Paying for the News: A Holiday Gift Guide
Topics Discussed:
Election Lawsuit Updates
Biden Transition Updates
Covid-19 Vaccine Updates
Thinking Differently About the Holidays
Moment of Hope: KY Hopeful Paws Rescue
Gifting the News: Our Holiday Gift Guide
Outside of Politics
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Episode Resources
Fact-checking the battle for credit over Pfizer's vaccine announcement (CNN)
Trump campaign cuts Sidney Powell from president’s legal team (Politico)
Biden Chooses Antony Blinken, Defender of Global Alliances, as Secretary of State (The New York Times)
Biden Will Nominate First Woman to Lead Intelligence, First Latino to Run Homeland Security (The New York Times)
TRADITIONAL MEDIA:
The New York Times
The Washington Post
The L.A. Times
The Boston Globe
The Financial Times
The Wall Street Journal
Apple News
The Atlantic
EMAIL NEWSLETTERS & NEW MEDIA:
Axios AM (free)
Transcript
Beth : [00:00:00] Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, we are going to catch up on what's happening with the election and the transition. A little bit about where we are with COVID-19. But in our main segment, we are going to support your holiday gift giving because many of you have reached out to say that you are giving yourself or others news subscriptions for the holiday.
So we're going to talk about our favorite news sources, what we pay for ourselves and why, and hopefully give you lots of ideas for this very inspired and civically minded holiday venture that you're on. Thank you so much for doing that. And we'll end, as we always do with what's on our minds outside of politics.
Sarah: [00:00:40] Before we get started, we wanted to tell you that we have holiday shirts. These were Beth's idea. It's a brilliant idea.
They're at T public and they say, Have the Best Holiday Available to You. I just love that so much. I think it's so great.
Beth : [00:00:54] It meets the moment, right. So we're just sort of just going for a meeting the moment. And everyone has told us that [00:01:00] it takes so much pressure off to hear, have the best day available.
So let's take the pressure off the holidays as well.
Sarah: [00:01:06] That's absolutely. Okay. As we were recording on Thursday, we were getting a flurry of text and tweets and messages about this Rudy Giuliani, Trump legal team press conference that was happening as we were recording, but as we finish up and we watch it, we felt pretty good about not having an instantaneous reaction.
I still feel good about that because now, you know, with the weekend behind us and further fallout from this press conference, now we can safely say, It was a very sad, sad debacle, and didn't need a lot of hot takes because I felt like that contributes to the sense of that this is serious and impactful when really, I just [00:02:00] think it's sad and pathetic.
Beth : [00:02:02] This has been another illustration to me, of the theory that we can be really outraged by the way that the Trump campaign is handling the election loss while simultaneously resting assured that there is not going to be some dramatic overturning of the election results. It reminded me of you talking about how this was the same crew that had the four seasons total landscaping press conference.
And that's really what happened here. And I honestly think as regular human being citizens who do not like many in the media have to imagine what it must be like to live in a red state because we do. And who'd not have to imagine being surrounded by Trump supporters because we are, this has been another illustration to me of the fact that I just can't get [00:03:00] exercised immediately about every tweet and statement.
It is better for my relationships with the people around me to watch as many of these things self-destruct and they're doing that. They're self destructing. They've already thrown Sidney Powell who said some of the most outlandish things and that's a high bar, and it was press conference all the way under the bus.
And that's good. That's helpful. I think it is helpful for people in conservative world right now to hear from people in conservative world. Hey. Too far. Way too far.
Sarah: [00:03:36] It was the theatrics of Rudy Giuliani's, you know, hair dye running down his face and Sydney Powell's, truly banana conspiracy theories, is not to mention now we know it was basically a super spreader event because Rudy Giuliani's son was there and he tested positive for COVID, but this was a legal press conference about what they feel like their legal strategy [00:04:00] is to. I mean, they had a bulletin board or a little piece of poster board that said the path to victory and I just, Oh, okay.
I mean, high-wire act, I think delusions of victory, but whatever the case, Beth, you've been doing deep dives on the cases and we had a major decision in Pennsylvania. So apart from the theatrical of the legal teams press conference, what is the reality of the legal strategy itself as it stands today on Monday, November 23rd.
Beth : [00:04:28] There is no path to victory. That's the summary. Look at the time we're recording. The Trump campaign has won two skirmishes in court and lost 34 times in post-election litigation. And those two victories were about ballots that had already been set aside before the camp canvass. So they didn't actually impact vote totals.
There are disparate theories, state by state of why lots of people have been disenfranchised, but I think a piece of clarity that [00:05:00] came ringing through so clearly in the Pennsylvania judges decision over the weekend. And by the way, this judge in Pennsylvania has been involved with the NRA, the Pennsylvania Republican party, the Federalist society. So this is not, you know, a socialist.
Sarah: [00:05:21] Can I have a quick side note with this judge really fast? Pat Toomey, the Senator from Pennsylvania came out to his credit and said, it's over, I congratulate president elect after this decision, but did you read his press release where he was like, this is a very conservative judge.
And so I trust his neutrality and I wanted to be like, who wrote that sentence? Because it really upset me this idea that I'm going to in this literally the same sentence say this person is incredibly conservative and therefore I very much trust their objectivity, but whatever. I just need to get that off my chest.
Thank you.
Beth : [00:05:57] I agree. And I also think [00:06:00] that he is grappling with the reality that there's an audience for Trump's outlandish claims and yeah. That to me is why I feel good when Tucker Carlson is saying, there's no evidence here, even though Tucker Carlson is not my trusted source of anything. I think it's important that people in this world make this case.
That's why it's been so devastating to me, that Republican senators and representatives, aren't standing up and saying how ridiculous this is. But anyway, this judge said something that I think is so clarifying that really applies to almost all of the claims the Trump campaign has filed. And remember, there's this huge disconnect between the public messaging and what's actually being filed in court.
But the judge said, you know, the remedy for you if you feel that your vote didn't count and a remarkable number of Trump voters believe their votes didn't count in some way. The remedy for you is not to invalidate the votes of millions of [00:07:00] other people. He said something in the seat that I just think we should all as Americans, like stop and meditate on several times a day, like maybe we should have a national bell and we just take a minute and we meditate on this statement.
This Pennsylvania judge was considering the fact that in some counties in Pennsylvania, The County boards of elections had decided to give voters who messed up their absentee ballot and opportunity to cure the ballot. Now think about it. You get an opportunity to cure when you vote in person, because if you've messed up yourballot, the person who tells you where to put it in the machine can say, Hey.
You voted twice here, you need to go back and fix that. So that an opportunity to cure is not something dramatic that doesn't happen for in-person voting. Some counties in Pennsylvania, took those absentee ballots and called people to say your signature doesn't match or you didn't put the security ballot on and others did not.
And the judge said expanding the right of some residents does not burden the rights of others. [00:08:00] You can't state a claim on your own behalf by saying that the state is not restricting someone else's right. And I just think as a country, we really need to internalize the message that helping some people is not the same thing as burdening others. I thought that was really clarifying
Sarah: [00:08:20] The transparency with which the Trump legal team is asserting the only way we get a fair result is to disenfranchise a massive amounts of black voters in these urban areas was shocking, even in the midst of an administration that it's hard to be shocked by like, They were just so blatant.
It's like you said, like, because they were able to vote in these high numbers, the elections not fair to us. It's not even mental gymnastics. It's just, it's, it's pretty blatant. It's [00:09:00] pretty blatant that their path to victory involved disenfranchisement of black Americans. And they were 100% okay with that.
And I, you know, as I watched the, the Dominos continue to fall, you have Senator Toomey, now Senator Portman, Chris Christie, even on the Sunday show saying this is a national embarrassment and he needs to begin to transition. You know, it's interesting to me to watch. The spectrum of Republican response to this behavior, you know, David French wrote a really good thing for the dispatch where he was like, you, you don't understand the fear.
I mean, listen, they came for Tucker Carlson for going after Sidney Powell and a point that he made that really stuck out to me is that, you know, we are praising the secretary of state of Georgia and the secretary of state of Arizona and these Michigan legislators who even went to the white house and then said, no, we're the, the results in Michigan stand and this judge.
All of these people are going to [00:10:00] face death threats which have become so common when you cross president Trump, it's like, we don't even register them anymore. And I thought that was such a good point. Like the fear we say like, Oh my gosh, how could they stay in by him? But the consequences for not standing by him are intense.
And I don't, I still think that's the right thing to do, but I think that we have become a little bit numb to the actual physical threats of violence, even hardcore conservatives face when they. Turn from the party line with regards to in, by the party line. I mean, yeah, Trump line and I'm really looking forward to a day when that doesn't it happened, but it's not going to end the second Joe Biden is inaugurated.
His people will still be out there threatening physical violence. When, if they see anyone betray him or even, you know, look like they're about to betray him. I mean, you're seeing it right now in Georgia, not just with the secretary of state. I think you're going to see it more and more play out with the Senate [00:11:00] runoffs.
And it's just when he wrote that, I thought, yeah, we are a little bit numb to the fact that these public servants and election officials, you know, we're all laughing at Rudy Giuliani's hair dye and how ridiculous he, him and Sydney Powell are but th these, this has real life consequences for people.
And no one should be experiencing death threats because they want to follow the constitution, state law, the democratic principles that have held up our country for 200 plus years. Like it's just so upsetting. I'm
Beth : [00:11:37] really glad that you brought this up. I was texting over the weekend with a friend of mine about how many people in our circles think that Joe Biden won the election clearly, but that there's really just not a bunch of harm in letting Trump do his thing here.
And that it's more fun to like, talk about the hysterics of people who use phrases like a threat to [00:12:00] democracy. And I was saying to my friend, like how much more messed up do things have to get for people to take it seriously? Because to me what this episode has solidified, I've spent a lot of the Trump presidency asking myself, is he sinister or incompetent?
And it's just both. It's so clearly. Both because yes, the four seasons thing is funny and yes, the hair dye thing is funny, but none of this is funny and it's actually very sinister. As you said, there is an enormous racial component to this strategy. There is a component you cannot get to Trump winning this election without having some legislators clearly determining to overrule the will of the people.
That's the only way he wins this election. And that is an overt part of the strategy here. So it is not just that he is incompetent and has this team that looks like. The Island of misfit toys. It is that they have [00:13:00] a very sinister objective. And I think we don't spend enough time thinking about what if they were successful.
And I don't even feel any anxiety about them being successful. I do not think there is a chance that they will be, especially after the developments in the court cases over the weekend. But what if they were, what would that mean? And if you can't psychologically process those death threats that you were talking about, what if you could, what if it became so common in American politics and it extended so far down the chain because we're no longer talking about cabinet level national figures.
We're talking about the secretary of state of Georgia. And what if that kept filtering down to the head of the local board of elections or the mayor of a town? What if we all started to actually feel the results of what we have created in this country over the past four years,
Sarah: [00:13:57] If Trump's base has been emboldened to [00:14:00] threaten violence while he's the president what's going to happen when he's not?
When even they feel even more silenced or resentful or oppressed, God, I hate to use that word, but, you know, I feel like that could make it even worse. And that the true moment of terror I had when I was thinking about this this weekend is people like Tom Cotton are watching this and. taking lessons and seeing what worked and what didn't.
And that terrifies me because Tom Cotton is a lot of things, but incompetent is not one of them. He is ambitious. He is driven. And the thought that people like him are watching this and seeing how far Trump can go and what he can get away with is truly terrifying to me.
Beth : [00:14:46] Well, on the other side of the aisle, things are proceeding very peacefully. The Biden transition, if you just picture all of the chaos swirling around what's happening with the Trump legal team, [00:15:00] including like lawyers being subbed in and out as though they are basketball players.
Sarah: [00:15:06] Well, usually they have to do that because somebody is positive. They really have to have a deep bench because they respect the rules of virality, not at all. And they have to constantly be prepared for somebody to test positive and be quarantined.
Beth : [00:15:21] Well, there's also such a loose relationship with ethical and legal principles that some lawyers do reach the end of what they're willing to tolerate. The Biden transition is unfolding quickly, methodically, competently.
I think it was Axios that called it boring by design. So you have really
Sarah: [00:15:42] let's meditate on that for him. Boring by design. isn't that lovely?
Beth : [00:15:47] You have really predictable, experienced choices for cabinet level positions being named still with some diversity, we have the first [00:16:00] Latino to be named the secretary of the department of Homeland security.
That matters a lot if you think about that department's policy. We have a black woman to be named as our UN ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield, Alejandro Mayorkas is the DHS secretary pick. Avril Haines is his pick for director of national intelligence. Um, so you just see this unfolding of people that Joe Biden knows and trust.
And more than that, that lots of other people in these spaces know and trust.
Sarah: [00:16:32] Yeah, the big headline was that, um, Anthony Blinken will be the secretary of state, not a common name. A common name if you are in the foreign service or a diplomat or in foreign policy, but not a nationally well-known name, long-term Biden advisors.
What I'm seeing over and over again, as I'm reading about these appointments is that you have this combination of people who have deep and wide experience in the [00:17:00] departments or areas in which they will be leading and long histories with Biden himself. So to me, what that says is it's this synchronization between the white house and the department between the trust they have with bind himself and their personal expertise in these areas.
And that to me is just truly as a person who used to work in the federal government, like it's a truly beautiful thing to be hold. And what it also says is they are clearly prepared and are picking people who will be in a dead run on day one, just like. There's not gonna be any ramp up. There's not going to be any intro.
Like it's going to day one. We're going to see a massive amount of activity. And especially with somebody like the secretary of state, I mean, starting with Rex Tillerson, that agency has just been decimated and it's not just the foreign [00:18:00] policy approach of America first that needs to be undone and the relationships with our allies and other foreign governments that need to be worked on.
It's the actual department and employees like Anthony Blinken is going to have to do all of that at once. Like, it's not like he can just, let's just focus on our allies, we have to work on that or let's just focus with Iran and let's work on that.
Like, it's literally, let's just work on building up our foreign service and making sure we have people and well qualified people. And there aren't any empty spots. Like, no, it's all of that on day one. And he seems very well suited to take that on.
Beth : [00:18:40] I think a lot about Murray Evanovich and George Kent and the whole cast of characters that we met when the president was interfering in the state department's work in Ukraine.
I just hope all of those people are like exhaling deeply and feeling like, now I can go about my business. I can do my work here. I can do [00:19:00] good work on behalf of the United States. I do not have to fear. Retribution for acts of purported disloyalty constantly. I just, I really appreciate the way the buying team has handled all of this.
I appreciate the Biden team's constant messages that what the president is doing is both not okay, and will be ineffective ultimately, I just think that's the message that America needs right now. And I'm super grateful for it.
Sarah: [00:19:23] Well, and I feel such hope not only when I look at these appointments and when I watch them put out policies and be situating themselves to take extraordinary leadership extraordinarily quickly on day one, but I'm feeling a lot of hope on the COVID front.
We got more news that AstraZeneca's late stage trials are showing it's vaccine with 60 to 90% effectiveness, depending on the dosage. This is the one coming out of Oxford university, which I'm just personally vested in because it's led by redhead a woman named Sarah with three boys. We had the FDA authorizing Regeneron, which is the antibody [00:20:00] treatment that the president received that looks like, did you see where Ben Carson was like, I was really doing bad until I got the president. Trump authorized the treatment that he got and I thought, well, great for you, too bad for the rest of Americans, but it looks like that will be available to more high-risk patients.
They're going to start distributing the vaccines in December. Like I can just. Like I can, I feel, I can feel it. It's so close and just hearing people at the warp speed say we should have it to almost everybody by may. Like all these, all this good news flowing in from COVID, which is so intense in combination with the massive and uncontrolled spread across the country is such an intense place to be. But I am really, you know, just hunkering down, staying at my house and trying to stay focused on the incredibly positive developments that are [00:21:00] just over the horizon.
Beth : [00:21:01] What's specifically exciting about AstraZenica is that its vaccine seems to not require some of the logistical challenges to keep it cold, that the other vaccines require. All of this is going to be logistically very demanding.
Another reason that you want competent people you've never heard of it running the show, but I'm really excited about that. It gives me a sense of calm coming into what we know is going to be a difficult winter because even as D as vaccines start being distributed in December, we don't think we're going to all have them until the spring.
Emily Oster whose work we've talked about a number of times here, uh, wrote in her email this morning that in talking through Thanksgiving, she always says the choices are anxious if you choose to see people or sad, if you don't. I have to say, I feel a third thing about Thanksgiving. I am sad, very sad that we aren't going together with my family, especially because it's my niece's first holiday season.
[00:22:00] At the same time, I feel really proud that this wasn't drama drama in my family, that we all sat down and said, these are our values. This is what we're going to do. We love each other. If we have Christmas on Easter, everyone's going to be fine and we'll be able to tell our nanny's eliza later in her life that this is what we did because we cared about our fellow citizens and we cared about each other.
I felt really good about coming to that decision. It will be hard, no doubt. And we will still find a way to make it lovely because we have all kinds of blessings and privileges in our lives. But I don't want to be all down in the dumps because all of this news about the scientific innovation that has happened in such quick time. I mean, just think about it. We have never had a vaccine for a Corona virus and look at what people have been able to do. It's amazing. It just, it really fuels me [00:23:00] a
Sarah: [00:23:00] long time ago, I read this really great analysis of happiness and the type of vacations you take. Go with me here. I promise this is relevant.
And the article talked about. That when you take the same type of vacation every year, you have an enormous amount of anticipatory pleasure because you know, what's going to happen. You know what you're looking forward to, but you don't have a lot of reflective pleasure in that, the memories, because they are so similar blend together.
And so, you know, it just kind of becomes one big blob of the memories of this type of trip you take every year. Versus, if you take a vet, if you go on a sort of an venture vacation or a vacation, a place you've never been, there's a lot of really intense stress and not a ton of anticipatory pleasure because there's so much to work out and you don't actually know what it's going to look like when you get there.
But that the reflective pleasure [00:24:00] upon coming back from the trip is much greater because even when there were challenges and stress on the trip, that just becomes like, look at what we did when we were on this crazy adventure travel trip. And you have these really intense memories because it was all new to you and it's really like cemented into your brain.
And that's the prism with which I'm trying to look at this current holiday season. We won't have as much anticipatory pleasure because many of the things we do every single year are either not available or going to look very, very different. But Danielle, every holiday movie is about a challenge to overcome during the holiday season.
Right. And that's what makes the memories and that's what makes everything special. Like, you know, there's no Home Alone if the big disaster of him actually being left home alone doesn't happen right? And I think. That's like, that's what I'm trying to think about. Like, it's not, there's not going to be the anticipatory pleasure of knowing, like, we'll go to the Christmas [00:25:00] parade and this is what will happen and it will look alike and there's no anticipatory pleasure of we'll go to see the same Santa.
And this is, we see him every year and this is what it's like, but the memories of this holiday season. And I mean, like, and I want to sweep of people even like struggling, let's say the worst case scenario happens and you get COVID. Seeing that you like, who supported you and who brought you food and, and the doctor that took amazing care of you.
Like that's still a special, precious memory, not to mention just the experience of like realizing how fragile life is and how precious it is. All of that I think can make this holiday season. Important and precious and special in a different way, because we're not getting the anticipatory pleasure, but the challenges that we're all going to face and overcome because of this pandemic are going to be really intense and like, they will be memories we take with us for the rest of our lives. And that's just how I'm trying to think about this.
Beth : [00:25:56] And none of that is to gloss over the tremendous suffering that will take [00:26:00] place this holiday season, the next couple of months are going to be really hard. Some people are not going to survive it. Our healthcare system is going to be stretched.
Even as the CDC has said, don't travel, there are a million people a day going through airports right now. So we have some really difficult to stuff in front of us and I don't for a second, want to lose space for that suffering and the importance of it, and the fact that none of this had to happen. And that it's unlikely that there will be any real accountability for the fact that it happened.
All that's really hard. And at the same time, what do you have if you don't focus on the hopeful aspects of things, and there are many, and we always do a moment of hope before we transition to our main topic. And today I wanted to do one that is about a friend of ours.
So my husband has two really, really close friends who are like brothers to him. And we call them uncle Derek and uncle Jeremy, uncle Jeremy's wife Haley has always [00:27:00] had a heart for animals. And she started very recently Hopeful Paws Rescue that takes in dogs mainly from rural shelters and owners that can no longer care for them. They often sometimes are called in on puppy mill cases.
And listening to her talk about that is extraordinary. What happens when a puppy mill is discovered and dissembled, and what she and her team do in just like on a dime to go in the middle of the night to take care of these animals. They've helped with hurricane relief, but they try really hard to give these animals good medical care, lots of love and resituate them in homes where they can be loved and cared for.
And they have rescued about 250 dogs since may and are really growing and receiving support from people all over the United States, which is just awesome. And so I'm really proud of what Haley is doing here and her team and excited that [00:28:00] so many little efforts like that happen all over the country and world all the time and go relatively unnoticed.
So it was just exciting to me to be able to lift that up here today.
Sarah: [00:28:11] Next step, we're going to talk about our favorite subscription new services and offer up a little holiday gift guide. If you're thinking about giving an, a news subscription as a gift to someone you love.
Beth : [00:28:30] I just want to start with the premise that the instinct to pay for news is a really good one that we should all lean into hard.
Sarah: [00:28:40] I feel like there has been an incredible shift within the industry and even how consumers talk about it outside the industry. I mean, I think the pandemic and the hit that advertising took at the very beginning was accelerated a change in an industry that realized like advertising is not the only thing that we can depend on.
[00:29:00] I think that there's been a major shift to substantiate where journalists are like, well, you can just subscribe to my work and I'll get paid that way so we'll do more listener support. And you see consolidation. I mean, it was announced over the weekend that Ezra Klien will be leaving Fox and become an opinion columnist at the New York times, they're scooping up all kinds of really good people.
They took Ben Smith from Buzzfeed. So you're seeing more consolidation at the Times and the post and places like that. I've just noticed in my own life, people saying, well, I decided to start paying for it. And that was important to me. And I think that is an incredibly positive trend and one, we need to lean all the way into.
Beth : [00:29:39] There's also been tons of reporting in the last couple of months about those internal shakeups what's going on here? What are the dynamics? You have this sense that some places have become too, I hate using this word, but too woke for lack of a better word for there to be genuine disagreement and then backlash about [00:30:00] that conversation.
And I mentioned all of that because a way that we can ensure that, that kind of healthy friction continues is to pay for our news and to pay for news from lots of different kinds of outlets, not just the behemoth media companies, but also the journalists who go out on their own, not just podcasts that are made by mass media corporations, but also independent podcasts.
I mean, the news universe needs to be rich and diverse. I'm paying for our news as a way that we can ensure that it remains that way.
Sarah: [00:30:39] Okay. Let's start with what Beth and I subscribe to. Now obviously we do a news and politics podcast, so we subscribed to basically every major news paper across the country.
We have subscriptions to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA times. The Boston [00:31:00] Globe, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. I think those are the major newspapers we subscribed to, don't you think Beth?
Beth : [00:31:06] That's right. And then I also subscribed to Apple news, which gives me access to all kinds of newspapers and magazines that I'll use in specific researcher kind of one-off situations.
Sarah: [00:31:17] So I check the New York Times daily news brief every morning. I read the.LA times, the Boston globe, depending on more their in-depth reporting. I wouldn't say I read the financial times, the Boston globe, the LA times every day, but it's pretty often that to a certain area of the country or, you know, Boston globe spotlight team is world famous and deservedly so for their in-depth investigative reporting.
And so I look to those papers when I want, like the LA times was so helpful during the California wildfires. Like I wanted people in the state reporting on what was going on there. And so, you know, I don't know [00:32:00] if those are the, the best options depending on where you live in the country for your absolutely daily news, but there's a part of me.
And I hate to, you know, lean all the way into this consolidated situation. But I do think that everybody should be subscribed to the New York times.
Beth : [00:32:15] I think it's hard to follow the news in depth as an American, if you are not subscribed to the times, because those free articles just don't get you to get the depth of reporting that you need.
And then I think if you are serious about analysis of news from a variety of perspectives the Atlantic is a must as well. And certainly there are people who talk about the Atlantic as primarily left-leaning, and I'm not really sure that anybody's doing a good job of deciding what left-leaning and right-leaning mean in the Trump era,
because there is this sense that anything other than blatant pro-Trump propaganda is left-leaning, but the Atlantic has a [00:33:00] real diversity of viewpoint represented within its writers. And the writing is so high quality. Even when I read something from the Atlantic and think, I don't really agree with any of this, I am better off for having read it.
Sarah: [00:33:12] I totally agree with that.
And I think if you want a more, let's say you're going big for yourself. I think you could balance what you feel like is the left-leaning times with a subscription to the wall street journal. And those two would like really situate you well, to take in like a good balanced daily. Headline Roundup. And
Beth : [00:33:35] Here's the truth of it. I don't find that the actual information presented by the Times and the Wall Street Journal are that different. It is the editorial decisions about what's highlighted. Now, certainly on the opinion side, things are very different, but here's the reality. I don't recommend a lot of reading the times opinion page or the wall street journals.
I don't care what the wall street journal [00:34:00] editorial board says about much of anything.
Sarah: [00:34:02] I actually probably pay more attention to the wall street journal editorial page, at least while Trump was president, because that was a good indication of it where the sort of conservative institutional hierarchy was.
Beth : [00:34:13] Opinion pieces to me have become predictable, boring. I will read an opinion piece, like a straight op-ed from a newspaper when I just have an emotion that I want validated. Honestly, that's the truth of it, but for good information, I stick to the new side and I think both of those organizations have outstanding, outstanding journalists doing really solid work.
Sarah: [00:34:38] And I feel the same way about the post. I will read their in-depth reporting. I don't love their daily news briefs. And I feel like their headlines are very emotional. That's my biggest beef with the Washington Post. If I'm just giving a full, unbiased, transparent review, but we still, I mean, I still think a subscription is, I [00:35:00] would say if you have a family member who is like, More openly left-leaning and you're not worried about like them feeling like you're sending them a biased source than the Washington post would be a good gift.
Beth : [00:35:11] We also spend lots of money on email newsletters because email newsletters in one sense are really helpful aggregators. So Sarah rattled off all these different newspapers that we have subscriptions to. How do we know what articles to check out on a daily basis that are relevant to the current headlines? Those email newsletters are invaluable in pointing us in a specific direction within each of those sources.
Sarah: [00:35:38] Well, because it's not like you're reading every article, but you check enough of the emails and then you're like, well, this article was in every single one, so clearly I need to go read it. So we both subscribe to Axios' daily, top 10, love it
Beth : [00:35:53] That's free.
Sarah: [00:35:54] That's free. That's the first thing I read every morning usually. We both subscribe [00:36:00] to Heather Cox Richardson's daily emails. She is a history professor who sort of went viral from her really long form narrative. It's like, it's really interesting the way she writes it. The news it's literally like a long form essay about what is happening the day before, instead of, you know, so many people depend on like just the lead sentence in a headline, but hers is a very, like, she tells the story through her perspective of what's happening in the news.
And I, you know, I really. Really like her writing and her approach, because I'm such a history buff anyway, like hearing, she always gives a, a very historical spin to like, we've seen this before, this is what's happening. Or this is like, this is, um, indicative of some trends we've seen in the past. Like, I really like her approach. So if you have a history buff in your family, I would highly recommend gifting a subscription to Heather Cox Richardson's.
Beth : [00:36:52] We subscribed to an Helen Petersen's work, which I think is really interesting if you have someone who's looking for [00:37:00] something that is not just hard hitting news, but is more cultural analysis with a political flare. Is that a fair description?
Sarah: [00:37:10] Yeah, I mean, it's called culture studies. I think people, you know, if you have a person in your life who maybe is a good newsperson, checks a lot of sources, is engaged, but reads a lot of like nonfiction, Malcolm Gladwell esque, cultural deep studies of what's happening with all these news and cultural trends, I think Anne Helen's newsletter would be very popular with that person.
Beth : [00:37:37] And she seems very focused right now because she's writing a book on this, on the workplace. And I think there's a good perspective that's missing from a lot of HR conversation in her work. So that's another, if you have somebody in your family, who's kind of in business leadership, they might hear things from Anne Helen that they're not hearing anywhere else.
Sarah: [00:37:59] Well, and we both [00:38:00] subscribed to Dave Pell's Next Draft, which is another, where he takes the, the articles, it's more like an article Roundup of some of the big news stories. And I often find at least one or two things in his newsletter that I've not seen anywhere else. And I really, I mean, I read his newsletter every day.
I really like it to like, it comes in the afternoon, but it's free. I think he has a subscription, but I only subscribed to the free version.
Beth : [00:38:24] We also have subscribed to Matt Yglesias' new newsletter. I appreciate his analysis. I need him to slow down a little bit with like the comment threads. There's a lot of content coming right now, but I think he probably will settle in after he's out of this debut period.
Sarah: [00:38:43] And he's very policy focused. That's what I would say about Matt Yglesias. It's like if you have a policy walk in your family that you're looking to give something to, or you think would really enjoy a very like policy perspective who gets turned off by politics, but would be interested in the more policy driven [00:39:00] conversations about immigration or social security or foreign policy.
Then I would definitely recommend this one because he is very walkie.
Beth : [00:39:08] One of my favorite daily news newsletters is The Dispatch. So for the conservatives in your life, the Dispatch is a group of people who came from like national review and other traditionally conservative outlets. They are not never Trump people down to like the biggest caricature of that description you could have, but they are also not pro-Trump people.
And so you get, it's like David French and Jonah Goldberg, you get a pretty unbiased view of what's happening, a whole lot of context for it. They do terrific fact checking of the latest thing to come out of conservative world. And it still comes with a sense of, this is how we think the world ought to operate. That's more conservative. [00:40:00] And so I think it's welcoming to people who have always been Republican, but who do want the news to be given to them straight.
Sarah: [00:40:08] I really liked the Dispatch. I would say it's the conservative source that I can read regularly that doesn't make me angry. I really, really have enjoyed it.
You've sent it to me probably a month ago. I read their morning dispatch and I really liked David French's, um, perspective, and I find it really valuable. And so I think for, for a conservative in your life who doesn't love Trump, but is like probably never gonna subscribe to the New York times. This is a really good option.
Beth : [00:40:38] It's also a really good option, I think. And this, Sarah, I think you affirmed this, for people who are really progressive, but want to expand their news sources because there is less sort of punching at liberals than you find in almost all other conservative writing.
Sarah: [00:40:55] Okay. Yeah. No, I think that's definitely right.
And that's what I appreciate about it and that's why I don't get angry [00:41:00] reading it. Okay. So let's talk about Beth. The most difficult person, which is the person who uses the term fake news. Well, let's say your gift is a form of intervention.
What would you recommend for someone who is looking to give a new subscription to a family member they're like maybe trying to full pull away from Fox news or Lord help us is already in Newsmax. And like, they're really trying to open up a dialogue about the news that is not, that is actual, uh, journalistically based and not run through the lens of concern commentary.?
Beth : [00:41:45] That's a very hard question because I think the Wall Street Journal is the best answer.
And I also think that someone who's using the term fake news would probably write the journal off.
Sarah: [00:41:57] Here's what I'm thinking. Here's my [00:42:00] suggestion. And it's just a start and it's not going to fix it, but I, I really like it. So I'm a big fan of what's called the New Paper. That their tagline is the daily news in as few words as possible.
So it's a daily email and it's like five stories. It's very basic. And I will tell you that they're like their first headline is often very different from everybody else's like, for example, today everybody's top coverage was the secretary of state pick, but that was not their top story. I would say they don't cover politics a great deal.
Like it's very focused on hard news, not even like political analysis through the lens of news, hard news. So if there's, if it's like full of, you know, Trump press conference, that's what everybody's talking about. There'll be talking about like a foreign policy development or a business merger or something like that.
So I think this is what I'm going [00:43:00] to give my dad for Christmas is a subscription to the New Paper. I think email is a really friendly.Um, path to introducing some hard news into this person's life. I think you would have to try very hard to get mad at the new, the new paper and feel like it was like a liberal fake news thing cause it's so it's stripped really bare.
This is my best suggestion. I think the New Paper is the best suggestion if you're trying to get somebody off cable news and you really just want to get at least a little steady, like maybe you're not gonna get them off of cable news, but you can at least introduce a steady drip of hard news reporting.
I mean, they're not reporting, they're linking to other stories, but it's usually the AP or Reuters or the sites that aren't like, they don't link to CNN or Fox news very often. And I think that's the key there is it's got to feel as truly objective as you can possibly get.
Beth : [00:43:55] I think that's a good suggestion.
The Dispatch comes to mind for me again as well [00:44:00] although they will probably take offense at some of the opinion work there. I also think that the Fox news daily podcast, the Rundown is not a bad place to get your news. We've been on that podcast. It's very professionally run. It's part of the true news division at Fox.
So I think if you're trying to steer someone in a new direction, but with a source that they already feel relatively comfortable with, that might be a good place. And like you said about newsletters, I think podcasts are a really good way to enter a new information space. And once you get into podcasts, you can certainly go down a very conservative rabbit hole in podcasting, and you see that happening to people right now, the top rated podcasts are just filled with very hardcore, conservative echo chamber kind of stuff.
But I think that Daily Rundown from Fox is [00:45:00] pretty well done.
Sarah: [00:45:01] Yeah. I mean, I think that's the other thing is it doesn't necessarily, I think pain-free news is a great thing, but helping a family member, like putting together a podcast, playlist playlist, for them showing them how to get it on their phone, like that's a gift to, you know, like kind of coaching somebody through the technology and trying to introduce them into another way to take in the news that's not 24 seven cable news is another type of gift that I think would pay dividends. And I
Beth : [00:45:30] truly think like for purposes of new year's resolutions strike out a new path kind of habits, if there is someone that you genuinely want to connect better with over politics and you feel like you're living in different information universes, I would just have each of you pick one source that is, bite-size like an email newsletter or a podcast.
And just commit to both of you reading that source or listening to that [00:46:00] source for a couple months and having conversations and seeing what happens because it does significantly change your perspective to keep coming back to Erica Mandy's the Newsworthy every single day.
That's another great one. I don't know how you get mad at what Erica does on the newsletter. It's just very straightforward. Like the New Paper.
Sarah: [00:46:21] Uh, that's what I was gonna say. I feel like she's like a podcast version of the New Paper.
Beth : [00:46:24] Yeah, you use a resource like that and you just keep coming back to it.
It, it will alter the state of things, just like it alters this, the state of things to mainline Ben Shapiro or Pod Save America. Like you get yourself in a certain space where you're listening a lot to one kind of commentary in and it just shifts how you look at the world. So sprinkling in some of those sources where you're really not getting commentary.
You're just getting information, I think does everybody a world of good.
Sarah: [00:46:53] And we should also add that a subscription to your local newspaper is always a great gift. You know, [00:47:00] supporting local journalism. There's been so much writing and thinking and debating about the importance of local journalism. So, so giving a subscription to your local paper is also a great idea.
I mean, this is one of the most common questions we get, but we really loved that over the last couple of weeks, we've been getting questions about gifting news subscription. So we hope that this little news holiday gift guide has been helpful.
Beth what's on your mind outside politics,
Beth : [00:47:31] Well this is my kitchen week. I'm so happy to spend time in my kitchen, making food this week, even though our Thanksgiving is going to look very different. In addition. To spending lots of kitchen time this week. What I'm most excited about is that I have purchased a new chair for myself as we record our podcasts.
I want everyone to understand that for five years, as we've been making Pantsuit Politics, I have been sitting at a desk in my closet on a folding chair. And this weekend Chad said to me, I think you need a better chair. [00:48:00] Let's go buy one. And we did. We went to this delightful furniture store Aligned Furniture in Cincinnati.
There are six floors in this super old building and this furniture store, it was so fun to explore and everybody was wearing masks and there were very few people there. It all felt completely responsible in the new COVID landscape. The people who worked with us there were amazing. And I am sitting now in the most comfortable chair I've ever sat in, in my life.
And it just is really changing my whole attitude about being here to do this with you. I have to be honest. I love what we do. I love it tenfold in my comfy chair
Sarah: [00:48:36] I love it so much. Well, let me, let me continue on that, that furniture thread. On Friday night and I really struggled last week, I had at least two or three days last week where I did not want to do anything, I was cranky.
And I just felt such malaise that I was struggling to get over it. It couldn't muster much energy to get anything done. [00:49:00] And then Friday night after at least two days, maybe three of Felix having a total meltdown when it was time to do his zoom kindergarten class, I thought something's got to give. The space that we're trying to do this and it's not working.
And it's contributing to everybody's bad mood and it's definitely contributing to my malaise. So Friday night, really on a whim, I transformed our guest bedroom into a little classroom for Felix and moved Amos's classroom and to his desk in his room. Now Griffin's upstairs in his room as well. And just.
Like spent probably two to three hours bringing a table in, moving the bed into like, sort of the eaves under the window, opening up a lot of space, moving a little table in there, setting up a little crafts station and a reading chair. Like I didn't buy a single thing.
I used only things in my house and I felt so much better when it was over. I felt like the Mo I told my husband, I was like, this is the [00:50:00] most, I felt like myself in probably three weeks. Like, I don't know why I love that so much. I think it's, you know, my friend was like, it's sort of like a puzzle, which I think that's part of it. It's like the intellectual challenge of like, what do I have and how can I make it work in here?
I don't think there's anything more fun than that for me personally. It was feeling like, okay, we have a fresh start. We can really figure out how to make this space work for us and how to hopefully have better smoother days where everybody's not as distracted. It was like the promise of a fresh start, being able to move things around and transform a space. It made me feel alive, like more than I have in the last couple weeks. And I just had the energy, the rest of the weekend to knock a ton of stuff off my list. And I just. It made me so, so happy. And it's like, I get to this space too, where I'm like, well, is there any other spaces I could transform?
It I'm like, stop it. The other spaces are working. You did that because [00:51:00] the space was not working, but like to make the space work in that way and to like use just a bunch of energy and everything you already have to solve a problem. Uh, just felt so good.
Beth : [00:51:11] I love that. I think a lot of that is what I feel in the kitchen.
Ellen and I made pie crusts this weekend and put them in the freezer for Thanksgiving because we usually do Thanksgiving with Chad's grandmother. And she, I swear, makes a pie per person. There's so much pie at her Thanksgiving. And so I decided I'm gonna make a bunch of pie to try to give that piece of Thanksgiving to Chad here.
And so Ellen and I made the crust and it was a lot of what you just said. I've, I'm using really humble things that are always in my kitchen. I'm putting them together. I can see the result right away. I can smell it. I can taste it. You know, I feel like I'm giving a gift to my family in the process of that effort.
And it really does bring out the best in me. My, my mood really escalated this weekend [00:52:00] with getting a comfortable chair and making some pie crusts because of those really simple things.
Sarah: [00:52:06] Yeah. And that totally agree. It is the small things, especially when we're spending so much time in our spaces, you know, when the home is like the center of our universe is because we're not going anywhere else that that space has really got to serve us.
I'm so I'm so glad you're out of your closet. I'm beyond happy that you were in a better space. It was, it was past time.
Beth : [00:52:28] Yes, thank you. And now I walk into my closet and I'm like, it's so big in here. I like that. The sound of music opening, just staring in a closet. Well, thank you all so much for joining us today. We genuinely hope that this week gives you some spaces for if not gratitude, a little gentleness.
So have the best Thanksgiving available to you. We have a special conversation between Sarah and her friend, Kristen Howerton, to share with you here on Friday, [00:53:00] and then we'll be back at it next week, diving into the headlines.
We appreciate all of you. Keep it nuanced, y'all.