Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

ooh look a second politics thread

can someone explain to me what the hell michael rappaport's deal is? like i only recently figured out he did that ATCQ documentary thing (haven't seen it) and is a comedian/actor that's been in a bunch of stuff, but apparently he's also the broiest man alive and beefs with his teen son on twitter?

if this is too much of a sidebar i'll take it elsewhere

― mh 😏, Wednesday, January 4, 2017 9:50 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't have the answer, tho I thought the teen son beef thing was somehow faked? idk I guess id like to know the deal too. he was a gd actor circa 20 yrs ago

ooh look a second politics thread

Sad lol, I swear this was not my intention

anyway imo these guys suck

expand on that

no

Good man.

ooh look a second politics thread

― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson)

holy shit, never would have predicted a discussion about a political podcast would turn political. is nothing safe anymore?

We should be taking about what kind of mics these guys use.

Yeah tbh their shitty mic situation turned me off at first. Way too tinny.

these dudes sound pretty unpleasant tbh

oh, the smelling salts

I guess more than general politics stuff I'm interested in new and (relatively) popular manifestations of dissent from the far left

I think it's interesting to compare/contrast their approach with (I guess?) their closest Canadian counterpart, the crowdfunded media criticism network Canadaland, which is much less dirtbag-y and more academic but similarly inclined to mock the pundit class. Their attempts to become a broader outlet of sorts has been hampered by their lack of dough.

ooh look a second politics thread

― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson)

holy shit, never would have predicted a discussion about a political podcast would turn political. is nothing safe anymore?

― increasingly bonkers (rushomancy), Wednesday, January 4, 2017 10:43 AM (forty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're right, nm, change my answer to: thrilled to have identical circular fights for the next four years

sorry for the sarcasm. i too get tired of the same old shit propagating itself in new forms, particularly when the cause of the propagation is to try and escape the old forms. but we're all the same people, and we wind up saying the same things no matter what thread we do it on. my conclusion is that this particular medium is currently unsuited to meaningful political discussion.

we should start a podcast

you clearly haven't heard my lisp

didn't stop Mike Cernovitch

its premium only but the reign over me episode was pretty amazing. as punditry you can get the same stuff from lots of places, and tbh the more political import people imbue the show with i think the more boring its going to get. the anarchic structure and comedic stuff is what keeps me coming around. the part i find the dullest, because i actually already spend too much time on twitter is the "this week on weird twitter" roundup where i already know most of the stuff they're covering. the reading series is better to the extent i wouldn't have encountered this stuff otherwise, and to the extent they can find real gems. there was one where they had the niall ferguson article comparing brexit to divorce which was pretty great. stuff like that is where the vulgarity shines -- where there's already this insanely pathological sexual not-so-subtext to things and it deserves to be stated openly with appropriate language.

again it was a fish in a barrel type deal but the Ben Shapiro book reading segment was v funny

Chapo trap house is great. One of the few reliable sources of levity for me over the past year as things became increasingly bleak.

A lot of the show's detractors have clearly never even listened to an episode. They seem to get the idea that the show is some kind of left wing version of early 2000s hipster Vice "edgy" humor which is really not the case. It's a bunch of sarcastic dorks talking politics.

wow there really is no appealing way to describe it

lol you guys got me, I started listening to an episode and within minutes there was a joke about how one of them actually killed an abortion doctor... because he wasn't doing an abortion fast enough

no edgy comments here guys

i think they're equally sincere and sarcastic, that's the appeal for me. there isn't any other place to clown on pundits and twitter idiots like eichenwald, garland, douthat, shapiro, etc

there is... it's called.... twitter

someone recently said eichenwald was lib commenters favorite republican writer now, and I had no idea anyone took him seriously because i apparently follow no earnest liberal ppl and just get all the jokes about how he's horrible

I'm not deep into weird political twitter and Chapo is a nice digest

hope they can resist doing an entire episode about Josh Marshall of TPM (presumably) accidentally tweeting a pr0nhub link

they pretty much took care of that in the last 10 minutes of monday's episode

where there's already this insanely pathological sexual not-so-subtext to things and it deserves to be stated openly with appropriate language.

Yeah, their ability to cut thru the psychosexual/psychodrama that acts the primary animus of so many political figues(be they anti-trans bathroom warriors or pundits obsessed with divorce court) moreso than any actual ideology or political belief.

This really came to the fore when they attempted to interview Matthew Walther, a RW catholic writer from the Washington Free Beacon. They took a good shot at discussing the guy's POV before it all went to shit, and the guy started rapidly dissembling in real-time. The resulting audio was rejected as a premium show and just posted to YT.

Matt had a very funny blow up moment about 20 minutes in when it became clear the guy had no intention of actually defending what he claimed.

i think they're equally sincere and sarcastic

I agree with this; despite their rep they seem pretty earnest

That's the real trap, isn't it. When too much of your schtick relies on snark and attack without actually being *for* anything, you can fall down into complete hipster nihilism. Sorta the vibe I first remember encountering from reading too many Suck.com columns at once 20 years ago.

I'm listening to their episode about Hamilton/Kevin Williamson

Nothing better than people who think that they're better everyone calling other people "elites."

well i only call people I know are powerful AND worse than me elite. It's a select group.

*xp better than everyone, obviously

someone recently said eichenwald was lib commenters favorite republican writer now, and I had no idea anyone took him seriously because i apparently follow no earnest liberal ppl and just get all the jokes about how he's horrible

― mh 😏, Wednesday, January 4, 2017 3:49 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the only confirmation i get that anyway takes the idiots they clown seriously is from occasionally checking in on ilx politics threads.

With some of the people they clown it almost doesn't matter whether anyone takes them seriously. I had never even heard of a lot of them, and that's part of the fun, just discovering these kooky B-list hacks who continue to exist somehow although no one reads them.

the ep where they introduce ron fournier is pretty great for that reason. the affection for kooks and oddballs hiding in plain sight.

Also everything "Nerdstrom Poindexter" has said in this thread is pretty much the opposite of what has actually happened on the show, p sure he has not listened to it.

The eps about the columnist who writes an annual column about his son are amazing.

Huh? I've pretty much directly quoted things. I've listened to most episodes. Again the aspects I've criticized don't comprise the whole of the show just mirror the sort of ridiculous orthodoxies of the leftist twitter world it's a byproduct of.

X-post

Haha yes Caleb!

YES, everyone missing the point which is LISTEN TO THESE GUYS CLOWN ON JEFF JACOBY'S CALEB ARTICLES

the Shapiro and Doubt-that bits had me laughing like a loon. these guys are ok by me even if they veer off into the whole "no really HRC and libby elites *should* be locked up" a little much. but that seems as much hyperbolic comedy device as visceral hate (which i have no doubt they harbor) idk

They revisited recently but in an earlier ep accounted of then described attending various GOP primary events. The Kasich stuff (then introduced by Montez Williams) is great. He's characterized as an emotional dad who wants to start a conversation in a hardware store and they talk about how that is his very specific demographic.

* in an earlier ep they deacribef...*Montel Williams (of course)

boring does not mean annoying

guys I think they've been reading this thread
https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-70-wills-disclaimer-1417

of course they have because we are IMPORTANT CRITICAL VOICES

Today's premium episode was good, and the strongest they've done since talking to Adam Curtis.

what do you guys think the M stands for duhhhh

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the one weird thing to me about the general leftist online community represented by chapo is that their support (that i share!) of bernie sanders has crossed over from "this person would have been a better choice than hillary clinton and represents a better way forward for the democratic party" to a sort of cultish reverence that i find to be like incompatible w/ the way they view pretty much every other politician. like dudes like @crushingbort on twitter (rightly) shit on pretty much every living politician and then genuinely like retweet bernie sanders statements. makes me trust them less.