080523 A Talk with Conservative Pundit Ami Horowitz (Part 1)

constructive conversations across the political aisle. And I do believe that Amy is the sort of person with the right temperament to begin having these conversations for.

Over the past let's call it year plus, there has been a little bit of friction between Black people and Jewish people, often stemming from black people's side of the equation, and we felt the conversation would be in order to attempt to establish a degree of understanding and really communication. We definitely believe in communication on the show here, and Ami has been kind enough to grant us an audience, so a person who obviously sees the world a little

differently than we do. But we're hoping that this conversations that we have today will be informative, constructive, and hopefully lead to increased dialogue across several aisles. And again, this is kind of what we're hoping for today. But first and foremost, we are going to start to sh off as we always do with some ebony excellence, shall we we shall? So today's ABNY Excellence is sponsored by Hip Hop Weekly Media and we are reading from the Black

Information Network. Today's ABNY Excellence is an acknowledgment of black CEO's reaching a record breaking high on the Fortune five hundred list.

on the list. Christopher Womack, the CEO of Southern Company in Atlanta based gas and utility company, was also in your infant to the group of black CEOs after earning the top position in May.

to be black. It's never a surprise when they advanced to the c suite or even to the CEO position, quote, said Laura Morgan Roberts, an associate professor of Business administration at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. She goes on to say, it says more about the companies and the board of director's ability to develop an advance talent from all backgrounds than it says about the representation

of the leaders themselves. So we want to shout out any advancement, certainly in the corporate world that we feel is a step in the right direction, and so shout out to the CEOs who landed on the Fortune five hundred list that are black. Moving on, it is time

to talk to our special guests. So Ami, welcome to the show, of course, and for our listeners benefit, we gave you a brief introduction, but talk a little bit about yourself and what it is that you do and how people might be familiar with your work.

business doing. So my first job was I actually ran out of college. I ran a campaign for State Controller of Maryland. I had zero experience in running a campaign, but for some reason I kind of fell into the job.

first and then come back into politics. And I go, great, how do you make money? He goes be an investment banker like me, and I was like, I don't even know what that is. Never took a business course in my life. And I basically moved to New York without knowing anybody. And I mean, this is back when when payphones were around. You guys may not know what that is. Oh things out there that you just put you plugged

in quarters and you could make phone calls. And got the Wall Street Journal and got a list of the investment banks and cold called investment banks until I and I'm going on too long, stop me, please no, please go ahead, And somehow got interviews and just kind of my way into my first entry level job and did that for about ten years. Wasn't never particularly good at it, but just was able to kind of get along, just move on. And then finally I decided, out of nowhere

to make a movie again. Zero film experience, no idea what I was doing, but kind of fell had a knack for it. Made a my my first feature film or my only feature film about the the United Nations, kind of like a black satirical Michael Moore style documentary about the dangers and the failures of the UN and then never look back. This has kind of been my career since then.

kind of getting out there. But you know, my understanding is that you've done these about topics that are well, you know what, why don't why don't I let you describe it a little bit more so, so talk to us about that facet of your career.

campus and see what people's reactions are to it. The next day I fly the US flag and see what people and compare contrasts and different reactions. And then the third type one you're referring to, a kind of man the street where I interview people around the world and try to get to the heart of kind of what they're thinking is and and get a sense of really what their and it's usually not me arguing with them.

It's very rare I do. Yeah, it's more really trying to understand what they think and having them say the quiet part out loud. That's kind of like my real skill set. Oftentimes I will pretend to be a person that thinks similar to them, which makes them feel a little more comfortable. That's kind of where there might be some controversy. I'm not I don't really understand the controversy. People will say, well, you know you're leading the horse

to water. I go, well, that may be true, but you can never force the horse to drink the water. Either they drink it, they don't drink it. You could lead me down any path you want, but I'm not going to say something I don't believe. So that's kind of been my style, kind of having them feel comfortable by me pretending to kind of think like they do.

might see a little bit of a trend. But we felt that a lot of news sources were anti black in some instances, the people that were elevated to you know, primetime positions were often the most hateful, the most divisive sorts of individuals, and we could see, you know, people profiting from allowing this divide to deepen and to protect our own sort of mental health and to just recognize that we kind of have a longer road here, we've limited intake from media outlets that are not entirely based

In fact, you know, Fox News famously had to pay Dominion voting systems almost a billion dollars. Yeah, it was like seven hundred plus million dollars for basically elevating what ultimately as an unfounded and utter lie about the previous administration. And that is not their only sin.

least by race. And so the reason I wanted to explain that is because where I'm going next is I've always felt by watching programs like The Daily Show, where they're kind of based in humor, they're a little bit more approachable for most of the population, you know, we just wouldn't want to have a laugh that we want to be informed as well. That they do have people

like that. Those the sort of man on the street sort of people that go out and they, you know, like you, they tend to be aligned politically with the people they're interviewing, right, and they will ask questions to really see why people believe what it is that they believe, right, And obviously these people are seldom prepared to have these conversations because they were either taught or you know, that's just a reflection of their viewpoint, you know what I mean.

And I think what we end up seeing and what we end up laughing at is that often enough these people are politically aligned with what they themselves will identify as being against their own interests in the moment in that interview, right, And so this is why we can all sit around and have a laugh. And so when I looked at some of your earlier work and saw something similar but from the opposite advantage point, I realized, you know what, not only is that fear, but that

might be something that's missing. Because pure gold fears no fire, right,

wrong is wrong, right is right. And when we're wrong on this side, or when we need to, you know, strengthen our arguments or whatever the case is, there's programmings like the ones that you put together that are necessary for us to really ensure that what we're thinking is based in a shared reality, and that our beliefs are not simply beliefs because we've been given them, but because they are indeed a reflection of who we are as

a people and what we value as a people. Now, I know that my listeners would eat me up if I didn't mention that there is a difference in power, you know, depending on who you're talking to, and power in terms of their capacity to influence their immediate here now, either by voting or have some sort of fiscal impact or effect on their reality by withholding dollars or spending

elsewhere or whatever. Those are who are the most vulnerable in the population typically don't have that same free them to change there, here and now the way that, let's be honest, our white male, often conservative, heterosexual Christian brothers do the value of a vote is less than the value of a vote from that specific type of individual,

et cetera. Forgive me for going on and on, but I wanted to kind of get your thoughts on what it is that you are trying to accomplish, or at least we're trying to accomplish with your programs like Ami on the LuSE and Amy on the Street. What what did you think would come about as a result of those endeavors?

why do I do what I do? Is because I feel that the center left and the center right have far more in common than the center right has with the far right, and the center left has with the far left. And it's unfortunate that most people on both sides don't realize that. And so my goal personally is to try to separate the center left from the hard left. I don't think they have a lot in common. I think the center left doesn't fully understand that, as the

center right doesn't fully understand that. They don't. They have not that much in common with the hard right, and so I'm trying to speak to them. I'm trying to say, look, here is what the hard left believes, and I don't think this aligns with your worldview. And if you tell them, hey, the hard left believes in destruction of capitalism, open borders, transiting nine year olds, the centate left will say that's

not true, that's right wing talking points. No one believes that, And my point is no, no, there are people who believe that here are those people, and I don't think that aligns your viewpoint. That's why I'm always trying to speak to and that's why I love to go on shows that don't speak to the typical conservative audience, which is just to me, he's preaching the choir, which has value, sure, but it's not who I'm trying to engage with. It's

why I do a lot of videos on race. I try to speak to the black community whenever I can. I think I think black people and the right of center have more in common than either side actually thinks or nos. So that's an important audience for me. So yeah, I'm always trying to speak to a different audience and trying very hard not to alienate that audience for my content.

that police are always the good guys. We recognize that we have been subjected to copaganda and that while there are I would assume a decent number of good human beings who happen to function in the capacity of a police officer, that there is a system that incubates bullying behavior. It insulates people from consequences of their biases, their hatred manifested in the form of violence against black and brown bodies.

And we believe that our being critical of policing is important to get the best version of public safety possible. In other words, we just simply do not accept that this is the best that is possible. We simply reject the narrative that it's a few bad apples, because that has been a narrative that has been People have tried to establish that for decades, and people have tried to say that training is something that is necessary for decades.

And I don't want to be born the whole life and then die and still have that be a narrative that is popular. A few bad apples, better training, et cetera. Right, So I need you to understand who you're talking to when I ask you these questions, because this title to a person like me and indeed our listeners now I know better, but a person like me, the title would seem like it flies in the face of an agenda that my people are trying to push, which is that

our lives have worth. And that is really the beginning, middle, and end of the conversation. And when other people inject other elements into the conversation, we take it as noise or a subtle way of pushing back against our affirmation of our lives having value. And then obviously you know the story about Q and I with the trademark White

White Lives Matter, and that whole pushback as well. So with that in mind, I want to ask you the intentionality behind and the result, in other words, what you learned of the do Cops Lives Matter initiative?

within the black community. In fact, the video began with me and a lot of my videos begin with me in leftist white neighborhoods and then end with me in black neighborhoods, and that video, I believe, began with me in a white neighborhood, I believe Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and I was interviewing white leftists and I asked them, how do how do you think black people view the NYPD? And to a man, every single person was rage on the street.

There's hatred of police officers. They find them all disgusting. It was just over and over the same narrative, kind of heard that, you know, it's just a hatred of police officers by black people around the country. Then the next shot was me in I believe West Harlem, I could have been East Harlem, and I had a T shirt that said, cops lives matter and hidden cameras, so almoys knows I'm being on film. I was trying to enlist what was the reaction I was going to get.

So it seemed provocative, right, particularly among the black particularly when Black Lives Matter was happening, and the I didn't know and with a lot with with some of my videos, I kind of have a sense of what the response going to be. This is one of the few videos I really had no idea what the response was going to be. And the response was I thought incredible. Almost almost every single black person came up to me instead of course, cops lives matter. How can we love supporting

the police officers? Of course we have problems, and they start telling me stories in fact about how cops were involved in their lives, saved them, help them. Some are black, some were white. And it was a really interesting experience where you got a perspective different than what the narrative I was hearing in the media was. But how blacks view police officers?

you described. I do want to offer something there that you know, for a person like me, I recognize that that illustrates and illuminates that black people are not a hateful people. If we're painting with broad strokes, affirming our

lives doesn't mean that anyone else's life matters less. And I think that it also suggests that black people can be subject to the influences of a white supremacist society A but also things like copaganda be the same as any other person, and those of us who have higher level thinking that can think critically about these things.