Patrons Only: Troubled Times For Mike Richards And The Woke Riddler

I had no idea what NJR looked like so I googled. Oh my. My husband was like “there’s a man with a lot of clothes and no fashion sense”.

And now Richard's been fired completely. Whoops!

NYT article about the process of making that Ringer hit piece. Just noting that the parts of Richards’ podcast that made it into the piece were meant to be representative, not the worst ones, or a complete list; unsurprisingly he was like that most of the time on the podcast: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/arts/television/jeopardy-claire-mcnear-mike-richards.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20210826&instance_id=38875&nl=the-morning&regi_id=1743515&segment_id=67284&te=1&user_id=74abcdc782dfa9f5c9722a065b099c78

Bob Garfield already got fired from On The Media for…being honest about his pain level to his co-workers after surgery for an injury, so I don’t know what else can be done.

Joined the Patreon to hear this. I guess that means the business model is working 😁

I would define "cancel culture" or "cancellation" narrowly as the following: 1. Primarily economic attacks on a person's reputation, employability, or ability to run a business. It's unlike a traditional boycott because it's directed against a specific person rather than putting pressure on an organization to change its policies. It isn't just being harshly criticized online. 2. It's closer to a mix of public shaming with an economic attack than something like boycotting businesses that have immoral policies (like racial discrimination, etc). 3. It originated as part of online "activism" on sites like 4chan, Encyclopedia Dramatica, and Something Awful in the early 2000s and probably 1998-1999 at the earliest. Sometimes the goal wasn't specifically to get people fired but it was often a result, where either the employer couldn't deal with extreme negative attention or can't employ someone now that certain information is public. People could be targeted for a good reason (they're actual Nazis), a not-so-good reason (someone disagreed with you), or no good reason (blonde girl has too many MySpace pictures of herself wearing aviator sunglasses and says she doesn't like Nine Inch Nails or something like that). I agree it might've been part of the trend where some teenagers in a white upper middle-class town in Florida start organizing Nazi rallies and people perceive that as though terroristic far-right extremism is having a major resurgence and must be crushed by any means necessary. You decide people are "fair game" for online takedowns, everything escalates, it makes it harder for someone to stop being a Nazi and re-integrate into mainstream society, etc.

How about Socialist Jacob Rees-Mogg? That may be a bit unkind, but the similarities in their fashion sense is uncanny.

LMFAO. Listened to this Ep twice so far. More than worth the price of admission. “Plantation Riddler”. Please make this a repeat feature

It seems trouble is not over for Jeopardy given the noise some people are trying to make about Mayim Bialik (who is filling in as main host) right now.

As an Ew-Jay I wasn't terribly offended but firing a model for getting pregnant sucks. Basically what bothered me was how true the show was to its Randumb title. Trebek wasn't exactly a rocket scientist but knew how to fake it.

We need a midget Nicole Hannah Jones type to host jeopardy

Successful (non OF) online sex worker here. Jesse is correct re: Onlyfans, lots of wannabes jumped on the bandwagon during pandemic, few really make $$$ from it. It is an essence of hand side, if you don’t already have a fan base it’s a bitch to build one. OF is claiming banking woes, MasterCard is denying that they are to blame. It’s a shitshow for sure.

Venus Babylon

“…because he’s black.” And you know this how, exactly? You’ve peered into the souls of the Burton fans? Or is this some sort of ugly default position for you? LaVar also hosts a popular (adult) reading podcast — he has many fans who think he’d be a natural fit as the new Jeopardy host.

I don’t have a horse in the race, but since lots of friends were talking about it on FB non-stop, I read lots of comments from hardcore Jeopardy! fans online and the majority preferred Mike Richards and said he was “a natural” and “understood the rhythm of the show.” Also, they want someone who will ONLY host Jeopardy! and eschew all other projects and opportunities, like Trebek did. People wanting Burton as the host is just another symptom of the Gen X & Millennial “I’m gonna be a kid forever and love wallowing in what made me feel good as a child for the rest of my life” garbage view of culture that permeates everything.

Katie didn’t mention the one line in the Ringer’s (successful, somehow) attempt at a hit piece that made me snort out loud during my lunch break: “In an episode released two months later, Triffon [his podcast cohost] tells a story about giving a dollar to an unhoused woman.” I had to reread that one a few times. Perhaps in another year we’ll all be saying “unhoused woman” and the Ringer’s ace reporter Claire McNear will have the last laugh. Or maybe everyone’s saying it now and I simply missed the memo. Shit’s moving quickly these days. Judging from these devastating (???) excerpts from Richards’ chuckle-a-minute 2013 “Randumb Show” podcast, my take is Mike Richards is a hack, and this stuff is more indicative of his wretched “mornin’ zoo crew”-level hackiness than anything else. I’m actually glad he’s out, but I agree the sanctimoniousness of this hit piece is completely over the top. Jeopardy will be much better off once they add the very talented and likable LeVar Burton.

Hey, my cat is named Shawty (yes, a black cat, named by my daughter 12 years ago). Time to cancel myself!

Google image search is your friend. And my take is "the most forgettable Dr. Who".

JulieDee

Only rivaled by the list of Shaun King nicknames, which always has me rolling.

I've been a Simmons fan for close to 20 years. I did not expect The Ringer to do a hit piece on anybody. That's not his style. Having said that, I have no idea how much Simmons is involved in daily content creation/editing.

What I was hoping to see in the show notes - where can I find a gallery of NJR pics so I can assess the accuracy of these incredible descriptions? Can anyone help a folx out?

I doubt dwarf sounds better for the halflings. A dwarf is a magical creature. They are just short.

vorbei

He's ostensibly straight but seems more asexual if anything. Literally just spends all his time reading books and churning out articles.

Midget is often associated with the time period little people were pretty much relegated to circus life as freaks. It also comes from the word midge, a small annoying fly, although I would doubt most people who say midget are thinking that. I would doubt all across the board view the term as offensive, nor are most trying to offend, but it does ring as perjorative in a way dwarf or little person does not.

I tried posting this but it disappeared into the ether. Katie is wrong about Richards. He was a better host than most -including Burton. Jeopardy's audience isn't clamoring for Burton. Twitter is. And they're doing it beause he's black. Jeopardy's audience isn't (for the most part)on Twitter. BTW I was a contestant on Jeopardy many years ago. I lost(well, came in second). I had always hoped to be on again and see Alex.

I was going to say Robinsons style of dress is “a dandy” but wow, the responses you got are so creative, I’m glad I didn’t offer up that one.

feel strongly that the cargo pants ritual is just zipping the lower half of the cargo shorts back on 🥲 nature is so beautiful

Loving the show but haven’t had my permabanned shoutout yet and I’m shamelessly shilling my collection of short stories Running Coyote and Fallen Star and my memoir about running from Paris to Istanbul, with the seemingly problematic title “Running the Orient”. Check it out on Amazon.

Gavin Boyter

On another note, I fell asleep to the pod and had a dream that they were my adoptive parents. I was upset about something but Katie wouldn’t stop talking about her dog. I would stomp around and getting books to read with the hope they’d notice how upset I was but then Jesse just gave me advice on how to deal with bullies. That’s all I remember. I’m older than both of them btw.

JGraves

Apes are monkeys

vorbei

If NJR is merely lying by omission, that's a step in the right direction; he's done worse hypocrisy. Here's him declining to debate Scott Alexander only to later claim to be declined a debate by Scott Alexander: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/10/response-to-current-affairs-on-against-murderism/ And here's The Nathan: the rhetorical move where you praise an author in a private email and then declare him a dangerous contrarian in print: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/here-is-an-email-nathan-robinson-once-wrote-about-my-book

To be fair to Current Affairs, I'm not sure anyone knows how to run a magazine these days. The conversation on the decline in print media tends focus on the decline of newspapers, but magazines have gotten crushed too. 2004 US periodicals (includes magazines, but can include newspapers that are mailed) mailed: 9,135,272,000 2020 US periodicals mailed: 4,006,079,000 With a few exceptions like Gun & Garden, most of today's most circulated magazines built their reputations decades ago. Links to stats if anyone wants to dig through them https://about.usps.com/what/financials/quarterly-statistics-reports/fy2020-q4.pdf https://about.usps.com/what/financials/quarterly-statistics-reports/fy2004-q4.pdf Katie & Jesse, if the financial stuff is causing you a headache, find a bookkeeper. You're both capable of learning to do bookkeeping yourselves, but with the amount of money you're making, I'd recommend spending that time on the things you're good at like podcasting, journalism, and taking fat bong rips instead of stressing out trying to do the bookkeeping yourselves. Jesse, I think you've mentioned you have an accountant that you like. Think about reaching out to her to recommend bookkeeper. Someone will probably tell you to "just get Quickbooks," but as an accountant I've seen so many horrible DIY Quickbooks fuckups where a huge amount of or even all the bookkeeping had to be redone.

I don't feel bad for NJR at all. He did that shit to himself. Wallace WAS snitching, just sayin'.

Manzell Blakeley

Hmmm, if the language police are sifting through old podcasts for retroactive cancellations, Slate’s gonna want to take a long hard look at its old linguistics podcast. I subscribed recently to listen to the back catalogue of John McWhorter episodes, but my player inadvertently skipped back to play a couple of the early ones with the original awful hosts and... gosh, Episode 2 was a certainly shock to my 2020s delicate hothouse sensibilities.

The unnamed friend of the pod sounds like Freddie deBoer. In fact, it sounded so much like him that I rewound because at first I thought Katie described this person as a “socialist” only. Then I heard “Marxist” too. 🙂

I dont think the big studios are all that big anymore in porn. Piracy/streaming hit them terribly, just like music labels. Back in the day a lonely divorced guy could just send a check to "Valley Video Partners Inc" and receive 20 hours of videotape in the mail and only the one clerk at the bank who authorized the check and had figured out who the vendor was would quietly chuckle to him/herself. Everybody knows everything now. Damn internet flattening.

I don't know that lots of people make a great living on Onlyfans, but there are definitely lots of people for whom it supplements their income in an important way. As a consumer, I'm offended that a duopoly of payment processors is caving to a "think of the children" moral panic to impose restrictions on content hosts beyond what is required by law. Is porn really going to be more ethical when we shut down all the amateurs and leave it to big studios?

Paul Thacker

As to point 1, Richards deliberately sandbagged his competition.

I'm just offended by the fact that amidst all these other controversial jokes about other marginalized groups, he didn't say anything about g*mers. Shameful.

This ended abruptly today.

Have you seen the John Mulaney bit about the word 'midget'? Hilarious and seems pretty apropos.

Can we get a written down, in-one-place, listing of all the descriptions of Robinson please? I fucking died. Non-binary Mary Poppins was the nail in the coffin. I was listening while walking my dogs and I think my laugh scared the neighbors.

1. Levar Burton was fine but I didn't think he was anything special. None of the guest hosts I saw was super great IMHO. 2. The first time I heard that "midget" was offensive was a rant on Howard Stern by Hank The Angry Drunken Dwarf (RIP). So my question is: can we still say dwarf? 3. I dont really know anything about NJR. But I have always had the fantasy of one day having the wherewithal to become a dandy. He succeeded in my dream so I can't really hate him. 4. I think it was left wing journalist Mark Schmitt who I first heard talk a little about the history of labor relations at left wing organizations. It would make a fascinating book. I wish I had the skill to write it. Maybe a weirdo podcast history series: "Here's the story of when the NAACP hired Pinkerton's to break their custodial employee strike."

Someone please tell me how many offensive things I accidentally said in this comment.

Ally

According to a little person I saw on RuPauls drag race, midget is offensive because it refers to a small version of anything, not necessarily a small human. I'm guessing the same goes for dwarf because dwarfism is the condition and other animals (lots, actually) can also have dwarfism. Makes sense to me. I can see why groups want to choose their own words. Kind of like how in context, referring to a woman as "a female" isn't offensive but if you habitually call women "females" instead of women were going to avoid you.

Ally

Monkeys are not apes.

When this blew up on Twitter, was I the only one who confused it with A Current Affair the gossipy tv show from years ago?

Larry Holifield

I soooooo needed a new episode this Friday afternoon! For this gay-adjacent dude, Katie and Jesse are my podcast-ibuprofen at the end of a kinda shitty week.

The Ringer provides a link to the word “midget”, rather than use it in the article itself. The Ringer online is the site of Bill Simmons, the former sports writer who now runs the very successful Ringer podcast network. He, himself, does several podcasts a week. Bill has routinely said and written things every bit as bad as this guy, He has also been accused of underpaying his LA staff. It would be impossible to overemphasize how inadvertently comic this cancelling is coming from his website. It represents an ungodly level of hypocrisy and would seem to be setting an awful precedent (going back and listening to past podcasts looking for speech crimes) for them. Perhaps not coincidently Bill has been on vacation for the past two weeks.

Wait...NJR isn't gay?

Hang tight, we've got a Patrons-only ep coming up; plenty of room for some talk of noods.

it doesn't truly matter what happens with current affairs but it's nice if NJR is discredited so he doesn't have to embarrass himself arguing with Glenn Greenwald about whether Jesse is a transphobe (on Bad Faith podcast)

suz

This episode alone makes my sub worthwhile! I haven’t laughed so much in a really long time! Thanks for that

I had to rewind on Jesse’s (deliberately hyper-neutral?) white-bread pronunciation “shawty” to understand it. Not good for the street cred, braugh.

Klondike

What?! NOTHING about the noodles ‘n’ dumplings stuff?! This is bullshit!

I've heard of Current Affairs. I've just never read it, because who has time to read 44,000 words of NJR drivel.

No more vacations! Ever!

Ram Adrian