Pantsuit Politics Flashback: 2017

Resistance, #metoo, and foreshadowing for trouble in Gaza

Pantsuit Politics is celebrating ten years of podcasting this year!

A lot has happened politically, culturally, and personally in the last ten years. This summer, we’re going to revisit each of the years we’ve been podcasting with a special flashback episode. Today, we begin with a look back at the first year of Donald Trump's first term as president.

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Topics Discussed

• The Year of Resistance

• The Beginnings of #metoo and Reflecting on Our Work

• Outside of Politics: Cultural Highlights of 2017

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Episode Resources

• Jerusalem, Al Franken, and feedback (Pantsuit Politics)

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:08] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] And this is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:11] You're listening to Flashback 2017, a special episode of Pantsuit Politics. We are celebrating 10 years of making this podcast by revisiting some of our episodes from each year and today it's 2017, the first year of Trump's first term. Buckle up, there might be some deja vu. We're going to talk about that and much more as well as big pop culture moments of 2017, which is becoming my favorite part of the series.

Beth [00:00:39] It's definitely the most palatable part.

Sarah [00:00:42] Yes. If you'd like to join the culmination of this series, we'd love to have you at the virtual celebration of our big live birthday party on July 19th. Tickets for the in-person events in Cincinnati are sold out, but you could still grab a virtual ticket and join us for all the fun. All the information you need for that is in the show notes. All right, next up, 2017. Beth, I think 2017 is accurately described as the year of the resistance.

Beth [00:01:23] That makes sense to me. My experience of it as I was going back through these episodes was thinking about how we were learning to adapt to drinking from a fire hose in terms of the news cycle. Everything picked up the speed, the pace, the velocity. And so you had that equal and opposite reaction. Suddenly Trump was moving faster than we had ever seen an administration move. That's the one superlative that I'll give him. He gives himself this kind of superlatives all the time. I do think he moves faster than anyone else because there's not a lot of process behind it or guardrails. And then the opposition to Trump grew in a fast and furious way.

Sarah [00:02:06] Yeah, when I looked back at all the top news stories and what we were covering, there's just so much protest. There's the Women's March. Me Too, really takes off. There's Colin Kaepernick with Take a Knee. There's The Confederate Monuments being torn down in Charlottesville. So there's an enormous amount of protest. There's that episode we recorded when they did the Muslim ban, and people were showing up at the airports. There's just a lot of protest. Protest against everything he was doing and this building idea of a resistance. Remember how breathlessly we followed the anonymous insider from inside the White House that was supposed to be helping us all in the resistance? What was the name of that? We found out who it was eventually, right? But I don't remember--

Beth [00:02:54] It's Miles Taylor. And now there's an executive order talking to us about how dangerous he is to the country.

Sarah [00:03:00] Beautiful. Love it. Perfect. Put a bow on it. Okay, so we still had a lot of violent moments in the year. The Las Vegas mass shooting was in 2017. That's a mass shooting that still haunts me. This many years later.

Beth [00:03:12] Absolutely.

Sarah [00:03:13] It's still the one I think about probably the most.

Beth [00:03:15] I feel like it's the one that we know the least about, too.

Sarah [00:03:18] Yeah, we still just don't know why. Like, why? What happened? It's so crazy to me that this shooting happened. It was so deadly. It was so out of the stereotypical construction of both school shootings and mass shootings in public. And we just still know so little. Because, listen, you best believe I get on Google and look it up every once in a while to see if there's more that's been discovered and we just don't know it.

Beth [00:03:47] It also prompted a moment of action from the federal government. There was serious conversation and effort to ban bump stocks, and you thought for a second this could be a turning point in the Republican Party's relationship with the NRA.

Sarah [00:04:01] Turns out not to be true. Ultimately, the NRA undid its relationship with the NRA.

Beth [00:04:07] That's right.

Sarah [00:04:08] They were their own worst enemy. Good, I didn't see that coming at the time. That's a good one though. The NRA to trace the--

Beth [00:04:15] That's a good example.

Sarah [00:04:16] Right, to trace that over this year, like what you assume about your enemy and what you assumed you know and understand can be really faulty. Because they felt like such a indestructible behemoth to me for so long. And they don't feel that way anymore.

Beth [00:04:32] And maybe that's just the truth of it that most organizations that seem indestructible have the rot coming from within.

Sarah [00:04:38] Yeah, as I look over this year, that response, the bubbling up after Vegas of like, oh, this might be different, there's a lot of that. There's the Muslim ban, and there's all the protests and the he's going to take it seriously. There's the Russia investigation begins that feels like, oh no, this is the serious turning point. There's the natural disasters. And he kind of fails in those and then everybody's like he's going to be responsive. There's Charlottesville. There's just moment after moment to me where it feels like I don't know what we thought. He was going to wake from a fever dream and turn into a normal president? I don't know what was happening.

Beth [00:05:22] That was the joke, right? Today is the day that Donald Trump became president.

Sarah [00:05:27] Yes.

Beth [00:05:27] Today he was presidential, infrastructure week is coming. We were doing all of these self-soothing memes, I think, to try to help us process that, no, there wasn't going to be a moment when he turned into the type of president that we're accustomed to.

Sarah [00:05:43] Well, and it's just, like I said, the deja vu. Is there a word for deja vu that's truly painful? Is there word for that? Probably in another language. We need it here. Because to listen to these episodes where Steve Bannon's talking about globalism and how they're opposed to globalism or to listen to, like you said, the drinking from the fire hose and the chaos and the speed and the disrespect for norms, truly it's just so disheartening, especially because this was taking place with that ever surging sense of resistance. And so it's even more heartbreaking to go back and listen now that we're walking through another first year of his term.

Beth [00:06:33] And tough to listen following him winning it again, and the post-mortem being a lot about where this resistance went wrong. How this resistance, as powerful as it felt, was also having an off-putting effect in the populace and that we are still trying to figure out what's the right way to push back against Trumpism. I also was thinking, Sarah, as I was looking at this list of top headlines and thinking through our episodes, that in addition to waiting for Donald Trump to make some kind of hard turn, we were also waiting for some external authority to make that turn for us.

Sarah [00:07:11] Yeah.

Beth [00:07:11] There was such optimism about special counsel Bob Mueller being appointed because he carried himself and had the resume to come into the scene as the adult, as sort of the walking characterization of government and of the idea that no one's above the rule of law and of accountability. And the slow recognition, the very, very slow recognition that that doesn't really exist, that it's just us, that we can't put all of that on one person, and that systems require an awful lot of people acting in concert has been harsh too.

Sarah [00:07:53] Yeah.

Beth [00:07:53] I think an important lesson and ultimately a good one that has some empowerment attached to it too, but harsh.

Sarah [00:08:01] Well, and globally, I feel like you see some continuations of what we talked in 2016. Obviously, you have the official trigger of Brexit, but you see we know what's coming on that. We know how slow and back and forth they're going to go over leadership and how to get it done and how it to rip the band aid off and do the hard things. But I was not surprised, but I'm just going to be honest I think I'd kind of forgotten about coming out of 2016 with all the terror attacks around the world that everybody rained fire down on ISIS and they lost a lot of territory in 2017. And I think they have struggled to regain any sort of stronghold ever since. And so I think it's really hard to register those wins and that progress around global terrorism because any attack's not going to hit you as hard if it's in another country. You're certainly not following closely military successes against such a diffuse enemy. But it was encouraging to look back over 2017 and say, no, people came back and fought hard against this group and had a lot of success.

Beth [00:09:15] And it is a reminder of how much of national security happens off the radar of the headlines. Because ISIS, while it has never regained that prominence that it had when it was working toward a caliphate and constantly taking responsibility for horrific attacks, it has totally never fallen off the radars either. And those decentralized operations happening quietly and seeking out power about vacuums in Africa and other places in Western Asia have cost our troops lives, have cost our country a lot of money and a lot of understanding of how national security works. There has been a real expense to keeping ISIS contained for all of these years. And we all have this instinct post Iraq to just bring everybody home, pull away from everything. But that's not how we have contained ISIS in concert with other countries. I don't want to take anything away from the efforts of European nations and others here, too. But that sustained effort over a decade, just looking at it honestly over more than a decade to contain ISIS has come at a massive cost and not a lot of celebration. Like you were saying, we just don't think about it and we don't about the people who have sacrificed a lot to make that true.

Sarah [00:10:41] Well, it's just altruism to you, that you don't celebrate the terrorist attacks that didn't happen because you don't know. You just don't know.

Beth [00:10:49] Yeah.

Sarah [00:10:49] Obviously, the big, big banner headline for this year was the allegations against Harvey Weinstein and the spread of the Me Too movement definitely in concert with other protests, the continuation of Black Lives Matter, the takening movement. But 2017 definitely was such a culmination of a lot of factors catching fire under the MeToo movement. So let's talk about that next. Beth, you and I both picked the same episode.

Beth [00:11:28] How random is that? I'm so surprised to see that in a year that contained so much.

Sarah [00:11:33] Contained a lot, but we both picked an episode entitled Jerusalem, Al Franken and Feedback, where we talked about Trump declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And we talked about Al Franken resigning from Congress. And I think I picked this one to listen to because Al Franken has become such a touch point for the Me Too movement is at the moment it went too far, especially among the progressive left. And so I really wanted to go back and listen to this conversation. This is the moment when I was talking where I thought, oh, Sarah, I disagree with you now. When I'm hearing stories from my grandmothers about how they were harassed, and I'm hear stories from mother about how she was harassed, stories I'd never heard my whole life, the takeaway isn't, "Oh no, some poor man's going to get falsely accused." Listen, I live in a house with four men; I love men. But that's not the point, you guys. And the other undercurrent is this poor man in this protective role, and we need to protect men, and they can't help it, and they might be falsely accused, and wouldn't that just be the worst scenario possible?

[00:12:54] Yes, that would be bad, and there is a high likelihood that that will happen. But if one or two even national false accusation stories, it somehow imbalances and outweighs the decades of women losing their job for true accusations, for accurate accusations, for just please can I do my job without being raped or attacked or demeaned? If we can't see that that is a mountain and the risk of false accusations is a molehill, then we have to have a conversation. I listen to that now and I I think what's so hard to hear in particular is the balance. There's a real zero sum undercurrent to what I'm saying there. We can't have it unless you let it go. We can't have our concerns unless you let your concerns go. That's what's hard for me to listen to a lot early in these Me Too conversations. This idea that to be taken seriously, as women, we can't take anything men say seriously. Basically, that's how it feels to me listening back.

Beth [00:14:11] I pressed play on this episode with a lot of trepidation, both about the Al Franken conversation and about the Jerusalem conversation. Listening reminded me though that that's the risk of having an opinion and stating it out loud, that everything will change and you're contributing to a flow of learning. What really jumped out at me in the Al Franken conversation was how new this issue was to us versus the way that it feels just like we've been around it every which way- because we have since then. And it's hard to recognize that it was a real moment when the party said to Al Franken, even though these allegations are not perhaps as serious as others that we're hearing right now and even though maybe we haven't really litigated it, their existence means that you need to go. And we both agreed and I still agree looking back. I don't regret that take at all. And to recognize that we're in a world where Pete Hegseth was not disqualified by allegations to be the Secretary of Defense. Just to look at Donald Trump is the president. Again, just to look all of this and to realize you come so far and then you slide back and then you do it again and it's just a merry-go-round that you stay on. That was the painful piece to me.

Sarah [00:15:44] I would not take that take again. I do not think he should have resigned because I don't think we further the goal, the articulated goal, which was to increase responsibilities for these acts. And what we really did was make this a partisan issue, which I think is what happened with all the resistance. We couldn't have a moral argument because it became a partisan argument. Because it became if you're on our side, this is what's representative of this party. And this party has decided if you don't agree with us, you're a bad person. Same for the other party. It just became so hyper-partisan. There are glimmers I think along the way. At the beginning of the Me Too movement, we'll get to this, but with the death of George Floyd, there's this moment where everybody's like I can see it clearly. And then the backup soldiers come in and say, no, you thought you saw that clearly, but let me explain why you're wrong. And so, when I listen to this conversation, one thing that bothers me, and I remember we said this so often about Me Too, is that you don't have a right to this. This isn't the justice system. No one's putting you in jail; although, Harvey Weinstein did go to jail.

Beth [00:17:09] But he had process.

Sarah [00:17:11] He had process.

Beth [00:17:13] Yeah.

Sarah [00:17:13] This is different. It's not like I disagree legally with the argument. Of course, it's different. The justice system is and should be different with a higher standard of due process than a job or a political position or just your take on the internet. But I think there's an invalidating that happened when you try to make that argument. First of all, I just hear myself explaining people to themselves. There's so much of me explaining why you're wrong, which I understand is the job of political debate a lot of the time, but I look back at that time and I can see so many threads that connect that with racial justice movement, with the anti-vax movement, with everything which is you feel this way because you don't understand. You disagree with me because you don't understand. And once I give you the information and explain how dumb you are, you'll see it clearly and agree with me, as opposed to taking people's concerns seriously. I was listening to that and I thought, "You don't have to choose, Sarah." You don't to choose between taking the Me Too movement and sexual harassment seriously, and also listening with care and consideration to concerns about false accusations. You do not have to pick. And I think that's what's so hard to listen to. I remember when Yascha Mounk came on and we read his book and he talks about like, well, this is what happens when you feel powerless as a minority. You start to police what you can police. You find the power where you can find it. And I feel like that's everywhere in our conversations from this year.

Beth [00:18:56] I think that's right. I agree that I also did not take seriously enough concerns about false accusations and especially what was happening like at the university level to people not in positions of power. Most of our conversations were about people at the height of their power, but I did not pay attention to how people not at the high of their power were experiencing this at the same time. And I regret that. I don't regret the Al Franken take: a big threat of conversation in this year with cynicism about institutions and that has continued to be a big threat in our discussions. And I think that it is really important to keep your own house in order. And I thinking as Democrats, we're making this a central issue, and maybe that's your critique mostly that it shouldn't have been about a party stance, just a human stance. But it was coming mostly from Democrats because Republicans were running Roy Moore in an election in Alabama at the time. Because it was becoming partisan, I just felt that it was really important for Democrats to say we care about this among our own people. I think it was important for a lot of people to rethink the Bill Clinton defenses around Monica Lewinsky. I think that that re-examination and that willingness to just try to take hypocrisy off the table is important.

Sarah [00:20:18] But it failed so miserably. It failed so miserably. You watch any YouTuber in defense of Donald Trump and I've watched them and they immediately trot out. What are they talking about with him? Look at Bill Clinton. Because if the other party, the Republican party, is never operating in good faith, then you're never finding a path out of hypocrisy to the higher ground, right? All it is, is quicksand. Because everything you say they will use, they have no gumption to use it. And so, I look back and I'm like I don't think we decrease cynicism, I think we increase cynicism. Like the way that we-- not me and you, but the way this was discussed among the Democrats and about the Democratic Party, I don't think anybody goes, yeah, Democrats are much better about this. I think that cynicism is worse now about the two parties, don't you?

Beth [00:21:21] I think it is worse. And I think that it's worse for a lot of reasons, not just the Al Franken situation, obviously.

Sarah [00:21:27] Yeah.

Beth [00:21:27] But it didn't help that this was an argument in the party, that there wasn't real clarity about it. There was almost immediately a backlash to the Al Franken resignation. If we could talk to Senator Gillibrand about this time, I don't think she would have said we were all in lockstep about this. And there are still apologists for the Bill Clinton situation with Monica Lewinsky. So there hasn't been a clarity of voice about it, but if I were in charge of such things, I would really try to say to both parties, the places where you have tried to protect the party and to protect incumbents within the party, almost always lead you wrong. That short-term protection is an instinct that almost always in the long-term holds up poorly.

Sarah [00:22:17] But that's what I think they were doing. I think that's why ultimately I think you look back years on Al Franken and it was the wrong call because they were taking away from the voters the ability to make the call. And they were trying to protect the party by forcing him to resign himself. And so I look back on all this and I think, like you said, whenever we try to get in the way because there is no voice-- that's the other lesson of 2017 in the resistance, right? Is that there's not a single voice, even one enforced by people on Twitter. We're not going to get there. We're not going to get to the place where everybody agrees on what we should say and what we should do and what should be the strategy and what should be the goal and what be the priority of positions and policies. That's never going to happen. Even among the Republican party that is lockstep up with Donald Trump, there are still lots of factions and there are lots of different policy priorities. And I look back at the resistance, and I think like we were prioritizing agreement when we really weren't prioritizing a goal. Like there was too much, I don't know, marketing and not enough strategy.

Beth [00:23:30] And the goal was against. Which I think has just turned out to be the wrong strategy, because all of this energy was directed at what we're against, not what we were for. Not what we want to build or our vision, but what the wrong vision is.

Sarah [00:23:42] Yeah, I think that's definitely true. But it's just so hard. We're here again.

Beth [00:23:48] It's hard.

Sarah [00:23:48] It's hard right now not to just make every conversation about how awful Donald Trump is as president. It just is. It's so hard.

Beth [00:23:57] It is both hard to not make every conversation like that while it is hard that when you do that, you will never say it emphatically enough for a lot of people. And while you have a lot of people saying, "I can't listen to that anymore. I can do another episode, another conversation, another day. So I'm going to have to just tune this out." It is really tough. Trump exposed, I think, how psychologically fragile we all are about politics. And I don't think that's gotten better since 2017.

Sarah [00:24:29] No. I think it's that I might think is a little bit better. I don't feel-- around the resistance to him this time. Well, first of all, I don't think you have anything called the resistance this time, and I do feel a little more willingness to debate and question, even to the level of primary going on inside the Democratic Party, very different than last time. So I don't know. I think the hard part is eight years probably isn't enough to learn lessons.

Beth [00:25:11] That's right.

Sarah [00:25:12] And that's a tough takeaway, especially when the stakes are high, which is what we were trying to name around Jerusalem.

Beth [00:25:18] And especially because this isn't the only thing in those eight years. We've just been spun around in so many directions over these eight years by so many events that felt unique for our time, that we felt ill-equipped to deal with. And so it is very tough to have to consider, to take on what we should have learned from 2017 when we know what's coming after 2017.

Sarah [00:25:42] Well, this episode was a mixed bag, because I do feel very good about our takes about Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And the second October 7th happened, that's the first thing I thought about. I thought this is what happens when you tell people sit and spin; you're not a part of this.

Beth [00:25:58] Yeah, we were both worried that this would spark a crisis, that the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital would spark a crisis. We were both recognizing the honesty in it in that America has always acted like it would be a neutral mediator in this part of the world, but always with our thumb on the scale for Israel. But we recognized that Jerusalem might have been the last little bit of leverage for Palestinians and that this move would harden the extremist in Gaza, because it would be a statement that the whole world is really against them. And that's kind of how it's played out over a longer period of time than I would have guessed, to be fair.

Sarah [00:26:48] Yeah.

Beth [00:26:51] But that's my American bias. A lot of the world moves on a longer timeline than we tend to move here.

Sarah [00:26:59] Yeah. It's not comforting to go back and listen to stuff where you think, wow, I really called what was going to... It's just as discomforting as listening to stuff you got really, really wrong, honestly, especially things like this. And so that's why this episode held a lot for me. I was like we've been on a real journey over the course of 2017 and since then.

Beth [00:27:20] Well, and the other piece of this episode that really hit me as I listened back is when we're talking about wildfires in California and wind and how as Midwesterners it's really hard to understand living in a place where this kind of things happens. And I was listening back and thinking, gosh, it was good that we talked about that little voice that says, well, you chose to live there, but it is also completely different to hear that now disaster is everywhere. There isn't a place where you choose to live because you've made a wise decision to insulate yourself from other nature. It's just not available.

Sarah [00:28:00] Yeah. I have thought several times over the last 10 years as the wildfires got worse, I went to California every summer. I just never even thought about wildfires. It's not like they never happened, but on the scale that we now experience them to have them, to be able to track in 10 years the beginning of our, "oh my goodness, look at this new thing," and now for it to become such a normal part of a year is really shocking. In the last part of this episode, we talked about baby boomers, a consistent theme. Our listeners were pointing out that we were very derisive towards baby boomer, and we took that feedback seriously.

Beth [00:28:44] We did. And I hope that we've done better, even as we've had some really hard conversations about aging on this show and aging political figures and generational change, I hope we've a better job being respectful to all the people who listen.

Sarah [00:28:59] Listen, but here's the truth, the reason we got better is because we made the list of people the generations people make fun of. Remember, it was like overnight all of a sudden. Millennials were like the ones getting picked on. It happened really suddenly. And then I did have a lot more empathy for the baby boomers, not going to lie.

Beth [00:29:18] Well, I also think we have been privileged from the beginning to hear from a lot of baby boomers.

Sarah [00:29:23] Yeah.

Beth [00:29:23] And we have a lot people and silent generation too, every time a person emails us and says, hey, our lives are really different. I'm in my eighties. I just am overwhelmed by the gift of that. Overwhelmed by people who listen to our podcast and reach out to people who are so much younger than them to say, here's what I value about what you do and here's what you've missed. I mean, that's fantastic. The appreciation that I have now is just exponentially what I might've experienced at this point in doing this kind of job.

Sarah [00:29:58] Yeah.

Beth [00:30:00] The other thing that occurred to me as I was listening to this episode, Sarah, was that we were in the publishing process for our first book. And we were trying to write it on a really quick timeline. About when this episode came out, I was winding down my full-time job and getting ready to quit because I thought there's no way that I can do my job, make the podcast and write a book that is due very, very, very soon.

Sarah [00:30:27] Yeah, this was a big year personally. I was serving as a city commissioner, but I was really probably should have been preparing more than I was to run again. And we moved into our house in 2017 at the end of the year and we were writing the book and I was dealing with this other role. And I think this was probably around the year we were really wrapping our heads around Felix's hemiplegia and understanding what was going on there. So this year is what I would like to call a blur. There's a lot of big holes in my memory in 2017 that I think stress wiped clean.

Beth [00:31:12] Well, same. I think that I was trying to figure out, can this be a business? Not just something that I love doing. Can this support my family? What's my plan if the answer to that is no? Because also we have to take this leap. We have to give it a try. I'll regret it forever. I said that all the time. I'll regret it forever. If it doesn't work out, that's okay, at least I won't regret that I didn't try.

Sarah [00:31:38] Yeah.

Beth [00:31:42] And it's gratifying to think back and realize that that was my posture because what if I hadn't? What if I just said, “No, too scary,” or to figure it out? I don't know. I'm just grateful.

Sarah [00:31:50] I would have been in real trouble because I was selling this new house to Nicholas on the idea that incumbents always win re-election. So, I would have been in a real trouble. Glad it worked out.

Beth [00:32:02] I'm glad it worked out.

Sarah [00:32:04] Right. Up next, let's talk about the cultural stories of 2017. Beth, when I look back at these 10 years, it does feel like the two solar eclipses that passed basically over my head where I live was the universe giving me a heads up that it was going to be kind of a crazy 10 years.

Beth [00:32:35] So true.

Sarah [00:32:35] Just a little bit of like, hey, this wild celestial event is going to happen and it's going to make a big X over your hometown. Once in a couple 100 years situation, big X of your hometown, 2017, 2014. Let me take that seriously.

Beth [00:32:52] We wouldn't have said it this way then, but it was like, hey, the vibes are off in the universe.

Sarah [00:32:59] Right? Even though I love the solar eclipse so much. Now, I enjoyed the second one more because this one I had a toddler who wanted to look directly at it. That's my main memory of this solar eclipse. The fun solar eclipse food, snack-themed food, and trying to keep Felix from burning a whole nasal retina.

Beth [00:33:15] I watched the solar eclipse with my friend who is a beekeeper and watched how the bees responded and the bees were definitely saying the vibes are off.

Sarah [00:33:25] The vibes are off!

Beth [00:33:25] They freaked out and it was the coolest thing to realize the level at which this works on us, what's happening in the sky, works on all of us.

Sarah [00:33:35] I didn't know what to expect. When it happened, I just remember the reptile part of my brain-- I know that's not really true, but you know what I'm trying to get at there. My monkey brain was like freak out, seek shelter, find safety, freak out and all. And the prefrontal cortex was like be cool, it's fine. And you know what, that is a metaphor for these last 10 years.

Beth [00:34:00] Absolutely the dichotomy of the Trump presidency, with all of us going to see Wonder Woman.

Sarah [00:34:09] Right

Beth [00:34:10] And listening to Taylor Swift's Reputation.

Sarah [00:34:12] I can't believe it's Reputation; I thought that album was older.

Beth [00:34:15] It made me really upset to see that this was the year for Reputation. Because in my mind, Reputation's like 2007. No. But how much work this woman has done in the last 10 years.

Sarah [00:34:26] I'll tell you what, some of these things were not helping. I really don't think it was probably good for us that The Handmaid's Tale became a TV adaptation in 2017. I don't think it was contributive, you know what I'm saying?

Beth [00:34:38] I was just talking to some friends about The Handmaid's Tale, and they were like, do you watch this? And I said, "I watched the first episode, and I said, "I cannot, because I read the book and I know where this is going."

Sarah [00:34:47] Word.

Beth [00:34:48] And I just don't need that rolling around in my brain. I got enough of it.

Sarah [00:34:50] Yeah. I got to about four episodes and I was like, you know what, I'm good.

Beth [00:34:54] This is a bad thing.

Sarah [00:34:55] And I really think maybe we--- I'm not busting on the show, the show's well done, obviously well acted, beautifully produced. Margaret Atwood's a genius. I'm just saying, at this time, did we need entertainment that was going to psych people up so hard?

Beth [00:35:11] You want to watch the Handmaid's Tale when things are going well.

Sarah [00:35:16] Right, because you know what I don't love? I'm just going to be real honest. I don't like people showing up in The Handmaid's Tale's costumes as protests. It's not my jam.

Beth [00:35:25] It’s not my jam either. Protests, though, aren't my jam in general, so I have a hard time.

Sarah [00:35:27] Protests are my thing. And I find that approach a little incendiary and so reductive to the genius that is that novel. That's what bugs me about it, is it just takes something that is very complex and so smartly written and executed and is saying so many interesting things, and just makes it a performance. It’s not my thing.

Beth [00:35:52] Well, and look, I think that a resistance lesson is that you run out of extremes and you lose credibility.

Sarah [00:36:03] Yes. that's it. That's exactly right. Because the struggle of 2017 and the resistance really is it didn't work because here we are.

Beth [00:36:12] Yeah.

Sarah [00:36:13] It didn't work. Maybe we don't know the attacks we didn't prevent. Could have been worse. We do need to take that seriously. But it's just tough,. It's tough looking back. The other thing that I had forgotten this year was the Fyre Festival.

Beth [00:36:27] That's exactly what I was just staring at on my screen.

Sarah [00:36:30] I loved Elizabeth Holmes. I love a fraudster. I find them fascinating.

Beth [00:36:37] You love the story of them, right? Like not that Elizabeth is like a personal hero of yours.

Sarah [00:36:42] No, no, no. I just think they're fascinating. And Billy McFarland, let me tell you, there is a letter that his mother wrote to the court during his sentencing that I am going to turn it into a book one day, guys. It's fascinating.

Beth [00:36:54] I can't wait to read this book.

Sarah [00:36:55] It's been percolating in my head since 2017, so I probably need to get on it. But you look back over these things that were happening, the streaming dominance, which was also a red flag, we should have been like, no, no, no. Please don't destroy this industry.

Beth [00:37:12] How far is Fyre Festival from cryptocurrency?

Sarah [00:37:15] Not far.

Beth [00:37:16] And meme coins, especially. This virality as the currency I think was starting to pick up then. And then you realize that that's always temporary. It's always volatile. And for someone to win big, so many people have to lose. That's the model.

Sarah [00:37:36] Right.

Beth [00:37:36] That so many are interested that a handful of people profit off the masses in these short bursts.

Sarah [00:37:47] Well, I'm really excited to continue this conversation because 2017 feels like the end of my memory of the first Trump term until the pandemic. I don't really remember much about 2018 and 2019.

Beth [00:37:59] I'm sorry.

Sarah [00:38:02] So I'm excited.

Beth [00:38:03] I do remember enough of 2018 to know that it is not going to be more pleasant to get there.

Sarah [00:38:09] We're doing it though.

Beth [00:38:12] We're doing it.

Sarah [00:38:12] And I don't think it feels like a slog. I do feel like we're learning and we're seeing things and it is helpful. And it puts things in perspective, both how fast time has gone and also that it doesn't march quite as quickly as we think sometimes.

Beth [00:38:31] I'm experiencing this like physical therapy. Like the bones have all broken and they've started to heal enough that we can use them a bit, but you have to use them gingerly, attentively.

Sarah [00:38:47] I like it.

Beth [00:38:48] And you're just getting a little bit stronger with every repetition.

Sarah [00:38:53] Well, we are grateful for everyone for joining us in this therapy. We will be back with a regular episode on Tuesday. Until then, keep it nuanced, y'all.