Iowa Caucuses Special: Pete Buttigieg

Bad Gays

Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller

History

4.5 • 934 Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2020

⏱️ 94 minutes

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Summary

With special guests Mac Folkes and Edna Bonhomme (@jacobinoire), Ben explores the life story, politics, and cultural phenomenon of Pete Buttigieg. From his resume-polishing early life to his racist record as Mayor to his recycling of stale right-wing attacks on progressive policy, we look at how longer-term trends in gay life and culture, including the split of the "mainstream" wealthy and white gay rights movement from multiracial struggle, have influenced both his politics and the broad audience they have found. == Update, 8 March, 2020 == We are devastated by the recent death of Mac Folkes, one of our two guests on this episode. A legend of the scene, a devoted friend, and a fierce fighter for justice. Rest in power. ----more---- SOURCES: Mayor Pete editing his own wikipedia: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/pete-buttigieg-wikipedia-page-editor.html On his early life and childhood: https://apnews.com/47fc3e167cd64488b16890c8973bb208 On his time at Harvard, including quotes from his memoir, Shortest Way Home: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/all-about-pete Andrew Sullivan on Rhodes Scholars: https://books.google.de/books?id=cIdMpKduSmkC&pg=PA108&dq=andrew+sullivan+rhodes+scholars&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false On McKinsey, and its business model and recent scandals: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/world/africa/mckinsey-south-africa-eskom.html, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/business/mckinsey-puerto-rico.html, https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/02/mckinsey-company-capitals-willing-executioners) On Mayor Pete's secretive record at McKinsey: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/henrygomez/pete-buttigieg-mckinsey-clients On Mayor Pete's record on housing and environmental racism: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/henrygomez/mayor-pete-buttigieg-south-bend-gentrification, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/22/south-bend-poor-say-democrat-pete-buttigieg-left-them-behind.html On the firing of Darryl Boykins: https://theintercept.com/2019/09/20/pete-buttigieg-south-bend-police/ On the shooting of Eric Logan and protests in June 2019: https://wsbt.com/news/local/probe-of-eric-logan-shooting-could-revive-scrutiny-of-buttigieg, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/mayor-pete-buttigieg-protesters-heckled-south-bend-police On the community/police events Mayor Pete skipped to campaign: https://theintercept.com/2020/01/23/pete-buttigieg-south-bend-police-oversight-fundraisers/ On the recent protest at a campaign event in which Mayor Pete asked the protestor to 'respect the format': https://twitter.com/AlxThomp/status/1221198787466665986/photo/1 On Mayor Pete's changing position on Medicare for All and attacks on proposals for universal social programs: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/16/buttigieg-tweet-medicare-for-all-048745, https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/467478-buttigieg-i-never-believed-in-medicare-for-all-that-ends-private-insurance, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/us/politics/buttigieg-sanders-warren-free-tuition.html An article on the campaign's treatment of staffers of color that came out too late for us to include in the episode: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/us/politics/buttigieg-campaign-black-hispanic-staff.html On allegations the campaign faked Black support for its racial justice proposal: https://theintercept.com/2019/11/15/pete-buttigieg-campaign-black-voters/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to another special guest episode of Bad Gays, a podcast where we uncover the dark
0:14.9	of gays and queer folks in history. I'm Ben Miller, a writer, historian, and member of the
0:20.3	board of the Shvulus Museum in Berlin. There'm Ben Miller, a writer, historian, and member of the board of the Shvulles
0:21.5	Museum in Berlin. There's a kind of conversation I used to have when working in offices
0:27.0	with large gay populations. The conversation happened frequently enough that I began to be
0:32.2	able to predict how it might unfold. An older gay male colleague, typically white and trim and successful, would set off
0:39.5	on a lament about the impossible meanness and pettiness about gay culture, would speak from the heart
0:44.6	about loneliness and feelings of inadequacy. Then, strangely, the conversation would turn to the idea,
0:51.5	expressed with varying degrees of confidence and anger, that there was a subgroup
0:55.8	of gays who had the wrong goals, too much sex with too many people, going to drag bars on a Tuesday
1:01.5	night. These sorts were holding the good ones back from finally merging into the mundane,
1:06.7	and it was suggested more fulfilling, every day of bourgeois life.
1:17.5	Maybe I would suggest the root of these colleagues on happiness wasn't evil sex radicals or unreconstructed sissies,
1:20.8	but the impossible situation contemporary gays find ourselves in.
1:26.2	The promise of acceptance and tolerance if we force ourselves into relationship models that often chafe,
1:27.8	the way that rights of access to institutions like military service and marriage have divided us from queer and trans sisters
1:32.6	and siblings, the gentrification of our community spaces out of major urban centers, our
1:38.2	own complicity, if we are white, and I am and these men always were, in these same processes
1:43.1	of gentrification, and the
1:44.8	ingrained misogyny that leads to a drive towards hypermasculinity and thinness,
1:49.6	no, the colleague would insist, it's just that bitchy mean gay culture, it's toxic.
1:54.9	In the community, we have a name for these people, a-gays.
	...

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