An Abashed Crash with Matt Labash
The Slack Tide writer talks about how men fall, audience capture and the things he liked this year.
Matt Labash was last seen being interviewed by me for Film Club, where I talked to him about his career as a journalist before talking about his favourite film Glengarry Glen Ross. He then simulcast an extended version of that interview on his Substack Slack Tide, which was seen by a lot of people because Jake Tapper shared it. Returning the favor, I thought I might return to him again for a year in review. There are few pop culture references here, since Labash is not as engaged with movies as I am. Instead, we ponder about the human condition, starting with the fall of the modern man, before we stop to think about what he liked about 2022, which, let’s be honest, was a rough year for some, but a better year for others.
Likewise, there will be an extended version of this in Labash’s newsletter, so look out for that one.
Let's talk about what is happening with the culture this year. My favourite song of 2022 is The Heart (Part V) by Kendrick Lamar, and one of the reasons why is its music video. He released an album called Mr Morale and the Big Steppers that was all about trauma and taking responsibility for yourself. The Heart (Part V), is a bonus track that sees Kendrick shapeshift into a deepfake OJ Simpson, Jussie Smollett, Kanye West and Will Smith. These men remind us of how they have fallen from grace and the lyric "In a land where hurt people hurt people, fuck calling it culture", reveals how much the excuses of victimisation and lack of accountability are deeply embedded. Will Smith is the most interesting out of the bunch because his mistake was caused by a mistaken urge to honour his wife, before winning an award that could have validated his status as one of the biggest movie stars in the world. It hurts not just him, but the Oscars, an institution that people used to watch. Meanwhile, Kanye is much more painful to bear and for a man who famously once said that 'slavery is a choice', he sure is living up to that standard by sucking up to a has-been that was going to be a darling of the conservative movement, before it turns out that he is a liability and a young white nationalist who is banned from taking a public flight. It's the colour of their skin that's used as a shield, while for Kanye, people use his heterodox thinking in his music and personal life, as an evasion of accountability. I can go on about how much I can't count up on my heroes throughout, especially when my interaction with them is through a screen. My point is, having seen these folks being used as useful idiots for what is essentially a culture war, shows a lack of order that reveals a culture being ultimately bitter and aimless. What are your thoughts?
ML: Well, I’m not going to pretend like Kendrick Lamar has been one of my spiritual gurus, even if he is a wickedly talented lyricist. My hip-hop taste was mostly frozen in the late eighties through the early aughts. But one of my MC heroes – Rakim, of Eric B. and Rakim fame – has given Lamar the legendary MC seal of approval, which is kind of like Michael Jordan saying he’d hate to guard you. So I’d be a stodgy middle-aged fool to say Lamar’s not okay by me. I re-watched the video you speak of, and as with most of Lamar’s videos, it’s hard to look away – especially with all those eerie deepfakes. I even had a flashback of when he turned himself into O.J. Simpson.
I once did a story on O.J., almost by accident. I was working on another piece – on the filmmaker Michael Moore, actually – and requested an interview with Simpson’s people just to get a quote about what O.J. thought about Michael Moore’s claim in a book of his that there was little chance that Simpson actually murdered Ron and Nicole, because he’s a rich guy, and rich guys would get lowly serfs to off their ex-wives. A few days later, I received a call from O.J. – collect – from his golf course. He thought Moore’s theory was preposterous, perhaps blithely unaware that Moore was trying to help him (sort of) by using him as a cudgel in a class-grievance culture war. Moore was actually ahead of his time, in a way. Because it was a war everyone would join within the next two decades, conservatives included especially. Everyone now jockeying for victim status. Be they multi-millionaire liberal filmmakers posing as the avenger of the working class even as they abused their employees (Moore), or billionaire real estate developers posing as the avenger of the working class so they could hand out corporate tax breaks (Trump), pretending that was a meaningful tax cut for the hoi polloi. But after we got that out of the way, O.J. and I talked about his golf handicap (which improved, he informed me, “after Nicole”), and about how he once hit the links with Bill Clinton. Since Clinton was in the midst of getting impeached at the time, I took a side detour and ended up writing a whole story about that. Why not? It’s not every day an NFL legend calls you collect, taking a break from hunting down the real imaginary killer who he insisted iced his ex-wife, to tell you about his golf game.
All of this is a long way around the barn of saying for one (very) brief moment, O.J. was willing to not be used as an idiot in the culture war. At least not by Michael Moore. One could make the case he was being used in mine against Moore/Bill Clinton. Nobody’s pure. I’ve seen it observed by others (I want to say Chuck Klosterman and Douglas Coupland – though feel free to fact-check me on that) that the main difference between the nineties and now, is that it used to be a badge of shame to sell out to outside larger forces - a sign of compromised integrity. Now, it’s a badge of honour. Rock stars, actors, and people generally, can’t seem to sell out hard and fast enough. Buy me! I’m for hire!
Hence, Kanye is getting worked like a hand pump by MAGAville. I don’t know what the hell’s up with that guy. Probably bipolar insanity. At least I hope for his sake that he’s insane – because it might be the only defence he has left if he ever comes to his senses long enough to realize the harm he’s done to himself and others after his months-long Jew-hating tour. And this has now backfired on the very people who thought they could use him as an ideological mascot (such as Trump and Candace Owens).
But I now suspect that’s not going to stop anyone. Back during normal times – let’s call those 2014 - we used to argue about tax cuts or healthcare or deficits, but now, culture war is the only issue that really registers and moves people. It’s Bloods vs. Crips for white people who are on the internet or cable TV all day. And so, they will collect their dead (Kanye, Nick Fuentes) bury them, and will go on fighting like casualties never happened. Except maybe the dead now also come back to life. Nobody’s ever really dead in the new set-up. (Trump should’ve been figuratively dead after January 6, but he’s still leading Republican primary polls, and most elected Republicans are still too afraid of his voters to cross him in any meaningful way.) So it would not surprise me in the least if the human skid-mark, Fuentes, ends up winning a congressional seat down the line. Why not? If a butt-dumb QAnon lover like Marjorie Taylor Greene can do it, why shouldn’t a Hitler-loving incel find similar success?
Fame matters a lot more now than intellect, conscience, morality, competence, or any of the yardsticks we used to wield to measure whether people were worthy of our attention/vote. Though I may be overstating that, and am probably needlessly romanticizing the past. It’s not that we haven’t always had a high tolerance for con men and demagogues. It’s just that there are so many more of them now, and they all have unprecedented access to their audiences through the magic of our modern communication channels. So instead of just tolerating it these days, we seem to practically require it of our celebu-parasites, who feed on our need to debase ourselves. That kind of puts me in the mood for another Kendrick Lamar song, come to think of it. “Humble,” off his 2017 album, Damn. Chorus:
Bitch, be humble
Sit down
Be humble
Sit down
Good advice for about 70 per cent of the people on the scene right now. Though probably more like 80. Humility is completely missing from public life, which is a large part of the problem. It’s our least favourite medicine. Nobody wants to take it. And a helluva lot of people need to.
I can certainly imagine a multiverse, where they were ideal, rational human beings in our heads. I can also imagine that multiverse, where we all have good times and the arguments were calmer. No pandemics, no wokeness, no conspiracy theories. Just normality. One of the most acclaimed movies of the year is Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is about an immigrant woman escaping from her real-life woes to something more fanatical, before it all goes out of control. I find it to be an… interesting movie, not a great one. And this gets to my theory in that there is something soothing about that situation because we convince ourselves that our preferred ideology is going to fix everything. We then make excuses for people who are less capable of presenting themselves professionally, because we fear they will be cancelled, and have their lives ruined and we want them to retaliate and protect themselves. We blame someone for it and call it ‘the regime’ or ‘the patriarchy’. As Spencer Klavan wrote in his long essay about multiverses, they provide an escape route because humans fear that they are run by one person and that person is corrupt. Would you like to live in that world Matt?
ML: You’re not gonna make me read long essays about the Marvel Cinematic Universe are you? Because I can’t even bear to watch the films. I’m not what you’d call a cape’n’codpiece guy. In fact, one of the happiest days in film history of the last ten years (there haven’t been too many to choose from, since filmdom has largely headed down the crapper by pretending everyone should have the taste of 12-year-old boys – which is why Quality TV now laps them creatively) was the day when Martin Scorsese dumped on the entire enterprise, calling it theme-park cinema.
He was roundly attacked by the fanboys, of course, a disproportionate number of whom I suspect might also show up for a Jordan Peterson talk on how to be manly men, or at least as manly as a Canadian psychology professor. But I was proud of Scorsese, and even defended him in a long essay of my own in print. I’d hyperlink to it, but the film site I wrote it for (the great Sonny Bunch’s Rebeller) was shuttered shortly thereafter for reasons I won’t bore you with. Though I’d like to think in the multiverse, it’s still alive, schoolchildren still read my Scorsese defence with clear eyes and open hearts, and they stay away from cinematic dross like Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania
So I guess the answer is no, I probably wouldn’t want to live in that world. I kind of think people choosing their own reality and worshipping superheroes (especially those of the political stripe) is precisely where the problems start. Most of the people we’re talking about now aren’t worthy of veneration, and yet, they inspire cult-like devotion. Which requires devotees to ignore all data points that suggest that the object of their devotion is, if not, an outright fraud, at least deeply flawed. Which is a hazard of being human, generally.
I would like to think we’ll somehow settle back into that. But am doubtful. We’re just overrun with too many people in public life right now who have a vested interest in and who profit from trading in insanity. And too many readers/viewers/suckers – whatever you want to call them – are all too eager to have their alternative realities given life. Everyone pretends they want the truth. But at least half of them would rather hear sweet little lies. It’s more fun to be told you’re smart and right, than that you’re blinkered and wrong. And too many hard partisans lack the discipline or integrity or whatever it takes to question their own assumptions. When you’re in a forever war, you don’t want to understand the enemy, you want to demonize him. It makes him much easier to kill.
But the truth is the only reality that ultimately matters. And it often hurts to realize it, especially when it’s coming for you.
A recurring theme for the past few years has been the yearning for a leader to solve almost all of their problems. People associate it with populism, therefore democracy is in danger. Some will unironically agree with that and start movements that will not solve those problems properly but will divide people who are quite sympathetic to your opinions. With Elon Musk, he captured a social media service that's barely used by a lot of people, except for shitposters and professionals trying to be hip with the former. While I think much of the response towards him is hysterical, I feel that it is at least warranted when he is acting chaotically. If you are running a social media service, wouldn't you interact with right-wing accounts that stoke it up over some account that was banned years ago for rightly flipping the ToS? Why choose these conflicts?
ML: Well, journalists get hysterical because Twitter is their baby. (Not mine – I’m not on it.) And if somebody walked up to your baby and put a fright wig or Groucho glasses on him or her or hir (if fake genders are your thing), you too might start crying like……a baby. A lot of them are motivated by fear. Fear that their protected class status is in jeopardy. Fear that the other side might gain an unfair political advantage when the woke dorks who formerly helped them cop their narcissism fixes were put out on the street. Fear that they might be seen as the shallow climbers many of them are if they have to shell out eight bucks a month for their sad little blue checks.
But a lot of populists and faux populists who are cheering on Elon’s every move are motivated by fear as well – fear that before he took over, they might have to actually shut up about leaving Twitter if they weren’t lucky enough to get banned (so they could brag about it in conservative media) and actually do it, shoving off to one of Twitter’s even worse rotten-to-the-core alternatives like Truth Social, which seems to have been named straight out of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth – its propagandistic properties resting right up there with “War is Peace” and “Freedom is Slavery” in the irony department. And of course, fear is the operating principle and chief animator of the new populist pin-up boys themselves, preying on everyone’s enmity, paranoia, and suspicions. I think deep down, Elon’s greatest fear is that he might have to stop talking about himself for five minutes. Or that other people might stop talking about him. (Why else would you pay $44 billion for that money-hemorrhaging, smoking turd of a company? A smart friend of mine swears that Musk is going to die broke, and I’m starting to concur.)
Mind you, I don’t think Musk is the locus of evil (at least when he’s not killing monkeys) the way I do, say, Trump. I’d hate to have to work for that erratic, nutty bastard. But last I checked, Elon didn’t invade the Capitol to try to overturn an election or invite a bunch of Hitler lovers over for dinner. (Though he has let a few of them back on Twitter, even if he did re-ban Kanye, for which the libertarian jihadis will now give him hell – content moderation is a thankless task, he will learn.) He is, however, reaching Trump-like levels of news-cycle ubiquity and saturation douchery – the two often walking hand-in-hand. And I wish he’d stop and go back to rocket science. You know, doing something potentially useful, instead of just keeping everyone – Substack writers included – overstimulated.
I welcome more free speech champions, mind you, even if I think Elon’s interpretation of the First Amendment sounds like someone who has never actually read it, much as he admits he hasn’t even read the Twitter files he claims are bombshells. (Though they aren’t without some newsworthiness. It’s always worth knowing more.) I can say these things because I didn’t have to sign one of those NDAs like what’s left of his workforce. But that aside, Elon is at heart Sam Bankman-Fried with better hair and (one suspects) less musky gym shorts. Another carny barker. Another shameless self-promoter. Another Ponzi schemer - figuratively, in Musk’s case - posing as a populist avenger.
And he’s not just a window on what’s happening in society, but a mirror. He’s the face staring back at ours because we practically begged him for his services. Most of us are motivated by fear, as well: fear of being bored. This is why these circus freak shows keep hijacking public life. They’re not doing it in a vacuum. They’re doing it because we get the publicity whores we deserve. I expect even more of those in the years to come. Which is why I predicted Congressman Nick Fuentes. Who I’m sure will win a district in Florida (where else?) - though Arizonans might fight them for bragging rights.
What do you think counts as a good man in 2022?
What counts as a good man in 2022 you ask? I’m a simple guy. Respect women. Look after them, when appropriate, without wishing to be them. Love your fellow man. (Platonically, I mean, unless you’re otherwise inclined. In which case, I don’t judge – to each his own.) And knuckle-dragging Andrew Tate should not be anyone’s role model. Choose better role models. If you want to be a rebel, be Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. Let your insubordination be in the service of a righteous cause. If you want to be the best at what you do, be Stevie Ray Vaughan on guitar. Play from your soul. In your intellect, be Ralph Waldo Emerson, relentlessly true. In your spirit, be Thomas Merton. In down’n’dirty real life, be my father, a man I don’t always agree with politically, but who woke up early every single day of my childhood to go support his family, without complaint or self-dramatization. He’s a man who took great pains to train his children up in the way they should go (as the Good Book puts it – a book he ingrained in us), even if we didn’t always want to sit still for his instruction. He is a man who takes a similar rooting interest in his grandchildren. He lays out his life wisdom to them in pages he prints off and assembles in three-ring-binders. Not out of vanity, but so they’ll have a record. And even if they think it’s kind of funny, they appreciate and read it. My dad is not always perfect. But he spent a lot of time figuring out how to lead – not for the sake of calling himself a leader, but to lead the people he loved to the things that he knows will enrich their lives even after he leaves them. It ain’t necessarily glamorous. He does not wish to become an Instagram influencer. I’m not even sure he knows what Instagram is. But to me, he’s what real manhood looks like. I can only hope I live up to it…..
Here's a simple question: What are your favourite things that you've done this year?
ML: Why, talking to you, Alex. You’re a thoughtful dude! Also, I guess, having started a Substack in the fall of 2021, I wrote more words in the last year than I have in any three-to-four combined years of my adult life. And I’ve been writing in public my whole adult life. Am not sure if I’m proud of that, or if should be ashamed for popping off too much. But I didn’t think it possible, and it was. And a lot of really good people have sprung up around those words. I hear from them with some frequency. So that doesn’t suck. Even if the New Obligation has been hell on my fishing totals. (I’m an obsessive fly fisherman, and a fish counter, sadly.) So I hope to rectify that deficit in 2023, and exact some piscine revenge.
What are you hoping for in 2023?
ML: Not to go all sunny on you, but I’m kind of hoping a giant meteor hits the planet and puts us all out of our misery. Though not before Season 12 of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Barring that, I’d settle for a nap.