EPISODE 191 — Drizzle, No Apologies

[JulyDiaz 2797]

Stephanie Allynne and Mookie Blaiklock return for a special improv3humans with Matt Besser! They’ll show what it’s like to be in marriage therapy with a husband who has participated in a purity ball, explore what it would be like to flirt with a complete stranger on a public bus, and do their best to introduce the new must wear goggles legislation during a porn shoot. Plus, everyone discusses apology culture in another edition of What’s Bothering You? Make sure to get the Upright Citizens Brigade television show season 3 now available on DVD, the UCB Comedy Improv Manual, and Dragoon’s new album at dragoongalaxy.bandcamp.com!

[Erudite crudite 225]

Great ep! The goggles scene was the highlight.

[Poika 615]

Whenever I see Mookie involved, all I can think of is, "Heee heeeeeee!"

[mikebonetti 3718]

Mookie hasn't been on in a while. Exciting!

[McSmashington 521]

The word "drizzle" will never sound the same again.

[Sleaze_J 253]

I was listening to the new Sun Kil Moon album this week and thought about how great it would be to get Mark Kozelek on i4h. Glad to hear Matty B wants to put that together.

[AndyPacheco-Fores 437]

Whenever I see Mookie involved, all I can think of is, "Heee heeeeeee!"

I fucken, always fucken think of fucken, that fucken cursing juggalo fucken scene

[souprman 10477]

I was listening to the new Sun Kil Moon album this week and thought about how great it would be to get Mark Kozelek on i4h. Glad to hear Matty B wants to put that together.

what the what?.... gotta get this ep in my earhole asap!

[MultipleReferee 176]

Great ep! The goggles scene was the highlight.

 

I think my favorite part of that is where they were (unkowingly, it sounded like) still treating the made-up porn scene like the improvisors they were, not the characters in the scene, hence the kids justification. Which of course, doesn't really fit a porno at all, but a great new game was formed from that. So funny.

 

Although Stephanie did say her character took a 101 class during the previous scene, so... now I'm not so sure. Hmm....

[souprman 10477]

Let's run through all the ways to make love.

 

... C - H.

[Noah 89]

Loved most of the episode, but as is forum tradition, I have come to argue about Matt's rant near the end of the episode.

 

I really cannot understand how on earth Matt considers "but it's just their personality! He was just joking! You can't get mad at someone if it's just their personality!" a valid defense for saying something disgusting or hateful, as if that makes it immune from criticism. Every time a prominent personality says something shitty, do we just have to ignore it because "it's just the way they are?" A Nobel Laureate just resigned over some fucking terrible comments he made about female scientists in a speech. Imagine a scientist that works with him comes out and says "That's just his personality! He was raised in a time where women did not work alongside men, so its not his fault He was just kidding!" Does that make what he said OK?

 

We have heard you on this very podcast kick someone out of a show for calling another audience member a faggot. According to your logic, that was unfair. For all we know, he was just kidding! It was just his personality! In real life he loves gay people and treats them equally! He called them a faggot as a joke!

 

What Mark did to a women WHO JUST WANTED TO INTERVIEW HIM OVER EMAIL was clearly over the line. Singing "she totally wants to fuck me” and “get in line, bitch" on stage and saying things like "I’m the best person you never met and one day, if you ever meet me, you’ll probably want to have my baby" is scumbag misogynist behavior. No one is preventing you from continuing to support him and no one is stopping Mark from saying it. However, that does not give you the right to tell other people that they can't be offended and that they don't have the right to criticize him for saying that shit.

[souprman 10477]

Loved most of the episode, but as is forum tradition, I have come to argue about Matt's rant near the end of the episode.

 

I really cannot understand how on earth Matt considers "but it's just their personality! He was just joking! You can't get mad at someone if it's just their personality!" a valid defense for saying something disgusting or hateful, as if that makes it immune from criticism. Every time a prominent personality says something shitty, do we just have to ignore it because "it's just the way they are?" A Nobel Laureate just resigned over some fucking terrible comments he made about female scientists in a speech. Imagine a scientist that works with him comes out and says "That's just his personality! He was raised in a time where women did not work alongside men, so its not his fault He was just kidding!" Does that make what he said OK?

 

We have heard you on this very podcast kick someone out of a show for calling another audience member a faggot. According to your logic, that was unfair. For all we know, he was just kidding! It was just his personality! In real life he loves gay people and treats them equally! He called them a faggot as a joke!

 

What Mark did to a women WHO JUST WANTED TO INTERVIEW HIM OVER EMAIL was clearly over the line. Singing "she totally wants to fuck me” and “get in line, bitch" on stage and saying things like "I’m the best person you never met and one day, if you ever meet me, you’ll probably want to have my baby" is scumbag misogynist behavior. No one is preventing you from continuing to support him and no one is stopping Mark from saying it. However, that does not give you the right to tell other people that they can't be offended and that they don't have the right to criticize him for saying that shit.

You somehow missed the whole point about context. The question is; does this person have an agenda or do they behave in an equally "offensive" way towards everyone. The point is not that understanding context makes it "okay", it's that it doesn't need to be looked at as either okay or not if you can wrap your brain around the subtleties of the situation. Also I didn't hear any instruction from Besser NOT to be offended, he's just pointing that you're kinda weak, whiny, sad, and pathetic if you are. And if you seriously think that calling someone a faggot in public out of context from the performance, and a satirical song about how someone wants to fuck someone else that directly addresses the subject as introduced by the performer are analogous, you are completely lost. If a woman had said those exact lines it would be funny to people. If your whole point is that Besser doesn't have the right to tell people not to be offended, I guess I have to wonder what gives you the right to tell him he can't say that? That was a rhetorical question btw.

[Noah 89]

Regarding the "equal opportunity offender" defense, I think it's total bullshit. Making fun of white guys is NOT the same as saying something misogynistic or racist. The difference is that white men in America do not face discrimination at any significant level. They dominant the world socially, economically, and politically. Jokes about how white people can't dance, or how much they like Whole Foods, or how dorky they dress does not impact their employment opportunities, social standing, or political power. Meanwhile, when you make jokes about women or black people, you are making fun of a group that already is getting shit on by society. You are supporting behavior and sterotypes that contribute to discrimination.

 

In Mark Kozelek's case, saying "I’m the best person you never met and one day, if you ever meet me, you’ll probably want to have my baby" and singing she "totally wants to fuck me" implies that female journalists are unable to do their job without getting distracted and wanted to fuck their subject. It is degrading, and contributes to the notion that female journalists shouldn't be taken seriously.

[Veegs 59]

You somehow missed the whole point about context. The question is; does this person have an agenda or do they behave in an equally "offensive" way towards everyone. The point is not that understanding context makes it "okay", it's that it doesn't need to be looked at as either okay or not if you can wrap your brain around the subtleties of the situation. Also I didn't hear any instruction from Besser NOT to be offended, he's just pointing that you're kinda weak, whiny, sad, and pathetic if you are. And if you seriously think that calling someone a faggot in public out of context from the performance, and a satirical song about how someone wants to fuck someone else that directly addresses the subject as introduced by the performer are analogous, you are completely lost. If a woman had said those exact lines it would be funny to people. If your whole point is that Besser doesn't have the right to tell people not to be offended, I guess I have to wonder what gives you the right to tell him he can't say that? That was a rhetorical question btw.

No you're the one missing the point. He doesn't behave in an equally offensive way to all people. I can understand why some of the War on Drugs stuff could come off as homophobic, but this stuff at the concert is so overtly misogynist. There's a difference between "just being an asshole" and demeaning someone based on race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. By definition it's impossible for him to be that offensive to straight white men. It's fine if his thing is being a jerk or if his schtick is all about being abrasive in an unfunny way, but one can do this without trying to tear someone down based on their gender/race/whatever. Besser tears into all kinds of people all the time on the show and uses offensive language in the process, but the actual joke and the actual criticism is never directed to a historically disadvantaged group of people. With the Kozelek song, the joke is specifically demeaning to women in general.

[souprman 10477]

Regarding the "equal opportunity offender" defense, I think it's total bullshit. Making fun of white guys is NOT the same as saying something misogynistic or racist. The difference is that white men in America do not face discrimination at any significant level. They dominant the world socially, economically, and politically. Jokes about how white people can't dance, or how much they like Whole Foods, or how dorky they dress does not impact their employment opportunities, social standing, or political power. Meanwhile, when you make jokes about women or black people, you are making fun of a group that already is getting shit on by society. You are supporting behavior and sterotypes that contribute to discrimination.

 

In Mark Kozelek's case, saying "I’m the best person you never met and one day, if you ever meet me, you’ll probably want to have my baby" and singing she "totally wants to fuck me" implies that female journalists are unable to do their job without getting distracted and wanted to fuck their subject. It is degrading, and contributes to the notion that female journalists shouldn't be taken seriously.

so your two points are;

 

1. discrimination against those who have not historically been discriminated against is okay.

2. some crazy shit about how you are able to wildly read subtext into things that are not explicit or apparent on any level and don't actually address the subject at hand.

 

cool.

[souprman 10477]

No you're the one missing the point. He doesn't behave in an equally offensive way to all people. I can understand why some of the War on Drugs stuff could come off as homophobic, but this stuff at the concert is so overtly misogynist. There's a difference between "just being an asshole" and demeaning someone based on race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. By definition it's impossible for him to be that offensive to straight white men. It's fine if his thing is being a jerk or if his schtick is all about being abrasive in an unfunny way, but one can do this without trying to tear someone down based on their gender/race/whatever. Besser tears into all kinds of people all the time on the show and uses offensive language in the process, but the actual joke and the actual criticism is never directed to a historically disadvantaged group of people. With the Kozelek song, the joke is specifically demeaning to women in general.

I feel like that attitude unfairly puts women in the default position of victim no matter what the context. That seems like some kind of inverse misogyny. The point of Kozelek's words weren't; hey this woman is over here being a woman doing these women things stupid women can't help but doing cause she's a woman, y'know because I uniformly am attacking an entire gender.

 

Steph Allynne says it best at 1:15:09.

[NathanJPK 104]

No you're the one missing the point. He doesn't behave in an equally offensive way to all people. I can understand why some of the War on Drugs stuff could come off as homophobic, but this stuff at the concert is so overtly misogynist. There's a difference between "just being an asshole" and demeaning someone based on race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. By definition it's impossible for him to be that offensive to straight white men. It's fine if his thing is being a jerk or if his schtick is all about being abrasive in an unfunny way, but one can do this without trying to tear someone down based on their gender/race/whatever. Besser tears into all kinds of people all the time on the show and uses offensive language in the process, but the actual joke and the actual criticism is never directed to a historically disadvantaged group of people. With the Kozelek song, the joke is specifically demeaning to women in general.

 

The point you seem to be missing in this story is that the journalist seems to have been aggressively pursuing Kozelek for an interview, and even went so far as to say, when he declined a face to face interview and made a mockery of the email interview, that she was going to interview his friends about him. That's fucked up, in itself. If you're a journalist who is trying to get an interview with someone famous who historically doesn't like to be interviewed and is a known asshole, what do you expect when you move beyond the boundaries they have for themselves? It is a very underhanded move to interview friends of a person because you cannot get direct access to that person. Kozelek deserves his privacy as much as the next person. Was what he said silly and stupid? Of course, but I am not sure he deserves the widespread condemnation that he has been getting recently. His song was not demeaning to ALL female journalists, it was demeaning to one female journalist who overstepped the boundaries of the person she was trying desperately to interview. And to what end? It's not like Kozelek has some secret knowledge and he just won't share it with the rest of us - he's just a guy that plays sad bastard music, and surprise, he's a bastard. And, further, as a singer-songwriter, I would imagine most of his output is completely to mostly autobiographical, why does he need to answer boilerplate questions when you can gain an understanding of who he is through his art?

 

Ian MacKaye of Discord Records/Fugazi gets the same kind of bullshit heaped on him because he doesn't like giving interviews. He's not a jerk, he's just a guy doing what he loves and doesn't need to sit down and explain his day to day life to some jackass music journalist.

[Veegs 59]

I feel like that attitude unfairly puts women in the default position of victim no matter what the context. That seems like some kind of inverse misogyny. The point of Kozelek's words weren't; hey this woman is over here being a woman doing these women things stupid women can't help but doing cause she's a woman, y'know because I uniformly am attacking an entire gender.

 

Steph Allynne says it best at 1:15:09.

No you can still attack a woman for being stupid, but you can do so in language without attacking a whole gender. It would be within Kozelek's rights to get to say, "She's stupid and I hate people like her", because that's not attacking her, not her gender. What he did say was that she was a bitch, while insinuating she was a weak-willed woman who was only annoying him because she couldn't control her sexual desire for him. Surely you can see the difference between pointing out individual flaws within a specific person rather than attacking an entire gender?

 

Stephanie's point is valid in general, but I don't feel it's applicable to the situation. It would be more applicable if a website was to post a headline saying, "Mookie Blaiklock calss Stephanie Allyne 'a bitch' on i4h", because, in context, you can tell Mookie is making fun of stupid men. Kozelek, whether intentionally or not, did attack someone based on gender, and an attack of this nature is going to be unacceptable pretty much always.

[souprman 10477]

trollin'?

[souprman 10477]

No you can still attack a woman for being stupid, but you can do so in language without attacking a whole gender. It would be within Kozelek's rights to get to say, "She's stupid and I hate people like her", because that's not attacking her, not her gender. What he did say was that she was a bitch, while insinuating she was a weak-willed woman who was only annoying him because she couldn't control her sexual desire for him. Surely you can see the difference between pointing out individual flaws within a specific person rather than attacking an entire gender?

 

Stephanie's point is valid in general, but I don't feel it's applicable to the situation. It would be more applicable if a website was to post a headline saying, "Mookie Blaiklock calss Stephanie Allyne 'a bitch' on i4h", because, in context, you can tell Mookie is making fun of stupid men. Kozelek, whether intentionally or not, did attack someone based on gender, and an attack of this nature is going to be unacceptable pretty much always.

so any time female gender is part of the context of an insult it is hate-speech and misogyny?

[Veegs 59]

 

The point you seem to be missing in this story is that the journalist seems to have been aggressively pursuing Kozelek for an interview, and even went so far as to say, when he declined a face to face interview and made a mockery of the email interview, that she was going to interview his friends about him. That's fucked up, in itself. If you're a journalist who is trying to get an interview with someone famous who historically doesn't like to be interviewed and is a known asshole, what do you expect when you move beyond the boundaries they have for themselves? It is a very underhanded move to interview friends of a person because you cannot get direct access to that person. Kozelek deserves his privacy as much as the next person. Was what he said silly and stupid? Of course, but I am not sure he deserves the widespread condemnation that he has been getting recently. His song was not demeaning to ALL female journalists, it was demeaning to one female journalist who overstepped the boundaries of the person she was trying desperately to interview. And to what end? It's not like Kozelek has some secret knowledge and he just won't share it with the rest of us - he's just a guy that plays sad bastard music, and surprise, he's a bastard. And, further, as a singer-songwriter, I would imagine most of his output is completely to mostly autobiographical, why does he need to answer boilerplate questions when you can gain an understanding of who he is through his art?

 

Ian MacKaye of Discord Records/Fugazi gets the same kind of bullshit heaped on him because he doesn't like giving interviews. He's not a jerk, he's just a guy doing what he loves and doesn't need to sit down and explain his day to day life to some jackass music journalist.

Once again, you can be a jerk and not give interviews or whatever without being a misogynist. It's not offensive not to cooperate with journalists. What is offensive is to attack people based on gender, and, while his comments might have been inspired by the behavior of one individual, the language and implication of what he said is simply offensive in general. If a woman cut me off in traffic and I said she was a bitch who couldn't drive, that would be offensive, regardless of the fact that it was caused by the behavior of a single individual and directed at this one individual.

[Veegs 59]

so any time female gender is part of the context of an insult it is hate-speech and misogyny?

What are you trying to say? Calling someone a bitch is misogynistic. Calling someone a pussy is misogynist, as I believe Besser himself mentioned offhandedly on this podcast a few weeks ago (it could be another podcast, I listen to too many). To bring it back to the homophobia example surely you could recognize that if someone was to use the word faggot as an insult that would be hateful and insulting to all gay people? Why would it be any different for women?

[souprman 10477]

 

The point you seem to be missing in this story is that the journalist seems to have been aggressively pursuing Kozelek for an interview, and even went so far as to say, when he declined a face to face interview and made a mockery of the email interview, that she was going to interview his friends about him. That's fucked up, in itself. If you're a journalist who is trying to get an interview with someone famous who historically doesn't like to be interviewed and is a known asshole, what do you expect when you move beyond the boundaries they have for themselves? It is a very underhanded move to interview friends of a person because you cannot get direct access to that person. Kozelek deserves his privacy as much as the next person. Was what he said silly and stupid? Of course, but I am not sure he deserves the widespread condemnation that he has been getting recently. His song was not demeaning to ALL female journalists, it was demeaning to one female journalist who overstepped the boundaries of the person she was trying desperately to interview. And to what end? It's not like Kozelek has some secret knowledge and he just won't share it with the rest of us - he's just a guy that plays sad bastard music, and surprise, he's a bastard. And, further, as a singer-songwriter, I would imagine most of his output is completely to mostly autobiographical, why does he need to answer boilerplate questions when you can gain an understanding of who he is through his art?

 

Ian MacKaye of Discord Records/Fugazi gets the same kind of bullshit heaped on him because he doesn't like giving interviews. He's not a jerk, he's just a guy doing what he loves and doesn't need to sit down and explain his day to day life to some jackass music journalist.

This needs to be said - Kozelek has at least a dozen songs about how much he loves his cats, I am not kidding. How bad can the guy be?

 

here's proof-

 

[souprman 10477]

What are you trying to say? Calling someone a bitch is misogynistic. Calling someone a pussy is misogynist, as I believe Besser himself mentioned offhandedly on this podcast a few weeks ago (it could be another podcast, I listen to too many). To bring it back to the homophobia example surely you could recognize that if someone was to use the word faggot as an insult that would be hateful and insulting to all gay people? Why would it be any different for women?

men have been calling each other bitches for a long time - is that just a roundabout misogyny? I agree calling someone a pussy is so because there is no other context for it. funny how that word context keeps coming up, as though nothing is just completely good or bad black or white. hmmm...

[Veegs 59]

men have been calling each other bitches for a long time - is that just a roundabout misogyny? I agree calling someone a pussy is so because there is no other context for it. funny how that word context keeps coming up, as though nothing is just completely good or bad black or white. hmmm...

So if two straight men called each other faggots it wouldn't be homophobic? The word context keeps coming up because it's the entire basis of your faulty argument.