183 - The War Room (1993)

re: HW being scary: you must remember this guy was the head of the CIA for years. he was shot down over the pacific in WW2. man was absolutely terrifying and did terrifying things

This was my favourite episode yet, it's fascinating getting a glimpse into such a formative moment in our current world, but one that just barely happened before I was around

James Carville didn't just date HE'S campaign manager, they're still married to this day

Funnily enough, I watched enough Mr. Show to get secondhand understanding of James Carville from Bob Odenkirk

it's wild hearing that carville started his career with a campaign for lloyd doggett given that my only frame of reference for the two of them is carville spending the 00s as a primary democratic sock puppet on retainer at fox news and doggett in the 2020's who campaigns here in the austin area with bernie, greg casar, and our local dsa electeds

This is the longest episode of Michael and Us I've ever heard! Also, Washington and our extremely shitty tax system mentioned

I know it was just a brief aside, but I can think of no better example of the pop culture of a dying empire than NBC's coverage of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. An unyielding torrent of commercials occasionally interrupted by a 30 second glimpse of a parade float or balloon (which is also some sort of commercial, but at least they were created with the intention of generating some small amount of joy).

If you guys haven’t already you should watch Reform!, it’s a 3 part series about the reform party by Jon Bois on YouTube

I went to a trump rally in New Hampshire out of morbid curiosity in 2016 and it was the most fucked vibes I’ve ever experienced

Does the Nixon ad mean S3 of Slings and Arrows is around the corner?

Josh, I'd love to hear you at some point elaborate on the "captured by capital" comment you made about the Teamsters. Being in a union that regularly interacts with teamsters, it's one of the more unique perspectives I've heard on them.

New Hampshirites?

Is Clinton good at politics? Or is he just good at manipulation? What we imagine to be "politics" here in the US is just telling people what they want to hear while entrenching and expanding capitalists' holdings.

Cat Person was a pretty okay movie about the paranoia and anxiety of modern dating that hit the exact vibe of “college town about six years behind the mainstream” but was overall a solid place-filler kinda deal. C+

gentlemen, you can't usher in the end of history in here

I love you guys, but every time you say "James Carville" me not being an American is just picturing the guy who wrote Shogun. Which I know is a different guy but it's where my head goes, sorry.

I’m from Massachusetts but volunteered in NH for the Bernie campaign and the amount of wild swing you’d get in “types of guys” house to house was astounding. It’s such a weird state where people will work in Mass but gladly drive an hour and a half to live in NH just to not pay sales tax, and then you get the even more mega libertarians and three percenters

Distraught at being reminded of that Lena Dunham Hilary song

I was in one of the last caucus held in Maine for the demo. One of the things we voted on, was changing to a primary system so we wouldn't ever need to caucus again. That year Bernie crushed Hillary in the Maine caucus, but the dems went with Hillary anyway.

Errol Morris also did ads for Chipotle.

As a former french Poli-Sci graduate it’s funny (but not surprising) to me that The War Room was displayed as a respected vision of how decisions are made in US Poli-Sci classrooms because we were presented it as *the exact opposite*. We were led to understand it as mythmaking. This is why referring to myself as a Poli-Sci grad to americans is sometimes kind of embarrassing because the way y’all do it over there is so different. (French Poli-Sci is rooted much more in critical analysis of systems, law, and sociology).

As a resident of Massachusetts, I can certainly appreciate your disdain for New Hampshire. Can't really speak for the rest of New England, but I can say that a good portion of Massachusetts residents find New Hampshirites to be incredibly insufferable. Aside from its very undeserved place in American politics, the state defines itself more by what it isn't than what it is. And what it isn't is Massachusetts, its wealthier, healthier, more educated neighbor to the south. New Hamshire's Governor, Kelly Ayotte, has spent the entirety of her term so far basing the "success" of her state against whatever standard Massachusetts has, despite the fact that by every metric, Massachusetts outranks NH by wide margins. Look...I get it. Massholes can be insufferable too. God knows I've seen more scally caps in my life than any person should have to. But at least we take pride in who we are. Plus, there's a reason why New Hampshire is considered the Alabama of New England.