2794-COVID Wished Away, The Republican Culture War, and Are Birds Real? w/ Heather Digby Parton and Peter McIndoe

It's Casual Friday! Sam hosts Heather Digby Parton, contributing writer at Salon.com and proprietor of the blog Hullabaloo, to round up the week in news. Although technical difficulties cut the episode slightly short, Digby and Sam touch on the two year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the COVID-19 Pandemic, diving into what we’ve learned about our rampant individualist culture, and the complete decimation of our government’s capacity to do anything – from the fact we still have no assessment of the role long COVID truly plays, to the absence of any infrastructure or apparatus to prepare or deal with future waves. Next, they walk through Biden’s reactions to the invasion of Ukraine, from his steadfast commitment to keeping the US out of the actual warfare to his rhetoric around American energy independence, before diving into the failures in putting this rhetoric into practice, as he goes from discussing this independence from oil to flaunting the US’s oil production. This brings them to the failure of Democratic leadership since Biden’s arrival at the White House, and the myriad steps along the way, and then they wrap up with the surprisingly not-devastating effects of the recent round of gerrymandering on the Democrats. Next, the Public Information Officer for independent organization “Birds Aren’t Real,” Peter McIndoe joins as he takes on mainstream media’s refusal to do any research, and insistence on shutting down alternative opinions, before he dives fully into his organization’s project, and how they’ve been fighting against takedowns by CNN and the New York Times. Sam also touches on the return of baseball, the collapse of the Iran deal, and Biden’s potential reversal of Title 42.

And in the Fun Half: Sam watches Sean Hannity do his best to lead Trump to water, but can’t make him not come out as pro-authoritarian leaders worldwide, as he insists Putin, Xi, and Kim Jong-Un understood him better than he understood himself. Laura Ingraham continues her tradition of using her journalistic “integrity” to do whatever she can to make the world more dangerous for queer folks, and Ben Carson reminds the “LGB-whatever” community that they matter. Sam also dives into the Democrats’ inability to portray the right in any honest and toxic light, and Andrew Callaghan’s coverage of the alt-right’s changing takes on Putin, plus, your IMs!

 

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