Back in 2015, over a two week period, I appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, and then, on The Glenn Beck Program.
The subject of my conversation with both men was identical. In fact, both men agreed across the board with everything I had to say about the widening skills gap, the obscene cost of a four-year degree, the importance of a skilled workforce, and the profound stupidity of pushing “college for all.” But the response to my appearance on these two programs was also identical, and very instructive. On this page, hundreds of center-right “friends” who claimed to like me very much and support my efforts, rushed to express their disappointment when I posted a clip of my appearance on Bill’s show.
“Sorry,” they said. “But Bill Maher represents everything that’s wrong with this country. You’ve lost me forever. Goodbye.”
A week later, when I shared a clip of me with Glenn, my friends on the left reacted the same way.
“How could you”, they cried. “Why would you lower yourself? I expected so much more from you. I’m out of here!”
That’s when I realized that a lot of people who claimed to like me, only meant it if I associated with individuals they approved of. And sadly, the same thing was happening in real life. People I’d known for years were asking me why I would associate with the likes of ________.
This phenomenon has done nothing but metastasize over the years, and today, much of the country has determined that every person we associate with, and every decision we make – from wearing a mask to drinking a Bud Lite to going to a Taylor Swift concert – is a condition of friendship. This desire to weigh and measure every aspect of everyone around us, and then announce our disappointment to the world before cutting them out of our lives is nothing short of an epidemic that’s driving us further and further apart.
Kat Timpf has come to the same conclusion, and writes about it with great humor and thoughtfulness in her new book, “I Used to Like You Until…” I read the book and found myself nodding in agreement with every chapter. In fact, I thought about writing something similar after I left CNN to do a show for FOX, and saw another wave of disappointment ripple through my world. (How could you, Mike??) For Kat though, it isn’t “a ripple of disappointment,” it’s a daily flood, motivated by the simple fact that she works for a company that a lot of people don’t like.
Our entire conversation is here, and worth a listen. The short clip below and explains why it’s often easier for Kat to tell people she’s an adult film star, than admit she appears on Fox News.
Perhaps I’ll follow her example…
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