Can't say anything bad about Charlie because he just died and that would hurt mama's feelings. Like, no, we don't know these people. These are public figures who are impactful and consequential and we don't have to treat them with kid gloves, especially journalists and people who are in this role of writing the first draft of history. You need to put all of that emotional stuff aside and do your job.

Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruitie, the show where I'm tired. I'm tired. How are you guys doing? I'm also tired. I'm so tired. It's been such a weird week. It's all happening.

This is not going to be a podcast episode where I tell you if it is or isn't morally correct to make jokes about Charlie Kirk's

death. Because to be honest, I don't really care. If you want to read funny jokes about Charlie

Kirk, go on Twitter. And if you want to read essays about why you're a bad person for laughing at those

jokes, go to New York Times.com. I feel like while conservatives and liberals and the right

and the left are all arguing over how we should feel about Charlie Kirk's death, his legacy is being

rewritten in real time by a lot of people, some of whom are using that rewritten legacy to justify

an extremely unpopular and dangerous authoritarian

crackdown. The far right is celebrating this, of course, and the left is terrified. And the

majority of people sitting closer to the middle, I'm thinking like my parents. And honestly,

just most people who aren't as online as I am, are watching this play out, watching politicians

seize on this moment very fucking quickly, and not knowing what the correct thing to feel or say

is without sounding insensitive about Charlie Kirk's death, God forbid, they lose their job

or visa or driver's license. Yes, that is a real threat made by

Representative Clay Higgins. If you talk bad about Charlie Kirk right now, you lose your

driver's license. Ezra Klein, a liberal writer at the New York Times, published an essay one

day after Kirk's death called Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way, where he argued that Charlie Kirk's

commitment to free speech and debate represented the best of American democratic ideals,

no matter how much you disagreed with the guy, and that his death represents a new era in the

erosion of American democracy. I think Ezra Klein is wrong. I think Charlie Kirk was

like a professional eroder of democracy. And I also think that rewriting his legacy this way

...