Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em Podcast

Married journalists Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer are the forces behind “The Harvey Weinstein Trial: Unfiltered” podcast, in which actors read daily excerpts of the courthouse testimony verbatim. Released during the trial in 2020, it’s an extraordinary document of a cultural flashpoint, providing a far deeper and more troubling portrait than most media coverage did at the time. Nobody was shocked when Weinstein was slapped with a 23-year sentence, but it seems many people were when that conviction was overturned on Thursday, April 25.Not Ann and Phelim. “This is of course not any surprise at all us, and to any of you who’ve been listening,” McElhinney said during the “special news breaking episode” recorded yesterday, “We Were Right - Weinstein Case Collapses.” Catherine A. Christian, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s office, was also unsurprised. “A number of us were expecting that it probably would be reversed if there was some sort of intellectual honesty,” she told Politico Magazine.”You don’t want to make bad law for bad defendants.”Few people followed this case as closely — or produced the kind of hard-hitting journalism as Ann and Phelim. Listeners may recall Sarah’s beloved holiday tradition for three years running: She listens to all 23 episodes of the podcast, which is very weird, although Ann called it “the most precious compliment I’ve ever had.” McElhinney and McAleer join Nancy and an awestruck Sarah to discuss “the silence of the laptops” in the courtroom, why actress Annabella Sciorra should never have been on the witness stand, the transactional nature of Hollywood relationships, and whether Weinstein will be tried again in New York. Strap in!Support Ann & Phelim at The Unreported Story Society. Anyone in or around New York City is invited to McElhinney and McAleer’s latest project, October 7: In Their Own Words. Tickets at www.october7theplay.comAnd don’t forget to send your letters to smokeempodcast@gmail.com. We’ll read them on-air in an upcoming episode. The media has snoozed through some of the day’s most important stories. Meanwhile, we’re not sleeping (literally), so please consider becoming a paid subscriber.Episode Notes:“Harvey Weinstein Conviction Overturned by N.Y. Court of Appeals” (New York Times)The Molineux Rule, explained“What Harvey Weinstein’s Overturned Conviction Means for Donald Trump’s Trial,” by Ronan Farrow (New Yorker)“‘Hindsight Is 20/20’: Why Harvey Weinstein’s Conviction Was Overturned,” Nick Reisman (Politico)“Harvey Weinstein’s Rape Conviction Overturned by New York Appeals Court—What’s Next?” by Savannah Walsh (Vanity Fair)“Why Harvey Weinstein Might Walk,” by Joann Wypijewski (The Nation, 2020)“The New Truth: When the moral imperative trumps the rational evidence, there’s no arguing,” by Jacob Siegel (Tablet)“Asia Argento’s Time Is Up,” by Nancy Rommelmann (Reason) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Title IX started as a modest part of the Education Amendments of 1972; it was the part that prohibited sex-based discrimination in education programs. In the 50+ years since, it’s become shorthand for many things: Women in sports, a sexual reckoning, a cultural over-correction, a legal shitshow. What no one ever seems to ask is: Why are colleges adjudicating sexual matters between students anyway?Our guest KC Johnson, a tenured professor at Brooklyn College, began his Title IX education back in 2006, when the Duke lacrosse team was accused of rape. The case became a national scandal, pulling in faculty, administration, lawyers, and the government, with the accused students at the center, though they were eventually exonerated. It’s a case Nancy and Sarah discussed way back in episode 10 (“Fabulists!”), and one Johnson spent years investigating and eventually co-authored a book about.Since then, Johnson has become the go-to guy on this topic. Who better to explain the new Title IX guidelines from Biden? Don’t forget: Biden is the original crusader behind Title IX’s more recent iteration as a way to address campus sexual assault. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comEli Lake is a longtime journalist, but we know him best for the tremendous “Re-Education With Eli Lake” podcast (Nancy’s #1 pod pick in 2023). Lake has recently become a contributor to the Free Press, where he writes about this world as it explodes. Nancy and Sarah talked with him about the paradox of anarchists attending meetings, why writers can be precious little bitches, the upcoming DNC in Chicago, and how he made our outro song, or at least instructed the robot to do so.* “When I kiss you on your mask you understand”* What does PEN America do?* Eli and Nancy’s Wikipedia pages are full of lies* “You’re not the boss of me” as the spirit of America* Will things go full Baader-Meinhof at the Chicago DNC?* Don’t go to journalism school, kids* Some love for Tom Wolfe, Bryan Burrough, Ask a Jew* Newsroom is the Jay Rosen of TV shows* “Norman Finkelstein is the Jew-y Jew who performs for anti-Semites”Plus, Lenny Bruce as a podcaster, Menachem Begin as OG punk rock, and is marijuana the Jewish kryptonite? Send us your letters! We want them! We’re not the boss of you, but we’d still like you to become a paid subscriber.

Michael Moynihan, FIFTH COLUMN co-host and man about town, joins Nancy and Sarah to discuss The Incomparable Mr. Buckley, the new PBS documentary about conservative firebrand William F. Buckley. They discuss his eloquence, mistakes, and political evolution, and Sarah calls the old Firing Line episodes “a call to civility in a time of chaos.”Also discussed: * Sarah puts her vibrator on time-out* The unfortunate rise of “churnalism”* AJ Cowling? Tacos anyone?* The Big 5-0 murder-suicide plan* That time Tracey Ullman talked to Michael about Morrissey* The affliction of presentism* Ronald Reagan as “the pretty ship of ideas that Buckley could load up and push out to sea.”* What did Hitchens think of Buckley?* Gore Vidal, dragged* James Baldwin, praised* The Buckley biography 20 years in the making* Are WE the new conservatives?* Don’t cancel Milk Duds!* “Free trade is a net gain for people, but there are going to be losers”* “Technology made us rougher people when it came to politics”* Who will lead a new campus movement. Could it be… Michael Moynihan? (If you let him do it over Zoom?)Also, why we watch documentaries we disagree with, Nancy’s kind of town, and more literary and video links than you can shake a Rabbit vibrator at.Also: CALL FOR LETTERS! You have questions? We have answers! smokeempodcast@gmail.comPaid subscribers have more fun.Episode Notes:Japanese Maple, by Clive JamesYour death, near now, is of an easy sort.So slow a fading out brings no real pain.Breath growing shortIs just uncomfortable. You feel the drainOf energy, but thought and sight remain:Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever seeSo much sweet beauty as when fine rain fallsOn that small treeAnd saturates your brick back garden walls,So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?Ever more lavish as the dusk descendsThis glistening illuminates the air.It never ends.Whenever the rain comes it will be there,Beyond my time, but now I take my share.My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.What I must doIs live to see that. That will end the gameFor me, though life continues all the same:​Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,A final flood of colours will live onAs my mind dies,Burned by my vision of a world that shoneSo brightly at the last, and then was gone.--New Yorker, September 15, 2014“Go Back to the Cold!” Clive James on John Le Carre (New York Review of Books)Best of Enemies documentary about Buckley and VidalA Traitor to His Class by H.W. Brands (about FDR)Letters to a Young Contrarian by HitchensNearer My God by William F. BuckleyLosing Mum and Pup: A Memoir by Christopher BuckleyCancel Your Own Goddamn Subscription by William F. BuckleyReagan in His Own Hand by Kiron K. SkinnerOverdrive: A Personal Documentary by William F. BuckleyReds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America by Ted MorganWhittaker Chambers: A Biography, by Sam Tanenhaus“Firehose #84: Did We Really ‘Mostly’ Endorse ‘The Fall of Minneapolis’?” by Matt Welch (Fifth Column Substack)What’s in your hot box?Sarah:Nancy: A love of Chicago and, in anticipation of the 2024 DNC in that big-shouldered town, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago, by Mike RoykoMichael:“The Secret Army: The True Story of a Lost Documentary”Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland and The Snakehead, by Patrick Radden KeefeUnanimously chosen outro: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comNancy’s still pissed they interrupted the 1994 Rockets-Knicks NBA finals to show the slow-speed OJ Simpson chase on every LA channel, and Sarah is driving through Texas in, yes, a Bronco, as the gals talk OJ Simpson, who died yesterday of cancer at age 76. Where were they heard about the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, and that OJ was the main suspect? What were the factors behind the nation’s lurid fascination? Did the OJ case spell the end of mono-culture as the internet splintered our fascinations? Has the nature of fame changed? Have we?Also discussed:* Seeing the sky turn black from the 968 concurrent fires during the 1992 LA riots* Some background on Al Cowling* The note Nancy’s daughter’s preschool sent home on the eve of the OJ verdict* The greatness of “The People v. OJ Simpson,” including the jacaranda, the pepper trees, the bad beige 90s furnishings…* David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian: yea or nay?And much more!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comMike Lacey and Jim Larkin launched Phoenix New Times in 1970. Working out of a closet in a women’s clothing store, the paper covered stories most media at the time would not, including then-Arizona senator John McCain’s involvement with the Charles Keating Savings & Loan scandal, McCain’s wife Cindy forging subscriptions and stealing pills from a children’s charity she’d founded, and the humanitarian horrors associated with Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio. “You get paid for castrations,” Lacey would tell the makers of HOLD FAST, an Audible podcast that covers New Times’ salad days and what came later, including the fateful turn when people the paper had once gone after went after them, including the McCains, Arpaio, and then-senator Kamala Harris.As Sarah recently wrote for the Dallas Morning News:“Things don’t turn out well for Lacey, or his more copacetic business partner Larkin, as they get dragged through two federal trials on charges of money laundering and (buried the lede) sex trafficking, thanks to the adult ads that were once the lifeblood of alt-weekly revenue and which the pair spun into the notorious Backpage.com, prompting the Justice Department to label them the biggest pimps in the history of the world. Whether these two men are free-speech champions, or smug bastards hoisted on their own petards, will be for the listener to decide.”HOLD FAST, named for the words Lacey tattooed across his knuckles, is created by former New Times writers Trevor Aaronson (also behind the podcasts “American ISIS” and “Alphabet Boys”), Sam Eifling, and Michael J. Mooney, who joins Nancy and Sarah - who spent a combined 25 years in the alt-weekly trenches - to talk about working for New Times during its heyday. “It was a meat grinder of employment, but also, the Shangri-La of journalism,” he says. “It was both things at once.”Also discussed:* Eclipse!* postrate not prostate* Post Malone does a chicken commercial* “We don’t get the free speech warriors we want, we get the free speech warriors we deserve”* Erotic cake toppers, anyone?* Does Sarah love Mike Lacey? Does she hate Mike Lacey? Maybe both?* Who did — and who did not — get those $5000 checks* Reason magazine’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown does heroic journalism* A gift from Wallace leads to the tiniest Viking burial?This episode of Smoke ‘Em, dealing with the threats to journalism and free speech, is, maybe not paradoxically for former alt-weekly scribes who covered the “freak beat” (Mooney), interviewed serial killers (Nancy), and walked around the office barefoot (Sarah), also one of its funniest. HOLD FAST is available on Audible.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comParticipants in April’s First Sunday Zoom kindly submitted to being recorded while discussing the 1973 film version of Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, which we watched as a group. How did people feel about Elliot Gould playing the classic 1940s gumshoe? What about all those naked women (too much, too little)? And was it possible to appreciate director Robert Altman’s update only once you’ve gone through the looking glass of post-Helter Skelter Los Angeles?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comCorrection to this episode: In our discussion of the late comic Ed Piskor, accused of sexual misconduct, we conflated the accounts of two women, both of whom happened to be named Molly. In the first case, 17-year-old Molly D. never claimed a physical relationship with Piskor, only messages she exchanged with the artist. In the wake of this accusation, an older woman, Molly W., added her own story, framing a past sexual relationship with Piskor as exploitive, a charge Piskor addressed in his suicide note, claiming they’d had sex twice, and that both times were consensual. The age of consent in Pennsylvania is 16.* First Sunday Zoom* Earthquake. Steve Kornacki.* Eclipse mania* Jennifer Senior wins award, keeps kicking ass* “Harmonica virgins”* Sarah’s new car, picture for paid subscribers only* Lessons of Isuecardealers.com* “The True Cost of the Church Going Bust,” by Derek Thompson (Atlantic)* The Matt Welch* Everyone meets at Paloma/Nancy’s apartment* “My Mom Has No Friends,” by Monica Corcoran Harel (The Cut)* Sarah’s first act of civil disobedience* “Nut pick” definition* The Journalist and the Murderer, by Janet Malcolm* Ed Piskor Comics Beat* “Don’t give me a gun and tell me not to use it.”* Bananas bananas bananas* The best musical of all musicals told at the twilight of the Americane experimentNothing worth doing comes without a cost. Become a paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comThe new HBO docuseries about Nickelodeon’s dark side, Quiet on Set, reveals the bad things that can happen when kids do adult work while actual adults behave like (troubled) kids. Child stars can be ultra-performers: Michael Jackson, Judy Garland, Ryan Gosling, Britney Spears, Olivia Rodrigo. But at what cost? Let’s ask Amanda Bynes and Drake Bell. (Or the cast of Diff’rent Strokes.) How many child stars will lose their marbles before we agree that a heady mix of celebrity, toxic task-masters, freeloaders, and easy money isn’t wise for a demographic that would otherwise be hanging at the mall? So much to discuss.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comChristine Blasey Ford is back with her memoir One Way Back, and Nancy took one for the team and read it. Sarah, meanwhile, re-watched the eight-hour 2018 trial, because she’s insane. The Kavanaugh trial was a real moment: squee, boof, “I like beer.” Beyond the memes, however, it was more: a reckoning, a moral panic; an education, a national disgrace. Five years have passed. What can we see — or say — that we couldn’t back then? A lot!