: [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: A previous version of this episode incorrectly said that Republicans describe Democrats as perverts and pedophiles. Some individual Republicans have made those accusations, not all. That story also incorrectly portrayed polling as indicating that only the Republican party had become more extreme in recent years. That polling shows that a majority of Americans feel that both the Republican and Democratic parties have become more “extreme,” although more view Republicans that way. We have also removed material in the game at the end of the episode that did not meet our standards.]
BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luse, and you're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
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LUSE: A quick heads up that this segment contains mature language that may not be suitable for all listeners.
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LUSE: This week on the show, we're connecting the dots between rubber, glue and sweaty dudes. I know, I know, how are all these things connected? Well, we're going to find out with NPR culture reporter Andrew Limbong and NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben. Andrew, Danielle, welcome to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Yo. What's up, Brittany?
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Will glue stick to a sweaty dude?
LUSE: (Laughter).
LIMBONG: No. I'll just let you know (laughter).
LUSE: I was going to say. I'm like, Andrew, I don't know. I feel like you're getting out and about. Do you know? I don't know. I have no clue. I have no clue. All right. OK. So I've got to ask y'all. When someone is being weird, do you call them out, or do you let it slide?
KURTZLEBEN: Oh, let it slide.
LIMBONG: If someone is, like, you know, back in the school days, eating their boogers, it's like godspeed, bro.
LUSE: (Laughter).
LIMBONG: But if they're, you know, being weird in ways that affect other people.
KURTZLEBEN: Sure.
LIMBONG: You know, especially if it's, like, your boy and you've got to do one of those, like, call-ins, right? You'd be like, yo, stop being weird, dude.
LUSE: (Laughter). You know, I'm inclined to agree. I feel like, depending on degree, your garden variety run-of-the-mill, weird everyday thing, I'm just going to ignore it in the moment, and then I'm going to go home and gossip with my husband about it later.
KURTZLEBEN: Sure.
LUSE: But we are here today because politicians have been calling each other weird, left, right and center. I first started noticing it a few weeks ago with Tim Walz, who later became the Democratic VP pick.
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TIM WALZ: You know there's something wrong with people when they talk about freedom - freedom to be in your bedroom, freedom to be in your exam room, freedom to tell your kids what they can read - that stuff is weird. They come across weird. They seem obsessed with this.
LUSE: And I saw it in posts from the Kamala HQ account on X. They posted videos of VP candidate Vance and former President Trump captioned - it's getting weird - or - this is weird. But this one little word seems like it's become a full-blown strategy. The Democrats are doubling down.
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WALZ: You know it. You feel it. These guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell. That's what you see. That's what you see.
LUSE: I was surprised to see it become real strategy. But what did you think when you first started noticing this phenomenon?
LIMBONG: I honestly thought it was going to get burned out after a weekend. You know, it'd get a bunch of play, and then we'd never hear this attack again. And I was surprised how much legs it had. And I think it works because the people deploying it are pretty strategic about aiming it at the candidates - at Donald Trump, at JD Vance, at any specific people - rather than, say, calling a group of people, out of an example, deplorable.
KURTZLEBEN: I think if you're a Democrat, it might feel really good to use the word weird to call your opponents because Republicans for such a long time in the era of Trump have been calling Democrats weird, not explicitly, not using that word but much worse words, like they're pedophiles.
LUSE: Right. Marjorie Taylor Greene said in a post on X that the Democrats were a party of pedophiles.
KURTZLEBEN: I think it's quite linked to the push for trans rights, something you heard at the RNC, an almost offhand mention in so many speeches about trans athletes, about, these people want to put boys' and girls' locker - that sort of thing. Like, this is the go-to thing that Republicans use, especially in this election cycle, as a way of casting the Democrats as so clearly out there. This is Democrats kind of taking this back and saying, wait a minute, you're calling us perverts? We're going to say that you have weird prurient interests in our bedrooms and in our doctor's offices and that sort of thing. I think I can see it as a Democrat - I know we're going to get more into the rubber and glue thing. I see this as a sort of way of Democrats yanking it back and saying, no, you want to call us that? We're going to slap it right back on you. The one other thing is that, by definition, weird is kind of, like, petty, or it's like, you just stay over there. It's kind of dismissive. And I imagine they hate that.
LUSE: It seems also like a totally different strategy from the Democrats just in general, like a complete 180 from when they go low, we go high...
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KURTZLEBEN: Yeah.
LUSE: ...Of all those years ago. I don't think we're there anymore. What do you see in the strategy of the Democratic Party with this? Andrew, let's start with you.
LIMBONG: I see an appeal to the normies, an appeal to people who aren't necessarily online pilled, who don't spend all of their days looking at Twitter memes. There's an old video of Kaitlin Bennett. She's, like, an Infowars influencer. But she's doing one of those, like, man-on-the-street sort of, like, gotcha interviews. And she's interviewing this regular degular (ph) presenting guy, right? And she's trying to gotcha him into, like, they're going to put tampons in the boys' bathroom at this school. What do you think about that? Right? And the guy's like...
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UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: I don't care.
LIMBONG: (Laughter) And then she tries multiple times. She's like...
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KAITLIN BENNETT: OK. So we should provide men with tampons?
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: I mean, if a dude wants a tampon for some reason, he can have a tampon. That's not my business.
BENNETT: What would he use it for?
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: I don't know. That's his problem.
LIMBONG: And it is that guy, you know, times a million, who I think the Democrats are trying to sort of capture with this weird attack.
KURTZLEBEN: I think Andrew is hitting the nail on the head there. And listening to all of this and thinking back to 2020, Joe Biden, the case that he was making and that his supporters would make on his behalf is that Biden is the boring candidate - boring in a good way - that if Biden is elected, when he's in office, you won't have to think about crazy tweets. You're not going to have to wonder what he said today. You can just go about your life not thinking about the president. Biden wasn't running as, quote-unquote, "normal." He wasn't calling Trump weird. But I feel like that was a different flavor of this.
LUSE: Yeah. I wonder, Danielle, why did it take a Harris nomination to kind of pursue a new kind of message? - because, I mean, this goes hand in hand with the handing of the, you know, presumptive nomination from Biden to Vice President Harris. Why did it take this Harris nomination or the prospect of a Harris nomination to kind of switch it up like this?
KURTZLEBEN: That's a great question. I think it's in part that Joe Biden only had so much range, like, political range, especially as he aged to, you know, use humor, to be off the cuff, to be casual. I mean, we saw it in that debate. We've seen it in various appearances. He just had trouble keeping a full sentence together at times. And I think that that really constrained what kind of message he could have. I think the message that he could have was mainly quite serious and somber.
LIMBONG: And I don't actually know if it would have worked for Harris to be the first to deploy it 'cause it was Walz...
KURTZLEBEN: True.
LIMBONG: ...Who did it, right?
KURTZLEBEN: Yes.
LIMBONG: And it's, like, if Kamala Harris did it, I think we'd be having a very different conversation.
LUSE: I would agree with that. I think it would be a completely different conversation.
KURTZLEBEN: Let's just put words around it. Let's put a name on that, right? Like, why does it work for Walz? They are using Walz's default American, white guy Midwestness (ph) to such effect here. Like, they are making sure you know this is just guy, guy, guy. This is football coach, teacher, military guy. And he is proclaiming someone else, other white guys, weird. Like, that is the power he has here.
LUSE: Yeah. And, I mean, there's a lot to take in there with regard to masculinity.
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah.
LUSE: And I think there's so much of that wrapped up in this. I mean, as you mentioned, Tim Walz is, like, the ultimate white dude for Harris to borrow from one of the many blank-group-for-Harris Zoom calls that have been happening over the past few weeks. He's also the person who launched weird into a real strategy. And this discourse is absolutely gendered. For example, there was a video by a PAC called Won't PAC Down that was basically a bunch of sweaty dudes being controlling about people's bodies and about sex.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: If Trump gets elected, we want the government involved in all aspects of your sex life.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Way more involved.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Way more involved.
LUSE: And the video was, like, framed in such a way that it was calling that weird. It was calling those guys' behavior weird. How is weird also a commentary on a certain strain of masculinity that's most closely associated with the right? Danielle, I'd love to hear from you.
KURTZLEBEN: I think this is Democrats' attempt to vastly reframe Republicans and specifically Republican men and Republican positions on abortion and LGBT+ issues because, for so long, the Republican Party - I'm thinking of Mitt Romney, Mike Pence pre-Donald Trump. Like, it was the party of upstanding, white Christian men who have particular moral beliefs, many of them informed by Christianity. OK. And often, they frame those beliefs as this is just the proper, normal, good thing to do.
The proper, normal, good thing to do, the thinking went, back in the day, was to just have marriage limited to one man and one woman. It is just to not have an abortion. And, like, they were very good at framing it that way. And I think that Democrats, in using weird here, are trying a tack of saying, hold on. We're going to cast this in an entirely different light. We're not going to call that a religiously patriarchal thing. We're just going to call it weird. And I'm interested in seeing if that sticks. I'm not sure.
LUSE: On the other hand, though, I think it's fair to say that the Republican Party has gone further to the right, and polls have shown that Americans are more likely to describe Republicans as extreme than they are to describe Democrats that way. You know, to call Republicans weird is kind of to call attention to that move to the right and the fact that some of them may be in support of policies that most of the public doesn't like, especially in opposition to a more generally moderate Democratic Party.
KURTZLEBEN: When you bring that up, the first thing I think of is IVF. Now, this is complicated. Donald Trump hasn't come out and said, yeah, we really need to restrict IVF. But some Republicans have or at least have reservations about it. But...
LUSE: Right, right.
KURTZLEBEN: ...Tim Walz has highlighted that they had kids using IVF, and a lot of people of many political persuasions have and do use IVF without any moral qualms. So I think that that is one issue that Democrats have and will continue to throw out there as a prime example of weirdness or extremeness on the Republican side.
LUSE: Well, I'll tell you what. The Republican clapback, if you can call it that, has basically been them saying, no, you're weird. Here's a direct quote from Donald Trump. "They're the weird ones. Nobody's ever called me weird. I'm a lot of things, but weird, I'm not. And I'm upfront. And he's not either. I will tell you, JD is not at all. They are." So taking that quote in, how does weird seem to be affecting the Republicans? And what do you make of their attempts to just lob it back?
LIMBONG: I think, you know, shout-out to the Republicans, I've always thought that they were very good at memeing (ph). And this, I think, is the first time I've seen them sort of scramble and, like, not know how to respond. You know, you see them trying a couple of different play options, right? You see them attacking how Walz hugged his wife publicly and apparently not in a good PDA enough way or whatever (laughter), right? It was sort of awkward and stilted. And they say, oh, that's weird. And you see them sort of, like, will these attacks into memery (ph), instead of it happening at a grassroots level like it normally does. And it's interesting that they forgot how to meme.
LUSE: It's interesting, though, because, like, now, it's like they're trying to meme this whole like, I'm rubber, you're glue thing (laughter) and trying to really make that land.
KURTZLEBEN: Right. And what I keep thinking about is the way that Trump supporters have been very good at absorbing insults. You will see at Trump rallies shirts that say, I'm a deplorable, like, deplorables for Trump. Or they'll say in an interview like, yeah, I'm politically incorrect - like, embracing the things that are thrown at them. And I think you will see how effective or not this weird insult is if you see T-shirts that say weirdos for Trump. Like, if - is that an insult you can embrace? Once again, I do not know. I...
LIMBONG: I mean, Radiohead did it.
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KURTZLEBEN: The weird insult has at least gotten under Trump and Vance's skin, considering how much they have been talking about it.
LUSE: Well, I'll say this. In old English, weird meant fate or destiny. And it remains to be seen if weird will be the destiny of either party at this point.
LIMBONG: Great ending. Yeah.
LUSE: Andrew, Danielle, I have learned so much here. Thank you both so much.
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah, thank you.
LIMBONG: Thank you.
LUSE: And as a thank you, I'd like to teach you something by playing a game with the two of you. Can you stick around for a tiny bit longer?
LIMBONG: Hell, yes. Yeah.
KURTZLEBEN: I guess.
LUSE: All right.
KURTZLEBEN: (Laughter).
LUSE: We'll be right back with a little game I like to call But Did You Know? Stick around.
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LUSE: All right, all right. We're going to play a little game I like to call But Did You Know? Here's how it works. I'm going to share a story that's been making headlines. And as I give you some background on the story, I'll also ask you trivia related to it. But don't worry, it's all multiple-choice, so the right answer's in there somewhere. The first one to blurt out the right answer gets a point. Person with the most points wins. And their prize is bragging rights.
LIMBONG: Yeah. I'm about to pay my mortgage with that. Hell yeah, dude. Let's go.
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LUSE: Take that to the bank. All right, are y'all ready?
KURTZLEBEN: Yes.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
LUSE: So as we discussed on our show last week, it's been a big summer for the pop girls, but especially queer pop girls. I don't want to point out something that should be normal, but it does feel significant that queer women are so present in our culture and in our music this year and that their lyrics don't hold anything back about sex, love and dating. So I will be sharing some trivia about these girls on the scene, so we can get to know them a little better. So to start. Question No. 1 - Chappell Roan is having a hell of a year. She's got seven songs in the Hot 100 right now, and there's a real breadth of experiences in there, from recognizing a lover's compulsory heterosexuality in "Good Luck, Babe!"...
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CHAPPELL ROAN: (Singing) When you wake up next to him in the middle of the night with your head...
LUSE: ...To asking a new crush to come over in "Red Wine Supernova."
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CHAPPELL ROAN: (Singing) Baby, why don't you come over? Red wine...
LUSE: And she's got a cool tramp stamp. Does it say A, princess; B, Dick Wolf - for those who don't know, the executive producer of many a "Law And Order" series - or C, "Hot To Go!"? - which is a title of one of her songs.
KURTZLEBEN: Dick Wolf.
LIMBONG: I was going to say princess.
LUSE: Well, Andrew, it's a good thing you did because the answer is A, princess.
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LIMBONG: Yeah.
KURTZLEBEN: Dang it.
LIMBONG: "A Midwest Princess" - yeah.
LUSE: Exactly, "A Midwest Princess."
KURTZLEBEN: That seemed too obvious. I thought Dick Wolf would be a fun - OK.
LIMBONG: I know you threw that Dick Wolf in there and then explained who Dick Wolf was. I was like, oh, no.
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LUSE: All right. OK. So here's a question. If you were to get a tattoo in that location, what would it say?
LIMBONG: Oh, I wanted to, but my sister talked me out of it.
LUSE: (Laughter).
LIMBONG: It was going to be one of those, you know, kind of generic, like, flared, quote-unquote, "tribal"-like looking thing?
LUSE: Oh.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
LUSE: (Laughter) Yes.
KURTZLEBEN: I'm going to say grilled cheese.
LUSE: Ooh, grilled cheese. That's a good one.
KURTZLEBEN: It's a delicious food everyone could agree on.
LUSE: All right. Question No. 2, question No. 2 - another girlie in the zeitgeist this year is one Billie Eilish. She has a new album out, and both her song "Lunch"...
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BILLIE EILISH: (Singing) Oh my God, her skin's so clear. Tell her, bring that over here.
LUSE: ...And her remix of Charli XCX's "Guess" are maybe too explicit to describe on the radio, but she's got a very interesting middle name. Is it - A, Danger, B, Pirate or C, Diablo?
LIMBONG: Diablo?
KURTZLEBEN: Pirate.
LUSE: All right. The answer is actually B, Pirate.
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KURTZLEBEN: Hey.
LUSE: Good job, Danielle. Her full name is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell. I love a fun middle name. Actually, our producer Liam's middle name is Efficiency. Legally, that is his middle name.
LIMBONG: Oh.
LUSE: Fun, right?
KURTZLEBEN: I love that.
LUSE: OK. So a question for both of you. If you had to adopt a second middle name just for fun, what would you choose?
LIMBONG: I think I would go with Drew. And I that - I know my name is Andrew already, but I did try to make Drew - I tried to will Drew into existence...
KURTZLEBEN: Tried to make Drew happen, yeah.
LIMBONG: ...In the seventh grade and never took.
LUSE: (Laughter).
LIMBONG: So to have it legally, you know, in there, it'd be nice.
LUSE: I like that.
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah.
LUSE: I like that. What about you, Danielle?
KURTZLEBEN: The first thing that's coming to mind is Micelph (ph) because my college roommate always said, if she had a kid, she wanted to name them M-I-C-E-L-P-H. So then she could say, allow myself to introduce Micelph.
LUSE: (Laughter) Micelph.
KURTZLEBEN: And so I want to take that for myself.
LUSE: That's a good one. I like that.
KURTZLEBEN: It's so dumb.
LUSE: All right. Well to recap the score - Andrew, you're at one point; Danielle, you're at one point. Without further ado, the final question - while JoJo Siwa's "Karma" didn't break the Hot 100, it definitely did numbers in my house. Let me tell you I love that song. I love that song.
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JOJO SIWA: (Singing) Karma's a b****. I should've known better. If I had a wish...
LUSE: But after years of being a performer whose audience was mostly kids, JoJo Siwa with her new persona has been trying a little bit of an edgier look and sound and not being shy about her sexuality in any sense of the word. And I love it. Good for her. I love it. But do you know what kind of car she drives? Is it - A, a Tesla with diamond-encrusted teddy bear heads on it; B, a BMW covered in bows; or C, a Lamborghini with hundreds of pictures of her face on it?
KURTZLEBEN: I'm going to go with Tesla.
LIMBONG: I was also feeling the Tessie, yeah.
LUSE: I'm sorry. You were both wrong. The answer is C, a Lamborghini with hundreds of pictures of her face on it.
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LIMBONG: Oh, no. Incredible choices being made, yeah.
LUSE: I know. What a gal. What a gal. The car also says karma's a b**** on the back. That's what it says.
KURTZLEBEN: Is it spelled C-A-R-M-A because it's a car?
LUSE: Oh, I wish it were, Danielle.
LIMBONG: Oh, my goodness.
LUSE: Your mind...
KURTZLEBEN: That is a missed opportunity.
LUSE: Team JoJo, are you listening? You got to call Danielle. She's got the ideas you need. All right. Well, that is it for But Did You Know? for this week. Congratulations to both of you for playing, but nobody won today, which means I think y'all are going to have to come back for a rematch.
LIMBONG: All right.
KURTZLEBEN: Sounds great.
LUSE: Well, Andrew, Danielle, thank you so much for joining me today. This was so much fun.
KURTZLEBEN: Oh, this was great.
LIMBONG: Thanks, Brittany.
LUSE: That was NPR culture reporter Andrew Limbong and NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Hey, Brittany.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Hey, Brittany.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Hey, Brittany.
COREY ANTONIO ROSE, BYLINE: Hey, Brittany. It's your producer Corey Antonio. Last week, you asked listeners for the last time they felt like they truly won something, and I have a response from Andrea (ph). She says, last week, I stopped for a black coffee to go, and the clerk said, that's it? This is on me. Their small generous act put a smile on my face, and later in the day, the $3 that I had in my pocket went into the veterans care donation box outside of the grocery store. It felt like won money at that point, and it was easy then to give it to a good cause. Now, isn't that sweet? We also got these voice memos.
LEE: Hey, Brittany. My name is Lee (ph). The last time I felt like I won something is when we were playing a basketball game, a five-on-five. We were tied 18-18. We ended up winning by three points by teamwork. It felt good at the end. We all celebrated together.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: I felt like a winner when after, like, six years of hardcore trying, I finally got top dog on a math assessment, and I got the best score in class. And that made me feel like an absolute G.
LUSE: Oh, my gosh. Thank you all so much for calling in and writing in with these amazing stories of victory, whether it be a literal victory, like Lee in that sports game, or a figurative victory that you could pay forward, like Andrea. But, oh, my gosh, I got to give it to our friend. Oh, my gosh, they are the top dog in their math class. So congratulations to all of you on being winners this week. I feel like a winner now because you shared your joy with me.
Next week, we're going to be looking at the most influential things from the San Francisco Bay area. So what do you think that is? And if you're in the Bay area, this is your chance to shout out your hometown heroes, iconic landmarks, favorite foods or anything else the Bay lays claim to. I can't wait to hear from you all. Send us a voice memo at ibam@npr.org. That's I-B-A-M at npr.org.
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LUSE: This episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by...
BARTON GIRDWOOD, BYLINE: Barton Girdwood.
ALEXIS WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Alexis Williams.
LIAM MCBAIN, BYLINE: Liam McBain.
ROSE: Corey Antonio Rose.
LUSE: This episode was edited by...
JESSICA PLACZEK, BYLINE: Jessica Placzek.
LUSE: Our executive producer is...
VERALYN WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Veralyn Williams.
LUSE: Our VP of programming is...
YOLANDA SANGWENI, BYLINE: Yolanda Sangweni.
LUSE: All right. That's all for this episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse. Talk soon.
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