many parts of europe. look, we're facing a pandemic. we're facing something that is killing millions or has the potential to kill millions of people. we have to get on top of it. we have to work as a world together. i mean, i was very upset when the spook nick version came out and a lot of people, particularly the b, b. c. look down this new you know, use it as if the russians couldn't do it, couldn't make the vaccine. just ridiculous. we need to put out all to upsize. we need to work together. we need to vaccinate. look what we've all done around the world with mumps or a bella. g b small partial. we've made massive strides in the last 100 or so years. we need to keep doing that, and we need to get less publicity in the to the correct box. and when you say, you know, half of america, the united states haven't had it. it's not going to end up as half. is it? they're going to get this vaccination, albert, and if we create in our country,

you know, they're talking all if you have enough. the vaccination is locked in a part time state. you know, you won't be able to go to the cinema. you won't be able to go to the soccer, he will call it, you won't be able to fly. well, it isn't apartheid because apologizes based on how you were born, the color of your skin, and then you'll never going to be allowed to do this. everybody, particularly in the united kingdom, it's friday. and so that's the 3 vaccine. so we can't let these people who got these stupid ideas. well, this so called hesitancy would get away with them. i agree with the honey, and now i do, i do apologize to john. i want to get people vaccinate very apologetic and get to listening to unfortunately the clock beating down upon me. now, i really appreciate your conversation. jones. thanks so much. william schaffner and professor preventative medicine and talk radio host john, go into full flow there. sorry. again for interrupting thanks. chance. no problem. thank you very much. indeed. i do. okay, it's

a quick intro bite. makes me the long when i would chose the wrong. why don't i just don't yes, to fill out the thing because the after an engagement equals the trail. when so many find themselves well the parts we choose to look for common ground in the, in the moon. the

i hello and welcome the cross odd were all things are considered i'm peter lavelle. not long ago humour was the domain of social critique and a means for us to laugh at ourselves. and the comic was the person who had the guts and skill to say what all of us might have been thinking. this is no longer the case. it would seem. now humour is just another political weapon. and you know, it's not very funny. i, i cross, i can humorless humour. i'm joined by my guest at ro in new york. he is a syndicated political cartoonists and writer as well as the author of the stringer in los angeles. we have wrongful cone. he is a comedian host of the youtube. sho,

get your news on withdrawn and and honolulu we go to graham elwood he is a regular and the jimmy door show as well as host of the political vigilante podcasts on youtube. right. gentlemen, cross talk girls in effect, that means you can jump in anytime you want. and i always appreciate it, graham, i'm going to go to you 1st because as you're speaking it is 4 o 3 am in the morning. ok. that is that that's, that, that is a real heroic effort. we all appreciate it. graham. i have this observation. i want you to confirm it, agreed, disagree with me. but why am i going to online comics to get the news? but when i watch news outlets, i get some kind of comedic propaganda about the news. have you noticed the trend here? graham? well, i'm kind of split on. yeah. it's obviously giving folks like myself and rod and jimmy a job, but it isn't state we're living and insane times that comedians on youtube or like the source for trust the news because the corporate media is lacking some clutch. i that it's like a bizarre, a world where it's,

it's kind of fun but also sort of been saying that there's like almost too much responsibility for like i would, i have a night club comedian like i've hosted game shows, you know, i, why am i now the only person that can, you know, find facts. it's crazy for me to say the same question to you because when i'm, when i say comedic propaganda like when i watch cnn and m s n b c. it's so patently propagandistic. it makes me laugh. i mean, i, my critique of them is, can you be any more clever than that? is that just how clever you can be? that's what really irritates me because you can do it so easily to dismiss. if you actually have an interest of what's going on. and you can see through the ideology and it's no wonder their numbers are going down, i guess because more and more people are seeing it. so, i mean, again, why are comedians, i mean, comedians were always to say the emperor has no clothes, court gesture, i get all of that. but the really good comedians that i like there

a step above the court gesture these days. go ahead, ted. you know, there's probably nothing more inherently ridiculous than someone who is talking down to you. and then while they're doing that, you realize that they think that they're smarter than you. but right, actually the other way around. that's kind of going, i think with a lot of corporate media outlets, you know, i could cite a 1000000 example, but i think that's exactly how it is. i mean, people sit at home and they realize that they're having that experience of being smarter than being the student who knows that he or she is smarter than their teacher. and that's not how things are supposed to be. you know, i, we all authority figures like walter cronkite or people like that, you know, who, who seemed at least if not smarter at least wiser or as wise as we are. you know, the problem is, this is really taking away

a lot of space from those of us who are trying to exaggerate for a living in order to make a humorous point. because, you know, they're pushing the needle to 11 and where are we supposed to go from there? exactly. you know, wrong button. you know, johnny carson, you know, when i was coming up johnny carson, he was genuinely funny. but he was a unifier. he, he kind of poked fun, it gently and everyone, he didn't take, make any preferences. but now humor is always at someone's expense, maybe at the expense of tens of millions of people, feed used to have some kind of unifying thing in the critique of our culture. we laughed at ourselves, our strengths or weaknesses or oddities. i don't see any of that now. run. yeah. you know, it's kind of weird. like, what's permissible, especially in the corporate space? i be in particular here in the united states, you see a lot of a lot of people in the mainstream that they just,

they but they will not touch joe biden right. meanwhile, it's, he's the president. he's one of the most powerful people in the world. and he talks as if his brain is in a microwave. you can go after the guy you can make jokes about the guy that's kind of how this works. she make jokes about the president. yeah, well graham, i mean, you know that, that is so patently obvious. i mean, this is a very gas, a prone guy, and it's not like just now in the white house. his whole life is a gap. ok. it's politics or a gap as far as i'm concerned. it, but it's almost for bowden to pointed out. go ahead, graham. i mean, what? yeah, i like when i was a kid and i would watch saturday night live. i mean, chevy chase in the 1st season or do he would do basically make fun of gerald ford because gerald ford was kind of a guy who would kind of fumble around it. and jason is hoping that you'd be fumbling and smashing stuff over. and they made fun of every president on that show . they made fun of carter, they made part of board. they made fun of reagan. i didn't matter the political

party, you're supposed to do that and it's, it's, they now because, you know, you can't to make one of this. you can't make one of that. no, i make fun of the most powerful person in the world, especially when you know this particular president is showing he's got cognitive decline and and it's kind of insane that like folks like rotten myself can just also pro corporate media. right. i've done that real time, i've just gone to a search engine and said, here's the actual facts and showed a clip from corporate media, how they're just not being honest with you. and i went and found the truth online. i'm like, so does the corporate mediate, do they not have internet, like what, what, what is the problem? it's kind of an insane world. we're living it right now. well, i mean, graham, you can say so thing about the pandemic and vaccines and be banned. but the corporate media can say exactly the same thing and they will, they're not touched. ok, i mean, that is the growing hypocrisy here. ted. i mean, presidents had been brought up here. i mean, did,

did somehow donald trump just break all their brains. i think they miss donald trump as an object of contempt in the 2 minutes. you know, i mean, my, many of my cartoonist calling are still drawing cartoons about president trump, or i should be a former president. trump, as i like to remind them, i mean, he's not president anymore. i mean, he may well be again, but he isn't. and at some point you do kind of want to make fun of the guidance there now, and there's not a lot to make. and but, you know, even you mentioned the cognitive declined look, it's as plain as day, but we're not allowed to talk about it much like make fun of it. you know, but this was never a guy with that sharp to begin with. and you know, he's just gotten worse and worse. there is something hilarious about the fact that the president of the non state is trying to not all there, but we don't get to talk about. yeah, i mean, ron, i don't know if you saw the clip. it biting was calling out for mom, mom,

where's mom? okay. i mean that just water off the back of the duck. nobody noticed. ok. i mean, when you see that clip in there and no one in the press corps reacts to it, then you're wondering what is really going on here? it was i the only one that's all that go ahead. i mean, calling out for mama is probably among the lesser gas that he had. i mean, this is a guy. and so many people are still talking about donald trump, which i've never seen anything like that in my lifetime. i was no fan of donald trump. i'm no fan of joe biden either. and these people who are so shocked by donald trump, it's like, or you so shell shocked that you don't notice that joe biden's continuing. most of his policies do not see that happening. and even after bush, like it's not like people were still making bush jokes after he was out of the office. for some reason. they're still talking about donald trump,

which is not only just bizarre because again, he's not president anymore. but in my entire lifetime, that was the big comedy. pho, par, you're not still bacon. jokes about the person who's died even in the office anymore. i mean, unless you can like tie it into something else and some evergreen way. but yeah, i mean a gram, i mean that's what i, what i asked tell me, did they trump broke their brain here. because if you look at the stories that get ratings that go on and it's a b, c, it's trump story, 7 months after he left office, they still, that's the only way they can get people's attention here. ok. and and what i find is that it is intentionally divisible. they want to divide people. everything is a purity test. that's what the comics are supposed to do. not news outlets go ahead, gram. yeah, i mean it's, it's kind of not that they're, they probably wish he, they hope he runs again because i'm good for rating and he's good to keep everybody

divided. and it's like the, the get like robert talking about the gaps of joe biden. i mean, during the campaign, joe biden said to a guy that was slightly heavy said, who is, who is challenging him at a town hall? he goes, listen fat. i mean, nobody in the corporate media brought that up. he just called the guy that were just playing with amongst the indy, you know, comedian media people, we were kept saying that we listen fat and no one else i never sought. i never saw on late night tv. i never thought of that now, like nobody said it, they just let that pass. i was like, how does that happen? and there's still that i think they are addicted to having trumping office, and they want him back as i hear john kerry just made some crazy. steven donald trump made it hard for america to fix its climate policy. it's like you got, the democrats have control of everything, the senate, the congress, and you're still blame me. trump. what else is they have control over the corporate media? ok. good. let me go to your head before we go to the break here. i mean,

you said something earlier that i think is very, very interesting. is that, you know, as a political cartoonist, you exaggerate the imagery here. how do you compete with these news outlets right now because they are gross exaggeration of just about everything. and ron is absolutely right and, and as when he was saying that there's no difference in policy at the end, it's all about style. ok, how do you compete? go ahead. well, actually there is a vacuum and we've just been talking about it, which is the vacuum of a good criticism that higher of joe biden. so those of us are doing that, at least in political cartoons all to ourselves. and he's actually fun to draw with is sort of weird, receding mullet and you know, he and he's a weird guy and which is sort of get an angle on him. you know, it's not just the fact that he's sort of a little bit cognitively declining and therefore a little mean like calling the guy that if you don't really know the english

language, like, you know, you don't pay, you pay a body, you know, i want to like get a call from, you know, from the white out, consult on how to get better. and so yeah, we're going to hold on. we're going to jump in. i'm going to jump in here. we're going to go to heartbreak and after that hard break, we'll continue discussion on humorless humor thing with our the ah, having alternate realities to experience or even live in like say, role or does my idea, you know, especially during and where you can go anywhere in the game world go everywhere, choose the game that you want. any open roll game, choose it. and you are now on a vacation in a place where you're like flying helicopters or you're, you're on beaches, you're, you're in a city drive, you know, whatever you want. you name it these,

these are getaways ah welcome to cross talk, where all things are considered. i'm peter le beltran, and you were discussing humorless humour, the okay, let's go back to ron in los los angeles, iran. you know, a lot of the stuff that you do, jimmy does, and you, graham, also, when what i like about and everybody knows i'm a conservative and these guys are a progressive. okay. and it will make a very good fit. i think sometimes and talking about these issues, but what you guys do and what i appreciate, if you do a systemic critique, you don't really like to go. i mean, it's all,

it's all fun to make fun of trump. it's really easy to do. it's fun to make fun of bite and that's really easy to do. but you guys do things that are edgy and in many cases per bowden. you critique a system. ok. and that's what makes you guys interesting. and you're actually funny in the process, and that's the, that that's the extra, extra points that you get to score with your audience here. but would you disagree with me, but that, that's really kind of the secret of, of, of a discussing politics. now when we have such a close, been narrowing media space go ahead wrong. absolutely. i mean, you really need to talk about the system. i mean, especially during the trump years as a free since so many people, you know, it's just trump, this trump that, well, you know, which way more interesting and important. well, what's the system that gave us trump? what's the system that made? what's in front of us right now? possible. i think it's so many ways. the 2020 election was just

a snapshot of everything that's wrong with our politics embodied in 2 people. on one end, you just had this plutocrat guy. you just bought his way and the things on the other end, you had this blank suit, d. c. insider. and because he's just always so around the beltway people handle him with kid gloves and have for his entire career. it's not even just the media that cotton joe biden, it's his colleagues, it's, it's comedy, least in the mainstream. so you cut out everything wrong with our system and body to, to people you had body of politics going on. and you had like d, c inside or wall street insider and that's worth talking about. and a lot of people don't want to talk about that because on that on mass, the usa. yeah. graham, as long as you focus it on those 2 personalities, which i every one in the public space. it's fair game as far as i'm concerned. but you know, there's so much focus on them. it just kind of echo which ron had to say here,

you're not really talking about what grieves people, the hopelessness and helplessness of so many people. i mean, look what's going on with the opioid crisis. we have this forbearance, with renters and all what up the asco, and nobody takes any responsibility for what to a student loans. all these other things are, these are, these are real life things affecting people. tens of millions of people, every waking moment of their lives. and they're still saying, well, it's there, bottom line is, well, at least trump isn't president. well, that just isn't good enough. go ahead, graham. yeah, it's kinda crazy and you know, you brought something up, peter, about how we talk about like the systemic problem. and you know, there's another comedian leak camp who's on this network does redacted. and he's like, has this late night, a comedy taco and he's the only one that's allowed to call out the whole system. and you know, it's kind of crazy because, and lee and i do

a show called government secrets where we go into the history of all the awful stuff the harrigan empire has done. and we do it to just keep ourselves from going crazy because we have to kind of joke about it to see it. so not so absurd and all the things that america has done and is doing. and like you say, now there's all these opioid epidemics and people are facing evictions and, and yet we're not allowed to call that out. we got to still be mad and make fun of trumps air or whatever nonsense was made fun of it's it's, it's so crazy and i think people really need to dig deep and as a comedian, you know, lee and ron and jimmy and myself and a couple others, we all know we, when we make part of the whole system, then we can have an audience that's willing to listen. because if you just make one of one side or side will. yeah, i mean, kid, i don't know if you've seen greg. god failed snoo program on fox and it's, it's not particularly funny. i don't, i don't find anyone late night funny. okay. because i don't think it's

intellectually challenging. no one is intellectually challenging, whatsoever. and it's always making, i mean, it's just getting grading people you don't like. and i don't find that humorous. i mean, every once in a while, if, you know, get kind of an oddity, you know, you know, kinda catches you, you're blind side, but constantly constantly doing it. and it's just mimicking the left here. and i just think it's just, you know, i don't think it's anything to be proud of. and i don't even think it's a particularly watchable either. it is just a reflection of the left. go ahead, ted. well, i haven't seen, i haven't talked to show boxes, tried and failed that humor showed in the past. and i can kind of imagine what they're doing here with you or, you know, find out that it's funny. right? you know, humor relies on unpredictability, and, and novelty and strangeness, and sometimes putting something into a cartoon or, or a skit that's there for no particular reason. and just because it's random,

and that's inherently funny, that's often what's missing. and he can't with any kind of corporate attempt comedy . and i think that even go even for sort of the better practitioners of mainstream, common, like comedy like bill mar. i mean, i think, you know, if you think of the issue like a alien land on the earth and take over the country, you know, you can probably imagine what someone like the mars, probably going to think about that. and that's a little unfortunate. you, you, i think unpredictability is really key and that's what's missing in general from corporate media when they attempt comedy and when they're just playing it straight . you know, ron if, if aliens did land on earth and declared themselves and the mainstream media would ask, you would ask them what their position on trump was. yeah, they'd ask them about trump. they'd ask them, you know, that they'd ask them if there's any resources we can exploit on their planet. and

jeff bezos would ask when he can get a trip to where they're at it just be, it would be an interesting corresponded gram. i think they'd be us yet. why would day? why i would stay, stay, stay clear. ok. you know, you, graham, you know, one of the things that, you know, there's all this talk about gain of function and all of this with the, with the, with the fax it with the coban. but, you know, you know, these phrases sometimes i think you can take advantage of because, you know, when i watch mainstream media it's, it's called gain of stupidity. this is what they're doing. it's gain of stupidity night after night after night. ok. and it is, i find it really, really exhausting. and i have to really temper myself. i have to watch just little bits a bit of time because it really can drive you insane. dana gave peyton, if you want to use it, take it danish stupidity. what do you think, graham? yes, it is gave divinity. peter, and it's really, i mean i, i've had a joke in my act about how the media is about, you know,

they're designed to keep us divided, distracted, afraid. i mean, that's all, they'll do some, you know, story. it's, everything's fear based. you know, everything is i, is isis and your kids, chocolate milk or whatever just to keep us fighting with each other. because if everybody got together, the $99.00 cent got together. they realized that it was the, the oligarchy, the one percent that are really, really the problem here. and instead we got to watch the media. like for all over jeff bezos, you know, phallic rocket, and then you get some of that ridiculous cowboy hat like what? no one's making fun of that guy. well, hey, gramma, hey, graham, you bet. you know you should, you know, you should take your words back a little bit there. you could get a $100000000.00 like ban jones. i mean, that could be a pay day. you know for, for a tongue bath, you know, there could be a payday for you one day so you keep that in mind. here. me go to ted here in new york. one of the things that we have this, this word diversity is always mentioned. you know, but you know, when i look at the corporate media and i look at corporate comedy,

it has nothing to do with diversity at all. it's all about uniformity. that's all it, it's uniformity. and the, and the boundaries are very strict. ted, well, what's missing? and i think trump took advantage of that and actually to get elected president. but what's missing is class and cultural diversity beyond the other, more familiar horizon, you know, people who are coming from under privileged backgrounds, people who come from a point perspective, that outside of the deeds versus the are people who have unorthodox political views . you know, there's those people that point to you and the perspective that are missing and comedy that's acceptable. this isn't a very and, and commentary. the picked up the ball exist, you know, very narrow bandwidth in the united states. i mean, i always like to point out, no one who endorsed bernie sanders was employed on the op ed pages of any of the

1200 newspapers in the united states. no newspaper in the united states ever endorse for any standard during any context whatsoever. yet over 30 percent of the american public loves him to death. so what does that say about the about how the media is representing its readership and it's yours? yeah. well ron, you know, because anything that i have to be honest with you, bernie's been turning into more and more of a disappointment. but if we look at 2016 even 2020 in the primary kids. absolutely right. you know, which, let's ignore what 30 percent of the population actually thinks. okay. and if you don't report it, then it doesn't exist. isn't amazing how that works. go ahead. wrong. oh, absolutely. and then in both cases in 20162020. you know, and by the way, just i agree with you. bertie has been letting us out a lot has of recent, but, you know, putting that aside, i mean 20162020 m b c would show trump's empty podium instead of showing bernie

sanders talking to arenas full of people added 2020 you add pretty much every candidate just right, make sure purdy sanders didn't get the nomination. and of course they never ever talked about that. i mean, our overton window in the united states is show skewed and corporate friendly and far to the right. they needed to get a special camera to zoom in far enough. it's absolutely ridiculous. in most other democratic experiments, the democrats would be the most right wing party available. meanwhile, here in the united states they're, they're supposed to be the alternative to that. so you have this incredibly small overton window of like the d's in ours, where wall street owns both of them. meanwhile, i would argue that most americans to an extent fall outside of that. i mean, over 2 thirds of the country are completely dissatisfied with both parties. and one

a viable alternative, so you have the huge portion of the country that you know, they don't agree on everything. we have our differences. we have our different perspectives in our different angles. but they're still outside of this very, very tiny bubble that is permitted on cooperative. okay, we've got them and we've run out of time, but i went down this here. you know, there are a lot of differences out there. but what the commonality is that there is, i would say, a real majority of people that are politically homeless and the leads like it that way as all the time we have gentlemen many, thanks them i get to new york, los angeles and in honolulu. and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at our to see you next time. remember cross top ah ah, the drug started as a way to come back. a great problem. what's the one?

it's part of the attitude of the nation, not just of north dakota, and it got to be something that you could get elected to this time, the fight against drugs took a tragic. he told us that there was a competence short form. this is way too dangerous for him to be doing. clearly they put him in harm's way. a rural college student does interest get shot in the head and found in a river like that. something else had to be happening with the way the us government funded is through the issue of treasury bomb and they pay the interest on those bonds by collecting taxes who owns most of those bond? virtually all those bonds, the top 110th of one percent. so the government simply becomes

a pastor mechanism for people to pay money from their pockets through something called taxes that are just a thickly that hides the transmission mechanism of your money through the government, into those who own these bonds. the president biden gets, say, hostile reception from the american public, amid anger over handling the afghanistan 20 anniversary of $911.00 approaches to explore the legacy of america's war on terror in the series of special reports. today we'll hear from families and so the loved one killed in a recent us drug store i can cobble i'm the head of the family that has lost 10 of its members. this is not a mistake of america. this is a crime.