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Mark Silbert's avatar

You’ve nailed it. When you stop calling it as you see it and engage in self censorship I for one will be gone.

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Kurt Simmons's avatar

First up a comedy analogy, then a riff on why Glenn gets to keep on riffing.

To create a great comedy show, Chris Rock or Robin Williams or Dave Chappelle, you hit the really small clubs and find out where the edge is and pull it back a step. Test out jokes, be they dirty, racist, sexist, or offensive, until the audience stops laughing, then put all the jokes just before the edge in the recorded live show. You have to go too far, to know where that is. That is required at the level of greatness that everyone really appreciates.

Glenn has a variety of platforms, with varying audience sizes and permanence. Writing a book for the ages requires a certain degree of decorum. Ripping someone a new one at a party requires less so. Alas we created a situation where some people record what happens at a party and nationalizes it. A small podcast can result in a viral video. I think one lesson is that we has a nation might need to learn how to process that we are able to see all of the conversations at once and not just the greatness. That is its own question.

Glenn also has a wide variety of skills. Renowned economist is one. Thoughtful listener another. Excellence at devil's advocate is another. But one of the great ones has got to be bad-ass, angry, black, mo-fo. Here is the comedy analogy. One of the best ways to get the greatest ideas out of Glenn is to let him go on an angry riff. It might scare liberals. Heck it might even scare conservatives. LaJuan probably tunes him out and says, "Whatever." But he will combine all his skills in that riff and get deeper into distilled essences of the topic, or reach higher intellectual understanding. And I think we all need to be able to see that.

We need him to reach past our comfort zones for greatness. Wusses need to see what greatness can come from a well-guided offensive riff. Glenn's books and speeches ultimately need the material discovered in these riffs. The process is exposed now so we should all get used to it. If Glenn is summoned to a popular TV show to give his thoughts on the matter he should probably stick to the known excellence. But we all still need the angry, in-yo-face riffs we get to see on the Glenn Show.

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