Gay and Amish Factions Shifted Pennsylvania Politics, Trump Administration Targeting Froot Loops?Video Games Prevent Surgical Errors?! (The Five for 11/08/24)
Plus, the strange saga of the Zach Bryan diss track. Stranger Things returns next year. X-Men scribe takes on a new Star Wars trilogy.
Hey, welcome to The Five, a publication about the stories that matter, but don’t always make the front page.
It’s Friday, so let’s dive into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
Joe Rogan sat down with Elon Musk on election day and…discussed exactly what you would expect.
How surgeons who play video games make less errors (ok, maybe that’s not what you expected).
26 percent better. Yeah. Everyone would have to take that course. Sure. Why would you want a surgeon that's less prepared? You would say, Hey, Bob, did you take this course? You didn't take this course. Don't you understand this course makes you 26 percent better? Sure. You'd have to take it. Everyone should have to play video games if you want to be a surgeon.
Well, I think it would be, it certainly would be a very good test to see if somebody can't play video games well. Like, that means, I mean, because you've got to move both hands simultaneously. Right. You've got to react to something very fast than, um, on screen. So, and, and, if your keystrokes or your mouse clicks or whatever are wrong, uh, then you lose the game.
Right. So. If somebody, like, has a good rank in video games, their manual dexterity must be very extremely good. Their fine motor skills have to be excellent. If you think about, like, Starcraft, or any any game, like Quake, any game where a lot of people are playing To rise to the top, you have to be exceptional.
Period. As a human being.
Musk, who runs Tesla, Twitter, Space X, Starlink and The Boring Company, somehow finds the time to be a top 20 player in Diablo IV in the world, a hobby he claims “helps him concentrate” on his high intensity roles as entrepreneur and CEO.
[two]
The media are taking stock of their role in this election…and learning all the wrong lessons. Deadline released a list of “winners and losers” in 2024 election coverage that makes you wonder what planet these people inhabit.
LOSER: JOE ROGAN
The pratfall-filled 2024 election was tailor-made for the former Fear Factor host, bigger than ever off the Austin-based The Joe Rogan Experience podcast and his longtime UFC announcer gig. Yet somehow Rogan turned triumphant into one bad joke with a sycophantic and meandering three-hour fact-challenged sit-down with Trump. The interview got tens of millions of downloads, and Rogan formally endorsed the Republican he once called a “man baby” late Monday night. Maybe the fix was in, and that’s why Rogan petulantly shunned an interview with Harris last week. The VP’s team wanted Rogan to meet her on the campaign trail to record the podcast and was offering an hour. Rogan wanted to do it in Austin and get three hours. In the end, he got nothing. I mean, dude, why didn’t you take the win? Maybe you never wanted to. Might be time to lay off the bison for a bit; it’s gone to your brain.
Keep in mind, Rogan’s interview with Trump racked up 100 million total views, and single-handedly determined that long-form podcasts MUST be a part of any candidate’s 2028 strategy.
Several online commentators cried out that the left needs to “build a Joe Rogan.” You had one. His name was Joe Rogan. He endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016, and all-but-endorsed Democratic primary candidate Andrew Yang in 20220. Then…the mainstream press mistreated him when he got COVID and didn’t take the vaccine and the left wing called him every nasty name in the book.
UFC President Dana White, a lifelong Democrat before his close personal friend Donald Trump ran in 2016, used his time on the mic…almost exclusively to thank podcasters:
I want to thank some people real quick. The Nelk Boys, Aiden Ross, Theo Vonn, Bussin with the Boys…and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan.
During election night, there were dozens of man-on-the street videos with low-engagement voters who turned out to the polls for Trump after listening to him on multiple three-hour interviews.
Harris, in contrast, rejected Rogan for a skit on Saturday Night Live, which flopped pretty hard, in retrospect (and also put the famous sketch show in violation of FEC rules, which resulted in a free ad for Trump).
And it’s not just Rogan, Kamala also ducked out of appearing on comedian Andrew Shulz’s Flagrant Podcast. Shulz didn’t endorse Trump, but would have asked more pressing questions than the pre-scripted appearances on The Breakfast Club and Call Her Daddy, where it’s pretty obvious the questions were submitted ahead of time.
But hey, Deadline doubled down by claiming that MSNBC “won” the election.
WINNER: MSNBC
In a divided America it seems everyone has their echo chamber of choice. For those on the right, that’s still Fox News. For those on the nearly everything else, it’s MSNBC. Sure, CNN had almost 52 million watch its much-simulcast June 27 debate between Trump and a befuddled Biden, which was the beginning of the end for the incumbent’s re-election bid, but the cable newsers are all down from 2020 in this fractured environment. Fox remains No. 1, but the Comcast-owned MSNBC is a solid No. 2, with CNN in third place for most of the year. It’s never good to undermine the power and draw of Rachel Maddow in an election year, but the truth is in the math: According to Nielsen, MSNBC has topped CNN repeatedly on core events this election, like among the 25-54 demo during the DNC, and, for the first time ever, in a presidential debate when Harris and Trump met September 10. Compared with 2016, MSNBC is up 40% among viewers on average, while CNN is down about 33%.
Cool. So MSNBC bought an expensive piece of content that people were going to tune into regardless of who carried it. Does Deadline honestly think 25-year-old liberals are going to CONTINUE to watch the network, when the entire business model is all but dead?
I’ll let Daily Show host John Stewart take it from here, who essentially declared cable news punditry dead-on-arrival.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Daily Show. The results aren’t fully in yet; we still don’t know what everything will look like. But before we run out of time, I just want to send a message to the election pollsters: **** me.
I never want to hear from you again. I don’t want to hear, “We’ve corrected the overcorrection of the voters.” You don’t know anything. I’m done with, “Oh, we were within the margin of—” blow me.
Look, here’s the thing. Here’s what we know: we don’t know much at all. We’re going to come out of this election, and pundits will make sweeping statements about the state of this country and the world. But the truth is, we won’t really know anything for certain, and we'll act like this moment defines our civilization.
What we do know is that we’ll all need to wake up tomorrow and work like hell to make the world into what we want it to be. And as a reminder, the lessons our pundits confidently draw from these results? They’ll be wrong.
And MSNBC came along to prove Stewart right, by deciding that the reason Kamala Harris lost was NOT that she was a bad candidate who constantly refused interviews, faked phone calls, ripped key policies off of Trump (no tax on tips, overtime) and didn’t address the top two issues of this election in a way that convinced voters she could do the job (inflation and immigration).
No. the reason Kamala lost, according to MSNBC who allegedly “won the election,” is that Black and Hispanic men are “white supremacists.”
For half a second, I actually thought Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Al Sharpton were going to learn the right lesson here.
I just say really quickly to Democrats need to be mature and they need to be honest
And then…they quickly proved why this is the election that killed the last whisps of influence the mainstream press held.
and they need to say yes, there is, there's misogyny, but it's not just misogyny from white men. It's misogyny from Hispanic men, right? It's misogyny from black men, things we've all been talking about who do not want a woman leading them might be race issues with Hispanics.
They don't want a black woman. As president, I say, you know, the, the, the, the democratic party that I've always found when you're sitting around talking, they love to just sort of balkanize everybody into these separate groups and say, oh, white people don't like women and black people. No, this is, it is time for the Democrats to say, okay, and you and I've talked about this before.
A lot of Hispanic voters have problems. with black candidates, right? A lot of with other hispanics. You've got some exactly each other. And some of the most misogynist things I've heard going on. And there's get out the vote tour came from black men. I mean, misogynist thing. So you're absolutely right.
It's not simplistic. And we've got to have real honest conversations about real honest conversations.
So, your plan to win back black and Hispanic men to the Democratic party is to tell them they’re horrible?
The inbred circle of mainstream press patting each other on the back and blaming working class Americans is truly stunning…a sentiment that’s already infecting left-of-center boards on Reddit and other corners of social media.
Politics is the art of the possible…and insulting people and wishing harm upon them is not how you win friends and influence people.
Again, you don’t win in 2026, 2028 or 2030 by telling people they’re stupid, and expecting them to come to your side.
Maybe the mainstream press really are committed to electing the first woman President.
Because Tulsi Gabbard is already a frontrunner in 2028, and the media are already trying their very best to hand the White House to the next Republican.
[three]
There has been SOOOOO MUCH content dropped in the genre of “what happened in this election,” I will not rehash what you have already read.
But there is one “can’t believe this is real” story to come out of Tuesday that must be highlighted. Trump won Pennsylvania, because Scott Pressler, a gay ex-Democrat registered the Amish, who are typically non-voters, at local markets.
From Fox News (published back in August):
A Republican activist who leads the group Early Vote Action has been crisscrossing Pennsylvania since January, working to register new Republican voters and meeting others to encourage them to cast their ballots early.
Fox News Digital followed Scott Presler as he made his near-weekly stop at the massive Green Dragon flea market in Ephrata, outside Lancaster.
The Friday-only market is a popular stop for tourists and locals alike, including the area’s Mennonite and Amish population. Amish, Mennonites and Brethren make up a large portion of the county population, and when they come out to vote, they typically also lean Republican. Both Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump courted the Anabaptist community during their administrations.
"And as you can see, we're out at fairs, we're going to farmer's markets, fraternity houses, American Legions, gun stores, supermarkets, gas stations. Our motto is to meet people where they are," Presler said.
And why were the Amish so fired up?
Because the FBI raided an Amish dairy farm in Pennsylvania. Rather than try to recap a complicated story, I’ll let you check out this short documentary on it:
Democrats typically have a strong ground game for voter turnout, but this time, seemed to really focus on celebrity endorsements rather than kitchen table issues.
The absolute low point being Cardi B, who’s brain short circuted when the teleprompter failed. When her personal assistant brought Cardi notes on a phone, Cardi claimed “women have to work ten times harder” to be successful.
While that is true in some cases, Cardi is what is called a “studio plant” in the music industry…with professional songwriters, A&R and producers essentially crafting a career from scratch, from her image, to songwriting and production. (Other “plants” include Billie Eilish and Lorde, if you’re curious).
The strangest tale, in a very strange election, is how a gay recruiter got the Amish to rebel against the establishment over the Feds raiding a dairy…and that was a more powerful force than a rapper who can’t talk without a teleprompter, and tried to get Americans to ignore the price of groceries when casting their vote.
Which might have worked in the 90’s, when pictures of Cardi’s house couldn’t spread on social media, amplifying the dissonance between celebs and the reality faced by paycheck-to-paycheck Americans.
[four]
RFK Jr. will be taking a major role overseeing health in the Trump agency, and it looks like his first target is a toxic yellow dye common in kids foods…that’s a byproduct of coal mining (really). See the video above for more.
Some experts say his desire to remove chemicals and harmful additives from food could have a positive impact on America's health.
But there are fears his lack of scientific or health policy training, as well as his tendency to promote debunked conspiracy theories like vaccines cause autism, make him ill-suited for the role.
Among his unfounded beliefs, Mr Kennedy has declared WiFi causes cancer, chemicals in water turn children transgender, AIDS is not caused by HIV, Covid was engineered to be 'ethnically targeted' and there is 'no vaccine is safe.'
The Trump campaign shut down claims that Mr Kennedy would be appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services, a role needing the approval of the Senate.
But it is still possible he could be appointed as a senior White House health advisor.
Studies have claimed those dyes could cause behavioral problems in some kids.
The FDA has said most kids have no adverse effects. Kelloggs says its ingredients meet federal standards.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup.
MOVIES: Well, this is secretive. Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting, The Martian) and Tom Holland (Spiderman, Avengers) are co-starring in a top-secret project from Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Inception). We’ll see it in 2026. The guy who wrote the best X-Men movie (Days of Future Past) movie is writing a new Star Wars trilogy. Maybe Disney can try not to suck this time.
TV: Happy to report we’re getting the final season of Stranger Things sometime next year. No trailer yet, but Netflix released the episode titles to get a bit of hype going. Outer Banks on Netflix has just one season left, but may be getting spinoff shows.
MUSIC: Huh. Zach Bryan and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portenoy are beefing, which has resulted in a pretty hilarious beef track. Part of me can’t believe I just wrote a sentence about a country artist and a sports website having a hip hop style beef resulting in a rap diss track. Zach is trying to quiet the noise by releasing new music (keep scrolling).
It’s nice to see Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean, The Imitation Game) in a lead role. Black Doves looks like a pretty typical spy thriller/whudunnit, but I’m intrigued.
And finally, this movie depicts Jesus as an MMA coach in first century Jerusalem in a story that (at least from the trailer) looks to be theologically correct. I’m definitely watching…whatever this is…at some point.
[new music]
Just four months after his most recent album, The Great American Bar Scene, it looks like Zach Bryan is gearing up for another project…EP or album.
Until the next one,
-sth