. Now this would have been this has been nineteen ninety four. So this is, like, even just before don’t ask don’t tell. This is a very understandable thing to say. Mhmm.

But I got the message of, like, don’t be that. And I already cut I already knew. I had seen the movie, mannequin, with Kim Cottrill, And I was like, I’m gonna marry Kim Cottrill. And then I was like, oh, boy, that’s a big problem for me.

Kim Cottrill? Well,

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Mannequin. I have married It’s not a good movie, but she was Anyway, I wanted to marry her. I had seen it on television, and I wanted to marry her, and that was going to be a problem. And I hear this now. It’s interesting with regard to trans kids or gender nonconforming kids.

It’s like, oh, I don’t want kid to be that because their life will be harder. Mhmm. Which I’m like, oh, we could just make life less hard for them in a number of ways. And I think that one thing I keep thinking about, though, about, like, how this generational shift has happened is that there is a sense that, yes, it’s good there’s been increased acceptance, but I think that there are people who are worried that something has been lost. You were talking about lesbian certifiers.

And I I I am picking up and you can correct me that you’re a little bit worried that the use of the term lesbian, you know, the idea of being a lesbian, that something is being lost. If folks are coming out as queer or coming out as non binary or gender nonconforming. That’s

well, that’s a good question. Actually, can I just say that I feel like I come at these conversations from three perspectives? One is the the parent of kids who are running taught things and language that, like, I I sometimes find confounding. Like, it just it’s different, and I have forming my opinions of how I feel about some of it and how they’re interacting with it as young people. Then there’s me as a lesbian who I wonder how it might have been different for me as a kid if the what is available now on the spectrum had been available to me, like, how I would have — Mhmm.

— whether that would have been good or bad for me because I’m uncertain. And then also is that somebody from women’s sports were quite important and formative for me. Mhmm. I think I grapple with these issues and I feel like I’m mad sort of at everyone all the time. Like, I’m really mad that with the lack of compassion, the gross way that conservatives have taken on transition choose as a way to wedge people culturally and be despicable to people.

And I also find myself torn about the ways that we’re trying to accommodate these new things. And like I I agree with you, I wanna make people’s lives easier, but I also don’t wanna put my pronouns in a zoom.

So — Yeah. — that that’s how I’m thinking about it. Right. And I think that there’s room for that I would say that there’s a moment in the movie children of the corn, which is not a good horror movie. I don’t like horror movies, but I think about it all the time.

Because there’s like the kid who’s been basically leading this cult that’s killing all of the adults. And he’s doing it on behalf of this entity, this like evil entity that lives in the cornfields. And I believe his name is Malachi. And there’s a moment at which one of the children who has been killed by this evil cult leader comes back as a zombie. And there’s this moment at which he comes and looks and says to this character, he wants you to malachi.

And

I think about that because we have now seen that the same people who are railing against trans people competing in sports are also saying like, hey, we should reconsider obergafem. Right. You know, I I think a lot about gender non conforming people. Because the idea that people are like, what about feminine men and masculine women? And I’m like, do you think that things have been super easy for them anyway.

Do you really believe that the folks one that’s not the same thing as being trans, but also that The idea that we have been so accepting of gender nonconforming people up until now is a fallacy. And so I am learned about a increasing slippery slope that takes out all of us, that is aimed at all of us. And so I think that there are a lot of individual issues especially because there are ways in which people talk about, say, the sports issue. That ignores the experiences of trans men. It’s interesting to me that when we talk about trans women and trans girls, we are always talking about like evil adults who are gross and bad.

And we talk about trans men as sad children where something went horribly wrong. There was an article, a national review about a trans man. It was written very poorly. But one of the comments was how will she ever get a man

to love

her? And I was like, oh, boy. I

heard your hand in the desk there. Yes. I genuinely

hit the desk. There. And so I think a lot about how we think it’s about just trans kids or non binary kids, but it’s actually about all of us. It’s about the ways in which people are shifting how they identify and wishing to be themselves in the world and figuring out the right ways to do that and how that changes over time. And I also think about the ways in which the people who had been keeping quiet about marriage equality found a new issue to rail at?

I understand it’s complicated. It’s incredibly complicated. I my answer is currently taking, like, ten minutes. But I think that it’s worth trying to keep all of this straight because it’s a sign of intelligence to be able to keep two opposing thoughts in your head at the same time. And so I think that the concerns that you’re raising are interesting and valid, and I also think that the concerns that I’m thinking about in which I see the ways in which people are using this as a means to either go after some of the most vulnerable people or attempting to take back rights that they believe we shouldn’t have gotten in the first place.

That’s what concerns me. I also think there is a degree to which how we talk about these issues. It’s so time based. I I think a lot about how gay men who experienced the AIDS crisis, who experienced a time at which they watched their friends and their family die, while people didn’t seem to care or that they were rejected by their families. I think a lot about how we have come so far.

But I also think that there is a degree to which they are experiencing something that I think that LGBT people have never really gotten to experience before, which is like the younger versions of you, annoying you. You never really you know, if you were an imagine that. Like, if you were a gay man in nineteen fifty five, you never thought about what it would be like to see future gay kids related to you, or doing something you don’t understand. I think in some ways, it is a sign of incredible growth that I go to pride and you see like the Lesbian teens in their twenties getting messy and drunk and make making out all over the place and you’re like, oh, just not on my shit’s loose. Just not on my shoes.

Well, you know, I could have this particular conversation with you forever, but we’re gonna have to leave it there. Jane, and thank you so much for coming on the Focus Group podcast and talking through

this shortly. Thank you so much for so much.

It was the best. And thank to all of you for listening to another week of the Focus Group podcast. We will be back next week when we will be talking about a real war and asking voters about Ukraine. Oh, boy. See you then.