Fake the Nation

Negin Farsad is a fantastic Commedian and host - didn’t really know her work before the podcast - but I’ve discovered many great new comedians through her show (really miss @ Midnight for that!) and as a pretty deep political content consumer, find it smart and interesting and SO much more education and insightful than a lot of the pundits on repeat….

November 2024 episode: Thank you Greg Proops for emphasizing that it is White people (including Whites who speak Spanish or Arabic) who chose Whiteness over economic issues. Thank you Greg for saying 92% of Black women voted for Harris / Walz (they & the 80% of Black men who voted for Harris are usually hurt more by inflation than Whites and they could still vote for the ticket that campaigned to help more people). By the way, Negin it’s more important to care for the targets of racism and sexism who built the United States than to be afraid to call out racism and sexism. The USA needs therapy through truth, reconciliation and reparations. Political comedy podcasts can be a part of that healing, but Negin needs more courage even though it is understandable to seek the security blanket of forced optimism. 7/23/20 episode: The Harper’s magazine letter cited in the segment on cancel culture was signed by individuals, including racists, whom many believe have undeserved lucrative platforms. One such individual is Bari Weiss who tried to get a NYC professor fired (this prof’s career was negatively impacted because he believed in the human rights of Palestinians & Weiss was offended by this view). So Weiss’s complaint in the Harper’s letter was hypocritical because she wants to harm & cancel others, but wants no negative feedback on her writing. Not enough time was spent on this episode discussing the response to the Harper’s magazine letter which was started by academics/writers of color, some of whom wrote anonymously for fear of retribution. In any case, in the middle of a global pandemic, there are more foundational issues to discuss with humor. Thank you for the humor on this podcast & the panelist, Christian, had the most reasonable contribution to the discussion about cancel culture (eg. privileged elites are whining & there are other impt issues to address).

Negin is an absolute delight and the show is great but I have on more than one occasion had to stop listening due to monstrous sound quality issues. Example: last weeks episode had Conscious Lee calling in with a horrible static that interrupted frequently. Please get a sound engineer to fix this or require all guests have a working microphone.

The host attempted to address a topical black issue without any black people present to share their perspective. Given that guests are booked ahead of time, that’s understandable; though one could argue that it was worth delaying the discussion for the sake of having the perspective of an actual black person represented on the panel. However, the resulting discussion completely missed the mark: It was clear that no one had spoken with any black people prior to discussing the topic and that no one on the show had bothered researching what black voices online had to say about the topic, because the panel never even got close to touching on the main grievances of black people (and everyone on the panel essentially dismissed it as a non-issue, to make matters worse). I’m not sure if it was laziness, incompetence, or just a general apathy toward black issues and viewpoints, but it made for a frustrating listen and turned me off this pod for good.