Maybe you can start doing an annual Week of Rage fundraiser, rattling off posts maximally calculated to snowball through Twitter and entice idiots to subscribe to display their loyalties in another dumb culture war skirmish. As readers, we'll do our part to play along and pick all the right fights and share the right hashtags to juice the ratings. Subscriptions roll in. Then when it's over, cool as a cucumber, go back to business as usual with Toni Morrison Appreciation Week.
The comments section here is filled with wonderful posters. Maybe this is elitist but hopefully the fact that your writing appeals to intelligent and thoughtful people is also compensation of a sort.
People pass around your pieces like contraband - as they do with anyone else who is brave enough to speak out and to do so fearlessly. They (we) feel angry and unable to really do anything about it without getting attacked. It's hard to be a thoughtful person as you are and try to find a place in a climate that wants you to only be one thing. Be one thing and sell that thing. We are all buzzing around like lost bees looking for our hive, and perhaps our queen. Like it or not you are one of the queens (bees-wise).
I've followed you for years, and I subscribe not just because of your talent as a writer because I feel a personal affinity for you. I find it remarkable that you've persevered after some pretty intense, potentially career-ending stuff. I appreciate your transparency on the issue of being paid because it's fascinating and it helps keep you from becoming a hack who starts doing things for clicks while genuinely believing he isn't. I'm sticking around.
I'm someone who (for a time) paid money for _The Fifth Column_ and _Blocked and Reported_. I stopped, because I found learning about the culture war stuff a lot like any vice: it's irresistible, but it makes me feel worse when I'm done. In the case of the culture war, I'm a conservative, so I *feel* like my side is losing and that all those around me (I'm a professor, so "those around me" are academics) are incredibly extreme and hate me. Intellectually, I know that my feelings overstate: (a) I'm sure the wokeies feel like their side is losing too; doesn't everyone feel like their side is losing? (b) even if it's true that America is getting woker and woker, it doesn't follow that this will stay the case forever -- our ignorance about the future is deep; and (c) even though my fellow academics are mostly on the woke left, it doesn't follow that they're the most extreme members of the woke left.
When you write about the woke left, this dynamic plays itself out as usual. I find your culture war stuff to be very alluring, but I feel pessimistic after I'm done. Weirdly, even though the situation is probably much worse for my views in education than in culture (I agree with both you and Bryan Caplan's views, to a large extent), I feel more optimistic after reading what you write on education. Maybe because there's a clearer agenda for what I want? Maybe because I'm *in* education, and so have more of a chance to make a positive difference? I don't know.
Finally, if I may make a trio of pitches: (a) I'm agnostic on the race science and IQ stuff--I just don't know enough, but from what I've seen when experts on one side debate experts on the other, it appears to be above my pay-grade; I'm very curious why you're so confident that people on the "there is some good evidence that racial disparities in IQ scores stem partly from genetic reasons" are not just wrong, but also racist? (b) Like I said, I have conservative politics--largely anti-gun control, generally pro-deregulation, on the fence (no pun intended) about immigration for cultural reasons, etc. Would you dislike me as a person because of my views? If not, why not? Would you just assume that my views are the result of false consciousness or something? (c) Do you have any interest in reviewing Caplan's _The Case Against Education_?
Anyway, thanks for writing whatever you want to write about. I love reading clear argumentation for interesting positions from someone whom I disagree with.
I'm sure you're aware of this but Slate Star Codex described the same basic problem (controversial angry articles get more clicks than sober-minded reflective articles) in 2014: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ Skip to part IV.
I think you've done a fantastic job balancing media criticism and criticism of the Wokes with the education pieces and reviews that you really want to write. Jesse Singal said something similar in an interview with Sam Harris...if he (Jesse) wanted to maximize his Substack revenue, he'd just write culture war stuff nonstop. But he has other passions and ideas, and he doesn't want to get sucked into that black hole where your audience captures you and drags you into Far Right Wackjob Land along with them. I can't tell you how many "independent" folks have fallen into that trap.
The way you've balanced your topics is spot-on from my perspective. Keep it up.
"I loved writing this post on the thinking behind changes to math pedagogy. And as is so often the case here, the comments were so sharp and engaging and substantive. That kind of mature, sensible, diverse, and informative conversation is truly rare on today’s internet. And some people corrected me on a few things, constructively, so now we both know more. It’s exactly what I want my blog to be. But the post only got 13,000 views, in large part because it got no pickup on Twitter...
"Perhaps you can make the internet a little better (I stress, a little) by doing good by your enemies. I ask you to recognize that hating your foes helps them, and while giving them certain kinds of attention won’t hurt them, it could help change the bad incentives that have us stuck in this hellhole.
"If you get annoyed at Matt Taibbi for being mean to liberal journalists, you could yell about him on Twitter... Or you could try sharing his interview with Dennis Kucinich or his review of Kucinich’s book..."
I'm subscribed here because you're supposed to be my "enemy" and you're interesting. I do love the posts about math pedagogy and whether YIMBYism (which I support) would work as intended, enough to be quite a pest in the comments sometimes (sorry!). I'm an escapee from a "THIS factory" myself, one where I didn't earn much money or attention, but where those who stayed — and (most importantly) conformed by performing the kind of outrage expected, especially of the women who write for it — did.
I don't know if I represent a type, but if I do, it's the type that stays the &^#$% away from Twitter and Facebook. This loses me opportunities to advertise and monetize my own talents, but since I can get by without, I do. I'd like to think, if I *could* stand these places, I'd use them to share content like yours. But I can't so I don't.
I don't know how many of your subscribers fit this type. Maybe there aren't many of us. But I'm assuming I'm not special (because, why would I be?). I can give you subscription money for as long as I can afford it, but not virality. And now I feel bad about that. But not bad enough to open a Twitter account.
I don't really have an issue with what you choose to write about because at this point I'll read anything based purely on the quality level. I came for the media criticism but I stay for the brilliant looks into the human psyche and occasional Star Wars stuff. But can we, the assembled masses in the comments, take a minute to talk about the people who have a problem with the so-called mean pieces?
Who are these people and why do they suck? I'm sure they're well intentioned but they need to get a life. There's literally nothing in any article on this Substack that crosses some mythical line. I'm also certain that people would not have a problem if these were vile diatribes on Trump and his ilk (in part because this shit is high school).
Part of why I love Greenwald and Taibbi is that sometimes they are mean. But they're mean in a natural, organic way, like talking to a coworker on a smoke break. They're not doing a pathetic tryout to be a Gossip Girl writer like when most blue checks try and do mean. Unsurprisingly, Glenn is also one of the few high profile journalists with a working class background. These guys come across like REAL people.
Similarly, Jesse Singal is problematic because he's a neoliberal DNC simp with terrible opinions on basketball. But he has such an earnestness about him that I pay money to hear those terrible opinions because he's a real, functioning human being and I'm interested in what he thinks. I could be wrong but there's nothing that strikes me as fake about him.
So much of modern "elite" discourse just seems like fake, rich kid nonsense. Even stuff I think they earnestly believe (Trump is literally Hitler!) is so divorced from reality I can't take is as real. All I - and probably many others - want is to read people who tell it like it is.
I am not surprised that there's people who get pissy when the Freddies of this world call a spade a spade. I read the media displacement piece because Glenn and Jesse Singal told me to and that means something. I reacted by thinking "this guy is saying what I think with more skill than I could say it." If anyone can point me to a single thing in that or any other one of the controversial pieces that's somehow wrong, I'd love to see it. But it seems wrong to me in the sense of it being wrong to point out a politician having hands soaked with blood, or a banker or corporate lawyer profiting off the misery of others. It's not actually wrong, it's just impolite to the people who benefit off it to say it out loud lest the rabble hear.
Freddie, I hope you just write what you want to write, regardless of whether anyone else likes it. As much as this is how you earn your living, and therefore the audience's response affects you financially, nevertheless, it seems to me that for a project like this to really serves a meaningful purpose (more than just a monetary one), it has to be an honest expression of who you are and what you're thinking about at the moment. If you were to start pandering to the audience by writing what you think they (we) want to read or what will kick the Twitter hornet's nest, you would lose what makes your writing worthwhile.
It's all interesting and important. Culture Wars, Math, Toni Morrison, Housing. I like your culture wars writing, I find it necessary to think about and discuss these things, but if you were exclusively that, I'd probably last about 3 months and then unsubscribe, as I did with a podcast I liked very much but grew tired of. Your math piece was one of my favorites because education is something I nerd out on and I've always found the new math quite fun but wondered how it compares in effectiveness to the old math. I enjoyed that you asked questions that you didn't answer because aren't we all still figuring this out? Keep doing what you are doing. Even if you don't get more subscribers due to your math piece, you keep subscribers like me who enjoy it all but don't want to be be limited to the very clickable culture war content.
Freddie, Like many of your newer readers, you hooked me with your piece on displacement in the media (I’m old enough to remember the launch party for Brill’s Content, so the last 25 years of media-watching have been quite a ride). What has kept me coming back, though, is your generalist’s curiosity about an incredibly broad set of subjects and your ability to make them all interesting reading. I, too, have a generalist’s love of intellectual rabbit holes (which, like Alice’s, so often lead to unexpected adventures), and it’s very rare for me to find topical writers of nonfiction nowadays who don’t end up getting trapped in whatever “issue silo” made their reputations. So, I hope you’ll continue to follow your curiosity and trust that you’re building a readership that will stick precisely because you never get predictable!
I've repeatedly tried (and repeatedly failed) to avoid the outrage cycles (which is not the same as avoiding negative or infuriating news -- there is plenty of that in the world and it can't be ignored -- but avoiding the predictable and repetitive fights online media thrives on), and focus my media consumption on interesting voices who are either articulating a positive vision I agree with or who I think have a unique and worthwhile perspective on things. Greenwald is the best example of why that is the better approach -- I believe he has correctly identified a number of systemic biases within mainstream media. Because mainstream media is so recalcitrant and defensive about those biases, Greenwald can (and pretty much does) respond to every single news cycle pointing out how those biases are at play in the coverage. I'm glad he's out there, but from the perspective of someone who is already convinced by his critique, the answer is not to read Greenwald but to try to ignore the people he is critiquing (which means ignoring Greenwald as well since that's basically all he writes about at this point). Reading too much Greenwald would be like if there was someone who I thought wrote devastating takedowns of Marvel movies, so I spent my time watching Marvel movies and reading the takedowns instead of watching movies I actually like.
But that's easier said then done. We live in an age of information pollution. There's only so many new and thoughtful opinions a person can form in a day; if you're trying to process 10 different national controversies a day, it's much easier to use tribes and shibboleths. You either have to withdraw from the news cycle or pick a team and ride with it.
As for your dilemma, I don't know how representative I am, but I probably read more of Greenwald's posts than yours but would not pay to subscribe to his Substack as I do with yours. Greenwald's posts are something I can plug into in any frame of mind because I already essentially know how I feel about the players involved and where I'm going to come down, whereas yours demand a level of focus and attention that I don't always have when I have 10 minutes to kill before a conference call or when I decide to spend half an hour online after putting the kids to bed. But, writing that I know will challenge and interest me and push me to think about the world in different ways is something I'm willing to pay to keep in the world, even if I don't get a chance to read all of it.
I have two comments. First is, the reason THIS article is doing well so far (at least in the comments) is because it’s clearly very honest. In the long run, honesty wins. Bullshit sells really well for a while. But eventually angry clickbait articles exhaust people. Especially smart people.
That said, maybe you just need a headline writer. Don’t compromise the article itself, and don’t completely mischaracterize it. (“Woketards think 2+2 is 5!” “Drooling Trump Zombies think everyone can be a billionaire!”)
But seriously, just get a little click baity with the headlines on the more wonky stuff and that might go a long way.
Or just push Yang for President in 2024 so we can all get some UBI and write whatever we want.
I wonder how much of it is just that's it's really, really easy to bag on people your tribe dislikes.
I'm part of a political bookclub. We're all Democrats and our book selections tend toward things that stroke partisan egos, but we also read a good selection of non-partisan books (my favorite from last year being _The Perfect Weapon_, a book about cyber warfare). I am constantly annoyed at how little we actually discuss the things we read, though. For the last four years, gossiping about Trump took up most of our meeting time, and I noticed that--when I could actually get people to focus on the book at hand--a lot of them struggled to come up with anything to say. There's a lot of "I thought X was interesting" followed by other people quietly nodding in agreement, and that's the extent of it. Saying "Mitch McConnell looks like a turtle", however, leads to an hour of laughter and jokes.
Maybe you can start doing an annual Week of Rage fundraiser, rattling off posts maximally calculated to snowball through Twitter and entice idiots to subscribe to display their loyalties in another dumb culture war skirmish. As readers, we'll do our part to play along and pick all the right fights and share the right hashtags to juice the ratings. Subscriptions roll in. Then when it's over, cool as a cucumber, go back to business as usual with Toni Morrison Appreciation Week.
This is mostly a joke. I think.
The comments section here is filled with wonderful posters. Maybe this is elitist but hopefully the fact that your writing appeals to intelligent and thoughtful people is also compensation of a sort.
People pass around your pieces like contraband - as they do with anyone else who is brave enough to speak out and to do so fearlessly. They (we) feel angry and unable to really do anything about it without getting attacked. It's hard to be a thoughtful person as you are and try to find a place in a climate that wants you to only be one thing. Be one thing and sell that thing. We are all buzzing around like lost bees looking for our hive, and perhaps our queen. Like it or not you are one of the queens (bees-wise).
I've followed you for years, and I subscribe not just because of your talent as a writer because I feel a personal affinity for you. I find it remarkable that you've persevered after some pretty intense, potentially career-ending stuff. I appreciate your transparency on the issue of being paid because it's fascinating and it helps keep you from becoming a hack who starts doing things for clicks while genuinely believing he isn't. I'm sticking around.
I'm someone who (for a time) paid money for _The Fifth Column_ and _Blocked and Reported_. I stopped, because I found learning about the culture war stuff a lot like any vice: it's irresistible, but it makes me feel worse when I'm done. In the case of the culture war, I'm a conservative, so I *feel* like my side is losing and that all those around me (I'm a professor, so "those around me" are academics) are incredibly extreme and hate me. Intellectually, I know that my feelings overstate: (a) I'm sure the wokeies feel like their side is losing too; doesn't everyone feel like their side is losing? (b) even if it's true that America is getting woker and woker, it doesn't follow that this will stay the case forever -- our ignorance about the future is deep; and (c) even though my fellow academics are mostly on the woke left, it doesn't follow that they're the most extreme members of the woke left.
When you write about the woke left, this dynamic plays itself out as usual. I find your culture war stuff to be very alluring, but I feel pessimistic after I'm done. Weirdly, even though the situation is probably much worse for my views in education than in culture (I agree with both you and Bryan Caplan's views, to a large extent), I feel more optimistic after reading what you write on education. Maybe because there's a clearer agenda for what I want? Maybe because I'm *in* education, and so have more of a chance to make a positive difference? I don't know.
Finally, if I may make a trio of pitches: (a) I'm agnostic on the race science and IQ stuff--I just don't know enough, but from what I've seen when experts on one side debate experts on the other, it appears to be above my pay-grade; I'm very curious why you're so confident that people on the "there is some good evidence that racial disparities in IQ scores stem partly from genetic reasons" are not just wrong, but also racist? (b) Like I said, I have conservative politics--largely anti-gun control, generally pro-deregulation, on the fence (no pun intended) about immigration for cultural reasons, etc. Would you dislike me as a person because of my views? If not, why not? Would you just assume that my views are the result of false consciousness or something? (c) Do you have any interest in reviewing Caplan's _The Case Against Education_?
Anyway, thanks for writing whatever you want to write about. I love reading clear argumentation for interesting positions from someone whom I disagree with.
I'm sure you're aware of this but Slate Star Codex described the same basic problem (controversial angry articles get more clicks than sober-minded reflective articles) in 2014: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ Skip to part IV.
I think you've done a fantastic job balancing media criticism and criticism of the Wokes with the education pieces and reviews that you really want to write. Jesse Singal said something similar in an interview with Sam Harris...if he (Jesse) wanted to maximize his Substack revenue, he'd just write culture war stuff nonstop. But he has other passions and ideas, and he doesn't want to get sucked into that black hole where your audience captures you and drags you into Far Right Wackjob Land along with them. I can't tell you how many "independent" folks have fallen into that trap.
The way you've balanced your topics is spot-on from my perspective. Keep it up.
"I loved writing this post on the thinking behind changes to math pedagogy. And as is so often the case here, the comments were so sharp and engaging and substantive. That kind of mature, sensible, diverse, and informative conversation is truly rare on today’s internet. And some people corrected me on a few things, constructively, so now we both know more. It’s exactly what I want my blog to be. But the post only got 13,000 views, in large part because it got no pickup on Twitter...
"Perhaps you can make the internet a little better (I stress, a little) by doing good by your enemies. I ask you to recognize that hating your foes helps them, and while giving them certain kinds of attention won’t hurt them, it could help change the bad incentives that have us stuck in this hellhole.
"If you get annoyed at Matt Taibbi for being mean to liberal journalists, you could yell about him on Twitter... Or you could try sharing his interview with Dennis Kucinich or his review of Kucinich’s book..."
I'm subscribed here because you're supposed to be my "enemy" and you're interesting. I do love the posts about math pedagogy and whether YIMBYism (which I support) would work as intended, enough to be quite a pest in the comments sometimes (sorry!). I'm an escapee from a "THIS factory" myself, one where I didn't earn much money or attention, but where those who stayed — and (most importantly) conformed by performing the kind of outrage expected, especially of the women who write for it — did.
https://holapapi.substack.com/p/lessons-from-the-this-factory
I don't know if I represent a type, but if I do, it's the type that stays the &^#$% away from Twitter and Facebook. This loses me opportunities to advertise and monetize my own talents, but since I can get by without, I do. I'd like to think, if I *could* stand these places, I'd use them to share content like yours. But I can't so I don't.
I don't know how many of your subscribers fit this type. Maybe there aren't many of us. But I'm assuming I'm not special (because, why would I be?). I can give you subscription money for as long as I can afford it, but not virality. And now I feel bad about that. But not bad enough to open a Twitter account.
I don't really have an issue with what you choose to write about because at this point I'll read anything based purely on the quality level. I came for the media criticism but I stay for the brilliant looks into the human psyche and occasional Star Wars stuff. But can we, the assembled masses in the comments, take a minute to talk about the people who have a problem with the so-called mean pieces?
Who are these people and why do they suck? I'm sure they're well intentioned but they need to get a life. There's literally nothing in any article on this Substack that crosses some mythical line. I'm also certain that people would not have a problem if these were vile diatribes on Trump and his ilk (in part because this shit is high school).
Part of why I love Greenwald and Taibbi is that sometimes they are mean. But they're mean in a natural, organic way, like talking to a coworker on a smoke break. They're not doing a pathetic tryout to be a Gossip Girl writer like when most blue checks try and do mean. Unsurprisingly, Glenn is also one of the few high profile journalists with a working class background. These guys come across like REAL people.
Similarly, Jesse Singal is problematic because he's a neoliberal DNC simp with terrible opinions on basketball. But he has such an earnestness about him that I pay money to hear those terrible opinions because he's a real, functioning human being and I'm interested in what he thinks. I could be wrong but there's nothing that strikes me as fake about him.
So much of modern "elite" discourse just seems like fake, rich kid nonsense. Even stuff I think they earnestly believe (Trump is literally Hitler!) is so divorced from reality I can't take is as real. All I - and probably many others - want is to read people who tell it like it is.
I am not surprised that there's people who get pissy when the Freddies of this world call a spade a spade. I read the media displacement piece because Glenn and Jesse Singal told me to and that means something. I reacted by thinking "this guy is saying what I think with more skill than I could say it." If anyone can point me to a single thing in that or any other one of the controversial pieces that's somehow wrong, I'd love to see it. But it seems wrong to me in the sense of it being wrong to point out a politician having hands soaked with blood, or a banker or corporate lawyer profiting off the misery of others. It's not actually wrong, it's just impolite to the people who benefit off it to say it out loud lest the rabble hear.
Freddie, I hope you just write what you want to write, regardless of whether anyone else likes it. As much as this is how you earn your living, and therefore the audience's response affects you financially, nevertheless, it seems to me that for a project like this to really serves a meaningful purpose (more than just a monetary one), it has to be an honest expression of who you are and what you're thinking about at the moment. If you were to start pandering to the audience by writing what you think they (we) want to read or what will kick the Twitter hornet's nest, you would lose what makes your writing worthwhile.
It's all interesting and important. Culture Wars, Math, Toni Morrison, Housing. I like your culture wars writing, I find it necessary to think about and discuss these things, but if you were exclusively that, I'd probably last about 3 months and then unsubscribe, as I did with a podcast I liked very much but grew tired of. Your math piece was one of my favorites because education is something I nerd out on and I've always found the new math quite fun but wondered how it compares in effectiveness to the old math. I enjoyed that you asked questions that you didn't answer because aren't we all still figuring this out? Keep doing what you are doing. Even if you don't get more subscribers due to your math piece, you keep subscribers like me who enjoy it all but don't want to be be limited to the very clickable culture war content.
Freddie, Like many of your newer readers, you hooked me with your piece on displacement in the media (I’m old enough to remember the launch party for Brill’s Content, so the last 25 years of media-watching have been quite a ride). What has kept me coming back, though, is your generalist’s curiosity about an incredibly broad set of subjects and your ability to make them all interesting reading. I, too, have a generalist’s love of intellectual rabbit holes (which, like Alice’s, so often lead to unexpected adventures), and it’s very rare for me to find topical writers of nonfiction nowadays who don’t end up getting trapped in whatever “issue silo” made their reputations. So, I hope you’ll continue to follow your curiosity and trust that you’re building a readership that will stick precisely because you never get predictable!
I've repeatedly tried (and repeatedly failed) to avoid the outrage cycles (which is not the same as avoiding negative or infuriating news -- there is plenty of that in the world and it can't be ignored -- but avoiding the predictable and repetitive fights online media thrives on), and focus my media consumption on interesting voices who are either articulating a positive vision I agree with or who I think have a unique and worthwhile perspective on things. Greenwald is the best example of why that is the better approach -- I believe he has correctly identified a number of systemic biases within mainstream media. Because mainstream media is so recalcitrant and defensive about those biases, Greenwald can (and pretty much does) respond to every single news cycle pointing out how those biases are at play in the coverage. I'm glad he's out there, but from the perspective of someone who is already convinced by his critique, the answer is not to read Greenwald but to try to ignore the people he is critiquing (which means ignoring Greenwald as well since that's basically all he writes about at this point). Reading too much Greenwald would be like if there was someone who I thought wrote devastating takedowns of Marvel movies, so I spent my time watching Marvel movies and reading the takedowns instead of watching movies I actually like.
But that's easier said then done. We live in an age of information pollution. There's only so many new and thoughtful opinions a person can form in a day; if you're trying to process 10 different national controversies a day, it's much easier to use tribes and shibboleths. You either have to withdraw from the news cycle or pick a team and ride with it.
As for your dilemma, I don't know how representative I am, but I probably read more of Greenwald's posts than yours but would not pay to subscribe to his Substack as I do with yours. Greenwald's posts are something I can plug into in any frame of mind because I already essentially know how I feel about the players involved and where I'm going to come down, whereas yours demand a level of focus and attention that I don't always have when I have 10 minutes to kill before a conference call or when I decide to spend half an hour online after putting the kids to bed. But, writing that I know will challenge and interest me and push me to think about the world in different ways is something I'm willing to pay to keep in the world, even if I don't get a chance to read all of it.
I have two comments. First is, the reason THIS article is doing well so far (at least in the comments) is because it’s clearly very honest. In the long run, honesty wins. Bullshit sells really well for a while. But eventually angry clickbait articles exhaust people. Especially smart people.
That said, maybe you just need a headline writer. Don’t compromise the article itself, and don’t completely mischaracterize it. (“Woketards think 2+2 is 5!” “Drooling Trump Zombies think everyone can be a billionaire!”)
But seriously, just get a little click baity with the headlines on the more wonky stuff and that might go a long way.
Or just push Yang for President in 2024 so we can all get some UBI and write whatever we want.
(I’m not helping am I?)
I wonder how much of it is just that's it's really, really easy to bag on people your tribe dislikes.
I'm part of a political bookclub. We're all Democrats and our book selections tend toward things that stroke partisan egos, but we also read a good selection of non-partisan books (my favorite from last year being _The Perfect Weapon_, a book about cyber warfare). I am constantly annoyed at how little we actually discuss the things we read, though. For the last four years, gossiping about Trump took up most of our meeting time, and I noticed that--when I could actually get people to focus on the book at hand--a lot of them struggled to come up with anything to say. There's a lot of "I thought X was interesting" followed by other people quietly nodding in agreement, and that's the extent of it. Saying "Mitch McConnell looks like a turtle", however, leads to an hour of laughter and jokes.
I love your posts flaming the media. They are so fun to read.