#81 - May Day, or Mayday

Lewis Black's Rantcast

Lewis Black

Stand-up, Leisure, Comedy

4.7 • 843 Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2022

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this week's episode, Lewis delves into the history of May Day and why in the US we moved the celebration of labor to the end of the summer. Honoring the working class at the same time as the rest of the world was too communal an experience for our nation of rugged individualists, and it was stained by links with socialists and anarchists and by fears of association with the 1886 Haymarket Riots. President Grover Cleveland thus proposed having the celebration for those who labor in September and it became a federal holiday in 1894. Now, more than a century later, we join together the first Monday each September to pay lip-service to the hard-working laborers who keep our economy and society functioning, while also somehow highlighting the importance of management and owners. Lewis also offers a modest proposal for relocating refugees and migrants, explores the vague return to normalcy that was the 2022 NFL draft, and offers this athletics-related opinion: Wizards is the worst name in sports. Also, if there’s a manliness crisis in America, Madison Cawthorne is clearly not the person to offer solutions. The live rants come from Chicago and Detroit, two towns where the citizens don't agree on much, especially regarding Lions, Tigers, Bears, or Cubs (or Pistons, Bulls, White Sox, Blackhawks, or Red Wings), but definitely agree that the potholes need to be fixed!\ The big news on the rant front is that we now have a prize for the best rant submission of the week: a subscription for cheeses from Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. Want to see Lewis live? Tickets are available here: https://www.lewisblack.com/tickets Check out Lewis’ Grammy-nominated special, Thanks For Risking Your Life https://tlbrecords.lnk.to/LewisWE SUBMIT RANTS TO LEWIS https://www.lewisblack.com/live SUBSCRIBE TO THE RANTCAST https://www.lewisblacksrantcast.com FOLLOW LEWIS www.lewisblack.com www.youtube.com/officiallewisblack www.instagram.com/thelewisblack www.facebook.com/thelewisblack www.twitter.com/thelewisblack www.tiktok.com/@thelewisblack New episodes arrive every Wednesday. For advertising opportunities/contact email: rantcast@thesyn.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the rubber chicken says...
0:21.6	The NFL draft was completely insane.
0:28.6	And I didn't even have any chickens in the race.
0:31.6	And for God's sakes, I'm just a rubber one.
0:34.6	So what do I know?
0:35.6	Yes, sir, he bob.
0:36.6	That NFL, and we'll talk about it in a bit, and I'd love to go into it with you,
0:40.2	and I wish did Washington to draft a giant chicken, I'll tell you that.
0:44.3	But we're going to get on with rantcast number 81, entitled May Day.
0:50.2	Well, Mayday as in, not as in danger, danger, the ships going down.
0:56.6	Look, woo!
0:57.6	No.
0:58.6	May Day is in May 1st, International Workers' Day.
1:02.7	I mentioned this only because in about two years, nobody will even remember that.
1:08.0	It's an international holiday to basically celebrate those who actually do real labor.
1:16.1	Unlike myself, or the rubber chicken who sit here and basically babble like lunatics and get paid for it.
1:22.4	And what did I do?
1:26.0	I just went yakety yak, yak,y-y-ac-y-ac.
1:27.6	That's it.
1:28.0	My tongue moved.
1:29.3	Are my arms moving?
1:30.5	Sort of.
	...

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