Great podcast. Lots of fun. But two things stood out:
1. Of course being right about Covid should matter. And of course l those that were right about it hold on to the ridicule from 2020 and 2021 and of course those who were wrong about it don’t want to talk about it anymore.
2. Nick Wright saying that the lefty bent of ESPN and others is now gone and they just want equal treatment in getting rid of any righty bent is quite literally insane. Perhaps the extreme left from 2020 has been silenced but sports media is still loudly lefty and for Nick to say otherwise (because of his priors) is a big miss.
Ethan has the clear eyed view of this. There’s no need to be an Aaron Rodgers fan or defend everything he said. But his position on Covid was correct and Kimmel’s was wrong and Rodgers suffered for it (partly of his own volition but not primarily) and Kimmel was rewarded for it. Kimmel then continued to double down on Rodgers by using the Epstein clip and got burned for it but once again, it’s Kimmel who’s the hero and Rodgers the villain.
So, the argument is that we were too careful/cautious with the "biggest worldwide emergency since WWII"??? Are we in agreement that somewhere around 1m Americans died from Covid? If so, how many more people would have died had we been not been careful/cautious enough?
Personally, I agree that some precautions went too far but I also feel that the overwhelming majority of the measures taken were in good faith and reasonable in the moment as well as in hindsight.
I'm also not sure what we should be apologizing for. If you ask healthy people what their one wish in life would be, you'd get an infinite amount of different answers. If you ask a sick person what their one wish would be, just about every answer would be health. For every small business that failed or kid who fell behind in reading or math, I'm sure countless of their elderly/obese/immune compromised friends and family members' lives were saved because of the precautions taken and the vaccine.
Well, here’s a small list that’s far from definitive but is definitely a good start - please note this applies to actions taken after the Spring of 2020 when there were still lots of unknowns:
1. Shutdowns
- Schools!!!
- Businesses!
- Places of worship!
- Parks/Beaches, etc.
2. Mandates
- Mask
- Vaccine and the resulting terminations
- Social distancing
3. Censorship
- Medical professionals against other medical professionals and out-of-favor groups (protests and funerals for me but none for thee)
- Covid lab origin
- Social media
You may feel like you still didn’t have enough information but that’s simply not true. You may feel like you and others who shared your POV had the best of intentions and that might be true but is quite irrelevant. We still apologize when we are wrong even when we meant well.
As for the above, the actions were either scientifically unsound (once we knew the old and infirm were the ones at risk), scientifically illiterate as Dr. Fauci confirmed yesterday with social distancing and his long confirmed flip/flop on masks, or just plain old moral cowardice when it came to bowing to the teachers’ unions and acceding to progressive demonstrations.
Incalculable damage was done to billions of people including hundreds of millions of Americans with kids being the hardest hit. Sometimes apologies aren’t enough and a further reckoning with accountability must be done but stubbornly not even being willing to try to apologize speaks ill of one’s moral character.
A scared person will give up all of his rights, too, for the promise of safety. Using the wishes and desires of the most desperate as evidence for your argument is quite weak, no offense.
Also, the good faith argument loses credibility when it was decided big companies can remain open while smile companies must shutdown. It was a bit more nuanced, but generally speaking that is how the shutdown operated.
"Personally, I agree that some precautions went too far but I also feel that the overwhelming majority of the measures taken were in good faith and reasonable in the moment as well as in hindsight."
The decision by many jurisdictions to keep schools virtual in fall of 2020 was indefensible, both in the moment and especially in hindsight. My son's preschool was communicating with parents in July 2020 about the extent and effort they were taking to get the school ready for in-person and how they were going to do so safely. Meanwhile the local public schools were sitting on their hands waiting to turn on their Zoom sessions.
The term "asynchronous learning" should be banished from K-12 lexicon.
Based on reported COVID‐19 deaths, vaccinations prevented an estimated 14.4 million deaths from COVID‐19 in a year. However, if excess deaths were used, this estimate rose to 19.8 million deaths prevented, equating to a global reduction of 63% in total deaths during the first year of COVID‐19 vaccination.
Per the appendix this is a study of deaths of individuals with positive COVID-19 tests and presumes a linear mortality rate regardless of prior exposure to Delta.
I might buy the majority, but not the "overwhelming majority". The issue became heavily politicized pretty quickly, and certainly the figures at the center (Fauci, etc.) of all this seem to have been not acting in good faith at all.
What were the better ideas for stopping the spread of a highly contagious, air-born virus than social distancing and masks? These were just common sense, low-stakes measures. If these things weren't ridiculed and politicized from the beginning, maybe all the rules and regulations wouldn't have had to been so draconian (and, yes, I agree that the mandates went too far but also agree with Ethan that, in some cases, would've been completely reasonable).
It's one thing for the government to step in and save you from yourself and a completely other thing to protect people from others.
The reasonable critique is not Spring 2020, it's Summer 2020 and onward... It's the policies of the government after we knew crucial information, like.... The virus wasn't spread outdoors (kept playgrounds/outdoor areas closed), kids are remarkably low risk of severity of infection and spreading it (schools stayed closed because of teachers unions), the vaccine is about protecting yourself and not preventing spread to to others (forced vaccine mandates), certain cohorts are remarkably low risk (required college dorms required vaccinated anyway), etc. etc.
If you give government "leaders" a pass for that crap when other countries and plenty of scientists/journalists/economists were pointing that out AT THE TIME (in wacko institutions like The Atlantic, MIT, Stanford, NYTimes, etc), then I don't know what to tell you...
I distinctly remember listening to a slew of podcasts with guests on who were warning of the psychological developmental harm of kids wearing masks (when we knew they didn't anything for 4 year olds), the disproportionate effect of school closures on low income households, the health consequences of keeping people indoors (oh, except for the correct political protests!), etc.
Sorry man, the evidence is too strong on those years to try and memory hole it that quickly.
It is quite clear in retrospect that social distancing and masks (or at least as they were implemented in America) had no impact on the spread of a highly contagious, air-born virus.
There is plenty of evidence that suggests that masks and social distancing did save lives/lower transmission (with actual cooperation). And I'm sure you can find plenty of evidence to support your claims as well *shrug*
This was great, and I normally hate argument podcasts. Actually felt productive. Some thoughts:
* I think Nick is right that there's no question Rodgers was trying to jokingly insinuate that Kimmel was on or near The List, but I think he's wrong to discount Kimmel's role in starting the feud over it.
* The one place I thought Ethan was 100% right and Nick was 100% wrong (most places I felt like I moved a little toward either direction when they made good points) is that I don't think Rodgers being a primadonna QB has any effect at all on why Kimmel started in on him or why the 95% of America that doesn't obsess over NFL player movement cares. It's entirely about his vax status.
* When Ethan started with "I think there's a double standard..." I thought he was going to end with the thing I was screaming internally: There's zero chance that anyone in the media is concerned about dangerous accusations if the roles were reversed and Kimmel was like, "Aaron seems really concerned about the list, I wonder if he's worried about who's on it." Then it would be a joke by a comedian and Rodgers would be a loser for threatening legal action on Twitter.
Yeah Ethan saying it doesn’t matter what Aaron meant when he said JK is on the list was totally insane, it definitely matters, Nick was spot on in regards to your first point.
Def agreed w Ethan here. This is not minority report. There are no thought crimes. AR did not say JK was worried about being on the list, or on the list.
It’s all about Covid. I thought the Kimmel “community college” comment was reminiscent when Killion at the chronicle did the same thing about his Covid stances. He’s not smart enough! As a 40 year old past “liberal” it’s funny to see the Wrights of the world be so mad he was questioning the government. Like ok do what? Enjoyable show nonetheless
Don't refer to someone by the wrong pronoun because it's bullying....belittle someone for not following the same educational path as elites? No problem there! So naturally it follows that the only reason why someone wouldn't care for what Jimmy Kimmel has to say is, "misinformation".
Kimmel (a professional comedian) has been teasing Rodgers for being gullible and stupid for years. Rodgers (not a good deliverer of comedic quips) tried teasing Kimmel back for being naive and uncritical.
That's how I read that. And Wright talking about how Rodgers is "dangerous" reeks of the same people in our society who justify censorship to "protect" others. This is the same Wright who said to those who didn't like Angel Reece taunting ("that bothered me, and it had nothing to do with race") "yes it did". An entertainer and sharp person? Yes. An insightful understander of cultural moments? Not really. A brave truth teller? Hell no.
This podcast is crazy, Nick reminds me of the people who believed in the Mayan calender and keep moving the date. I love it, I love passionately wrong people lol.
Wright saying Rodgers went down the "internet rabbit hole until it became their own reality" is the exact kind of sentiment that motivates and spurs reactions from Rodgers. The reality is that in that "rabbit hole" there were almost certainly things Rodgers was correct about (regarding COVID) as well as things that he was incorrect on. For example, i'm sure Rodgers was listening to Jay Bhattacharya long before Wright and that's because of the "rabbit hole". He probably knew of the research on outside transmission being low enough to not justify outdoor masks earlier than Wright. Wright would say the typical line "well we were all learning! We didn't know what we know now!" Bullshit. Some people knew things years before others did, and many people who he dismisses as crazy were aware of that months and even years before others. All that is to say his overly simplistic retelling of how all that played out isn't accurate.
His totalizing dismissal of Rodger's dive into what could more accurately be described as "alternative media" reflects an arrogance that isn't very appealing to a lot of people.
Just wanted to give you a head's up that Jason Whitlock sent you some love and read an excerpt from your Aaron Rodger's substack yesterday on Fearless. It was around the 15 minute mark. Anyways, you should invite him on your show and paywall it.
Only halfway through. Have him on more. I genuinely can’t believe how seemingly convinced Wright is on this. But I’m not sure it’s bad faith. I guess people of good faith really can disagree passionately...
My takeaway is that, yes, the two of you are arguing the two polar sides of this argument, but the reason it's interesting and ultimately good is because both of you are interested in arguing in good faith. If we had more of this in media the public wouldn't be so misinformed in general.
As far as some of these comments re: Covid, I think that those of you who had your lives turned upside down late into 2020 should focus your blame on your state and local officials and less on Trump/Biden/Fauci et al. I live in Birmingham, AL. Our schools and businesses were shut down for about three months and then all of us basically said "nah" and everything opened back up. School was back in-person by August 2020. My kid was playing in baseball tournaments by July 2020. Ultimately the federal government didn't *mandate* anything. They just gave guidance and a lot of the states then decided to take away people's freedoms. And I'm not saying living in a red state is even that great- they don't do enough to help public schools, they don't do enough to help the poor, they won't let women get abortions- but when it came to Covid they actually got it right
I couldn’t take hearing Nick’s shrill voice and emotional charged response to Ethan’s article more than 5 minutes. Just make the point or attack the argument without the hysteria. He had to resort to that because Ethan framed the situation accurately — undermining the narrative from sports’ media members like Nick.
Nick is someone who tries too hard to demonstrate he’s an ally. It comprises his quality of thought on these issues because his primary motive is signalling… and I just can’t find conversations with those people interesting.
I agree on the ally thing, but I don't think that's his primary motivation. I think he avoids takes that go against the grain because it's more important to him to be liked.
Where NW lost me is when he said that Rodgers was a guy "with a platform" who was saying irresponsible things and those things need to be called out/corrected.
I'm just so over this type of policing. On a daily basis we are all inundated with information from people with platforms large and school. Some of the information might be correct, wrong, missing context, fabricated, mostly true, misleading, etc. But going out of one's way to correct it or to partake in a virtual campaign to stigmatize such information doesn't matter unless you're looking to chase clout.
I just hope as a society we move past this at some point.
I can't recall another interview with ESS where the guest was trying to mask an strong emotion to the topic, in this case Aaron Rodgers. NW's disgust w Rodgers was so obvious against ESS just talking facts perspective. Wonderful interview, rare poor showing for NW. I was very curious to read if others felt similar!
I still find ESS's 'just the facts' reading of Rodgers statements overly contrarian and legalistic. Rodgers did not actually say that Kimmell or friend's are on Epstein's list word for word but only anyone that isn't a computer should be able to see the implied meaning. I'm not afraid to admit my opinions are motivated by emotion. I am skeptical of people that go to lengths to claim that they operate from strictly reason. Even wanting to be fair is motivated by emotion. Most our opinions are back filled with reason. I agreed with NW here even though I am loath to admit that I now have an opinion on the hair splitting of this inexact public cat fight.
Is it not natural when someone threatens a lawsuit to view the interactions in a legal way?
Personally, I don't see why it matters if AR implied that or not. You throw mud, you get dirty. Kimmel thought everyone but the AR contingent was on his side, but many people from all walks of life thought he sounded pathetic.
Sort of like athletes bringing up their earnings to counter criticism. It's an automatic L, in most instances. Publicly threatening a lawsuit over words is an automatic L.
When I heard AR words I thought he was implying JK was an elitist. Part of the decision making class collectively protecting prominent names involved with Epstein. I didn't think he accused JK of pedophilia because he didn't say that.
Threatening a lawsuit in a tweet (or however he did it) is a long way from actually filing a lawsuit. JK hasn't filed a lawsuit just like AR hasn't called JK a pedophile. If he files a lawsuit, that will be stupid and probably won't succeed. I don't really care about either of these guys getting dirty. I don't think we should be getting more overly serious about it than either them seem to be. This is mostly all argument for sport. * Edit- Argument for sport for us and argument for profit for JK, AR, and ESS.*
Great podcast. Lots of fun. But two things stood out:
1. Of course being right about Covid should matter. And of course l those that were right about it hold on to the ridicule from 2020 and 2021 and of course those who were wrong about it don’t want to talk about it anymore.
2. Nick Wright saying that the lefty bent of ESPN and others is now gone and they just want equal treatment in getting rid of any righty bent is quite literally insane. Perhaps the extreme left from 2020 has been silenced but sports media is still loudly lefty and for Nick to say otherwise (because of his priors) is a big miss.
Ethan has the clear eyed view of this. There’s no need to be an Aaron Rodgers fan or defend everything he said. But his position on Covid was correct and Kimmel’s was wrong and Rodgers suffered for it (partly of his own volition but not primarily) and Kimmel was rewarded for it. Kimmel then continued to double down on Rodgers by using the Epstein clip and got burned for it but once again, it’s Kimmel who’s the hero and Rodgers the villain.
Must be nice.
So, the argument is that we were too careful/cautious with the "biggest worldwide emergency since WWII"??? Are we in agreement that somewhere around 1m Americans died from Covid? If so, how many more people would have died had we been not been careful/cautious enough?
Personally, I agree that some precautions went too far but I also feel that the overwhelming majority of the measures taken were in good faith and reasonable in the moment as well as in hindsight.
I'm also not sure what we should be apologizing for. If you ask healthy people what their one wish in life would be, you'd get an infinite amount of different answers. If you ask a sick person what their one wish would be, just about every answer would be health. For every small business that failed or kid who fell behind in reading or math, I'm sure countless of their elderly/obese/immune compromised friends and family members' lives were saved because of the precautions taken and the vaccine.
Excellent question. What apologies are owed?
Well, here’s a small list that’s far from definitive but is definitely a good start - please note this applies to actions taken after the Spring of 2020 when there were still lots of unknowns:
1. Shutdowns
- Schools!!!
- Businesses!
- Places of worship!
- Parks/Beaches, etc.
2. Mandates
- Mask
- Vaccine and the resulting terminations
- Social distancing
3. Censorship
- Medical professionals against other medical professionals and out-of-favor groups (protests and funerals for me but none for thee)
- Covid lab origin
- Social media
You may feel like you still didn’t have enough information but that’s simply not true. You may feel like you and others who shared your POV had the best of intentions and that might be true but is quite irrelevant. We still apologize when we are wrong even when we meant well.
As for the above, the actions were either scientifically unsound (once we knew the old and infirm were the ones at risk), scientifically illiterate as Dr. Fauci confirmed yesterday with social distancing and his long confirmed flip/flop on masks, or just plain old moral cowardice when it came to bowing to the teachers’ unions and acceding to progressive demonstrations.
Incalculable damage was done to billions of people including hundreds of millions of Americans with kids being the hardest hit. Sometimes apologies aren’t enough and a further reckoning with accountability must be done but stubbornly not even being willing to try to apologize speaks ill of one’s moral character.
A scared person will give up all of his rights, too, for the promise of safety. Using the wishes and desires of the most desperate as evidence for your argument is quite weak, no offense.
Also, the good faith argument loses credibility when it was decided big companies can remain open while smile companies must shutdown. It was a bit more nuanced, but generally speaking that is how the shutdown operated.
"Personally, I agree that some precautions went too far but I also feel that the overwhelming majority of the measures taken were in good faith and reasonable in the moment as well as in hindsight."
The decision by many jurisdictions to keep schools virtual in fall of 2020 was indefensible, both in the moment and especially in hindsight. My son's preschool was communicating with parents in July 2020 about the extent and effort they were taking to get the school ready for in-person and how they were going to do so safely. Meanwhile the local public schools were sitting on their hands waiting to turn on their Zoom sessions.
The term "asynchronous learning" should be banished from K-12 lexicon.
You have evidence for that last claim there buddy?
Based on reported COVID‐19 deaths, vaccinations prevented an estimated 14.4 million deaths from COVID‐19 in a year. However, if excess deaths were used, this estimate rose to 19.8 million deaths prevented, equating to a global reduction of 63% in total deaths during the first year of COVID‐19 vaccination.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9537923/
Per the appendix this is a study of deaths of individuals with positive COVID-19 tests and presumes a linear mortality rate regardless of prior exposure to Delta.
>overwhelming majority of the measures
I might buy the majority, but not the "overwhelming majority". The issue became heavily politicized pretty quickly, and certainly the figures at the center (Fauci, etc.) of all this seem to have been not acting in good faith at all.
What were the better ideas for stopping the spread of a highly contagious, air-born virus than social distancing and masks? These were just common sense, low-stakes measures. If these things weren't ridiculed and politicized from the beginning, maybe all the rules and regulations wouldn't have had to been so draconian (and, yes, I agree that the mandates went too far but also agree with Ethan that, in some cases, would've been completely reasonable).
It's one thing for the government to step in and save you from yourself and a completely other thing to protect people from others.
The reasonable critique is not Spring 2020, it's Summer 2020 and onward... It's the policies of the government after we knew crucial information, like.... The virus wasn't spread outdoors (kept playgrounds/outdoor areas closed), kids are remarkably low risk of severity of infection and spreading it (schools stayed closed because of teachers unions), the vaccine is about protecting yourself and not preventing spread to to others (forced vaccine mandates), certain cohorts are remarkably low risk (required college dorms required vaccinated anyway), etc. etc.
If you give government "leaders" a pass for that crap when other countries and plenty of scientists/journalists/economists were pointing that out AT THE TIME (in wacko institutions like The Atlantic, MIT, Stanford, NYTimes, etc), then I don't know what to tell you...
I distinctly remember listening to a slew of podcasts with guests on who were warning of the psychological developmental harm of kids wearing masks (when we knew they didn't anything for 4 year olds), the disproportionate effect of school closures on low income households, the health consequences of keeping people indoors (oh, except for the correct political protests!), etc.
Sorry man, the evidence is too strong on those years to try and memory hole it that quickly.
This is an outstanding summary. Thank you.
Well you just named two things that didn’t work to stop the virus while imposing large social costs, so we’re off to a great start.
It is quite clear in retrospect that social distancing and masks (or at least as they were implemented in America) had no impact on the spread of a highly contagious, air-born virus.
There is plenty of evidence that suggests that masks and social distancing did save lives/lower transmission (with actual cooperation). And I'm sure you can find plenty of evidence to support your claims as well *shrug*
Can't wait to read this
This was great, and I normally hate argument podcasts. Actually felt productive. Some thoughts:
* I think Nick is right that there's no question Rodgers was trying to jokingly insinuate that Kimmel was on or near The List, but I think he's wrong to discount Kimmel's role in starting the feud over it.
* The one place I thought Ethan was 100% right and Nick was 100% wrong (most places I felt like I moved a little toward either direction when they made good points) is that I don't think Rodgers being a primadonna QB has any effect at all on why Kimmel started in on him or why the 95% of America that doesn't obsess over NFL player movement cares. It's entirely about his vax status.
* When Ethan started with "I think there's a double standard..." I thought he was going to end with the thing I was screaming internally: There's zero chance that anyone in the media is concerned about dangerous accusations if the roles were reversed and Kimmel was like, "Aaron seems really concerned about the list, I wonder if he's worried about who's on it." Then it would be a joke by a comedian and Rodgers would be a loser for threatening legal action on Twitter.
Yeah Ethan saying it doesn’t matter what Aaron meant when he said JK is on the list was totally insane, it definitely matters, Nick was spot on in regards to your first point.
Def agreed w Ethan here. This is not minority report. There are no thought crimes. AR did not say JK was worried about being on the list, or on the list.
It’s all about Covid. I thought the Kimmel “community college” comment was reminiscent when Killion at the chronicle did the same thing about his Covid stances. He’s not smart enough! As a 40 year old past “liberal” it’s funny to see the Wrights of the world be so mad he was questioning the government. Like ok do what? Enjoyable show nonetheless
Don't refer to someone by the wrong pronoun because it's bullying....belittle someone for not following the same educational path as elites? No problem there! So naturally it follows that the only reason why someone wouldn't care for what Jimmy Kimmel has to say is, "misinformation".
the community college comment was really embarrassing for Kimmel
Kimmel (a professional comedian) has been teasing Rodgers for being gullible and stupid for years. Rodgers (not a good deliverer of comedic quips) tried teasing Kimmel back for being naive and uncritical.
That's how I read that. And Wright talking about how Rodgers is "dangerous" reeks of the same people in our society who justify censorship to "protect" others. This is the same Wright who said to those who didn't like Angel Reece taunting ("that bothered me, and it had nothing to do with race") "yes it did". An entertainer and sharp person? Yes. An insightful understander of cultural moments? Not really. A brave truth teller? Hell no.
In a few sentences Woz was more succinct and on point understanding this whole Kimmel/Rodgers fiasco than 2,000+ blabbering words from Wright.
This podcast is crazy, Nick reminds me of the people who believed in the Mayan calender and keep moving the date. I love it, I love passionately wrong people lol.
Lol. This guyis unhinged. Needs to be a regular guest.
Wright saying Rodgers went down the "internet rabbit hole until it became their own reality" is the exact kind of sentiment that motivates and spurs reactions from Rodgers. The reality is that in that "rabbit hole" there were almost certainly things Rodgers was correct about (regarding COVID) as well as things that he was incorrect on. For example, i'm sure Rodgers was listening to Jay Bhattacharya long before Wright and that's because of the "rabbit hole". He probably knew of the research on outside transmission being low enough to not justify outdoor masks earlier than Wright. Wright would say the typical line "well we were all learning! We didn't know what we know now!" Bullshit. Some people knew things years before others did, and many people who he dismisses as crazy were aware of that months and even years before others. All that is to say his overly simplistic retelling of how all that played out isn't accurate.
His totalizing dismissal of Rodger's dive into what could more accurately be described as "alternative media" reflects an arrogance that isn't very appealing to a lot of people.
Hey Ethan,
Just wanted to give you a head's up that Jason Whitlock sent you some love and read an excerpt from your Aaron Rodger's substack yesterday on Fearless. It was around the 15 minute mark. Anyways, you should invite him on your show and paywall it.
Only halfway through. Have him on more. I genuinely can’t believe how seemingly convinced Wright is on this. But I’m not sure it’s bad faith. I guess people of good faith really can disagree passionately...
My takeaway is that, yes, the two of you are arguing the two polar sides of this argument, but the reason it's interesting and ultimately good is because both of you are interested in arguing in good faith. If we had more of this in media the public wouldn't be so misinformed in general.
As far as some of these comments re: Covid, I think that those of you who had your lives turned upside down late into 2020 should focus your blame on your state and local officials and less on Trump/Biden/Fauci et al. I live in Birmingham, AL. Our schools and businesses were shut down for about three months and then all of us basically said "nah" and everything opened back up. School was back in-person by August 2020. My kid was playing in baseball tournaments by July 2020. Ultimately the federal government didn't *mandate* anything. They just gave guidance and a lot of the states then decided to take away people's freedoms. And I'm not saying living in a red state is even that great- they don't do enough to help public schools, they don't do enough to help the poor, they won't let women get abortions- but when it came to Covid they actually got it right
I couldn’t take hearing Nick’s shrill voice and emotional charged response to Ethan’s article more than 5 minutes. Just make the point or attack the argument without the hysteria. He had to resort to that because Ethan framed the situation accurately — undermining the narrative from sports’ media members like Nick.
Nick is someone who tries too hard to demonstrate he’s an ally. It comprises his quality of thought on these issues because his primary motive is signalling… and I just can’t find conversations with those people interesting.
I agree on the ally thing, but I don't think that's his primary motivation. I think he avoids takes that go against the grain because it's more important to him to be liked.
I believe our thoughts are aligned here. His signalling is done in service to be liked by the members of society in good standing.
Nick looks like Tom Green playing Jesus in a movie
Where NW lost me is when he said that Rodgers was a guy "with a platform" who was saying irresponsible things and those things need to be called out/corrected.
I'm just so over this type of policing. On a daily basis we are all inundated with information from people with platforms large and school. Some of the information might be correct, wrong, missing context, fabricated, mostly true, misleading, etc. But going out of one's way to correct it or to partake in a virtual campaign to stigmatize such information doesn't matter unless you're looking to chase clout.
I just hope as a society we move past this at some point.
I can't recall another interview with ESS where the guest was trying to mask an strong emotion to the topic, in this case Aaron Rodgers. NW's disgust w Rodgers was so obvious against ESS just talking facts perspective. Wonderful interview, rare poor showing for NW. I was very curious to read if others felt similar!
"My "Not involved in human trafficking" T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt."
I still find ESS's 'just the facts' reading of Rodgers statements overly contrarian and legalistic. Rodgers did not actually say that Kimmell or friend's are on Epstein's list word for word but only anyone that isn't a computer should be able to see the implied meaning. I'm not afraid to admit my opinions are motivated by emotion. I am skeptical of people that go to lengths to claim that they operate from strictly reason. Even wanting to be fair is motivated by emotion. Most our opinions are back filled with reason. I agreed with NW here even though I am loath to admit that I now have an opinion on the hair splitting of this inexact public cat fight.
Is it not natural when someone threatens a lawsuit to view the interactions in a legal way?
Personally, I don't see why it matters if AR implied that or not. You throw mud, you get dirty. Kimmel thought everyone but the AR contingent was on his side, but many people from all walks of life thought he sounded pathetic.
Sort of like athletes bringing up their earnings to counter criticism. It's an automatic L, in most instances. Publicly threatening a lawsuit over words is an automatic L.
When I heard AR words I thought he was implying JK was an elitist. Part of the decision making class collectively protecting prominent names involved with Epstein. I didn't think he accused JK of pedophilia because he didn't say that.
Threatening a lawsuit in a tweet (or however he did it) is a long way from actually filing a lawsuit. JK hasn't filed a lawsuit just like AR hasn't called JK a pedophile. If he files a lawsuit, that will be stupid and probably won't succeed. I don't really care about either of these guys getting dirty. I don't think we should be getting more overly serious about it than either them seem to be. This is mostly all argument for sport. * Edit- Argument for sport for us and argument for profit for JK, AR, and ESS.*
Threatening someone with a lawsuit doesn’t mean you’re going to file one in real life, but it does show that you’re MAD ONLINE.
Please bring back Wos and/or Amin to cleanse my ears 😂😂