That Hunter Biden Story

It’s October 15, 2020, and 12.4 percent of the votes that were cast in the ...

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It’s October 15, 2020, and 12.4 percent of the votes that were cast in the 2016 election have already been cast this election cycle. Sarah and David try to discern through the tea leaves what this means for voter turnout this year. “There’s two different schools of thought here,” Sarah says. “One is that we’re on pace to have record turnout and one is that we’re simply banking Election Day votes early this time.” On today’s episode, our podcast hosts also discuss the journalistic, political, legal implications of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden story before breaking down the key ingredients to a successful marriage.

Show Notes:

–Divided We Fall by David French, “Emails reveal how Hunter Biden tried to cash in big on behalf of family with Chinese firm” by Emma Jo-Morris Gabriel Fonrouge in the New York Post, Malwarebytes Inc. v. Enigma Software Group USA, LLC, “Why Only Amy Coney Barrett Gets to Have It All” by Katelyn Beaty in the New York Times.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  1. Martin Miller

    I appreciate what David and Sarah do on this podcast. I did have a thought on the discussion concerning men and women’s roles and their career advancement. Sarah jokingly made a comment about how hard it was to find a man that was over six feet tall and still comfortable with her career and education. I know it was just a joke, but I do know of a lot of woman (including my wife) who said they wouldn’t marry someone shorter than they were. The reason my wife gave me was that the wedding pictures would be horrible. Lol. I am curious on whether this is a real concern for women? If so, maybe that should be discussed? It might open the field for more men!

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  2. GusABQ

    I think another piece of this that I don't see below is the American culture's treatment of men and especially husbands. Men are seen as lazy skirt-chasing, useless, etc.such that it's become a cliche. I was brought up by two parents with a multitude of faults, but who both knew that survival of our family meant that they had to work together both at work and at home. It would be nice to see that borne out in modern TV/film/literature.

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    M.E.

    I think two through-lines in the gender role topic is that successful reversals -- and even traditional role taking -- involve the active choice of the domestic partner to take on that role, and I would add the importance of the professional partner respecting that role.

    David noted that the one family he knows in which gender-role reversal succeeded was one in which the husband made an affirmative choice to stay home. That echos my experience -- before we had kids, my wife and I agreed we wanted a stay-at-home parent, and her earning potential compared to mine (physician v. humanities grad!) made the choice obvious. Likewise, commenters who've described their relationship successes seem to be those for whom the choice was taken, not forced.

    Further, I sense in the comments here of domestic and professional partners, both men and women, that the work at home is valued by both partners. I presume the same is true for David's friend, and I know that's the case for me -- my wife goes out of her way to tell people, when they ask if I'm working, that I am, at home.

    I think that narrative, of "making a choice to do a job" rather than "having to stay home", makes a huge difference. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of men can't make that cognitive switch, even when their partners can. Then again, women can also get grief for staying at home, so how can we as a culture move toward making homemaking a respectable choice for men /and/ women?

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  4. Kurt Von Fuchs

    do you believe in the Bill of Rights? The constitution? Free Enterprise? Then you are a LIBERAL

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    WKDawson

    I remember people used to say "behind every successful man is a woman". The discussion Sarah Isgar brought out about how the husband makes a big difference reminded me that this is also true in reverse. I think it goes further though ... it probably also depends upon family, teachers, friends, etc. There are many places where either misfortune, ill fate, or unfortunate choices can factor in.

    Families sometimes have problems. The parents can discourage their children from advancing in their education ... they don't always want their own children to have a better life than the bitter one they had. There are alcoholics who can ruin their children, though miraculously, some of them come out ok in the end. Likewise, when either party in a marriage is unwilling to adapt, or unwilling to mature, he or she or even both can end up destroying each other (as well as the marriage).

    Life is complicated. Some of our misfortunes are consequences of our own bad choices, but there are others that fall upon us (uninvited) and still others we can do nothing about. At any rate, Ms. Isgar is right that this notion that "you can have it all" is mostly hogwash. It is also a bit self-serving -- kind of the same problem as always with this me-me-me-me-me thinking. I wish we would get to a bit more of an "us"-mentality again. CEOs don't single-handedly save companies, the laborers (including the grunts) contribute a lot too. Platforms with the "I am great" and "I alone can solve this". Beyond even the brazen lack of humility, why do we buy into such pernicious twaddling?

    I also agree with David's insight that we should emphasize virtue over titles. Probably that applies to both sexes, but maybe in the current framework, I can remember that I grew up in a time when the male typically earned the bigger salary, and that was what has been subtly pounded endlessly into my head by society in general and Hollywood in particular. How many movies in the last 10 years had the male earning far less money and having a far less steller position in the hierarchy, but having a genuine kind of success of his own (not measured in status, income, or other facile metrics of status)?

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    Jenny

    I always enjoy the topics Advisory Opinions covers, but this week’s discussion on marriage was brilliant. Sarah, I love how you bring up women’s issue, and David, you are a great feminist ally. Please keep it up!

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    Victor Clairmont

    So you asked for a little homework, and I decided to show some, as I believe both Sarah, David, and myself included until recently, are incorrect about Facebook engagements and also not talked about, reach. (Skip to the end for summary. If interested in summary, back up and read the full post. Lots of numbers)

    So, when we look at the top 10 performing news publisher websites on Facebook, going back to August 2020, we find 3 of the top 10 being conservative/right leaning. Dailywire.com, in August, had 104 million "engagements" When we take in aggregate the other top 2 of 10, (The Blaze and Breitbart), we come out to around 187 million engagements (notice I said "engagements", not dealing with "reach" yet). That is around a third of all total engagements for that month at 587 million among the top 10 sites.

    https://www.newswhip.com/2020/09/top-publishers-facebook-august-2020/

    (If you look at individual articles, most of the news things are not right leaning but that's a different story)

    Lets go further now, to the top 25 sites (also listed in the link). We now can add in another 3 right leaning sites, (Western Journal, Conservative Opinion CNS news), and now add up to another 257 million more engagements. This is around 25-27% of the top total of the 25 websites. If we then also add in Foxnews, Dailymail, and The New York Post, we now show that when it comes to news publishers, we are at less than half the engagements.

    This does not get better when we look at data for previous months also. The trends hold up that left wing news publications continue to have more total engagements in aggregate than the top right leaning ones in totality (Daily Wire has not always, month by month, been the top engagement website over the years, much like how Fox News and MSNBC, at different times over the years, have swapped position for the top 1 or 2 slot).

    So lets talk about "reach" now. If you are thinking "Ok, so right leaning news sites maybe don't get the majority, but still have a hefty chunk." If "engagement" is the interactions/clicks on an article or shares, "reach" is the clicking/sharing and interaction of an article across a larger spectrum (maybe you don't share it, but your mom does, and you see the headline and just don't click. but you still see the headlines, and so does the 57 other people your mom forwards it too in her group called "Cats are better than dogs eat it Jonah Goldberg". Lots of people after all, run with headlines and never read the article. Maybe it's coming from a trusty source that they assume is telling the truth, till you get to paragraph 13 and find the lede has been buried but hey, you never read it). "Reach" and please get this, is the whole totality of engagements, not limited to clicks, but gifs, emoji's, and even the silly meme's one see that includes interacting with news content that has to do with it. In other words, which posts are seen by the most users via sharing as well as being clicked on, commented on, etc. While "engagement" is used to measure the passionate base, "reach" is used to measure the whole of the internet from passionate to casual paying attention to that news, even if the casual is only slightly paying attention.

    We actually have zero metrics on "reach", because the data is not available to the public from Facebook, but we know it exists from none other than, Facebook.

    Here is John Hegeman, the head of Facebook News Feed, confirming "engagements" do not tell the total story, responding to Kevin Roose of the NYT's who alleges (and for months/years) has said the right has more "engagements" than the left on Facebooks platform. Roose, it seems, is incorrect due to not knowing about "reach" but continues to suggest that the right has more underground currency.

    https://twitter.com/johnwhegeman/status/1285359446273622017

    Hegeman is saying that Roose, and others, calling for Facebook to be censored are missing the proper metric for measurement, much as Sarah, David (and myself) looked at the "engagements" and not the totality of the "reach". The more accurate stance is "reach", or what people saw in their news feed. In other words, one can have the highest "engagements" (clicks) with the Daily Wire, but if Buzzfeed or the LA Times has a higher "reach", (which these sites have in the past) it is more meaningful than engagements, and thus they have the higher totality. He includes specific examples of left leaning engagement outperforming the right via "reach".

    Facebook needs to release their data on "reach", which, if like "engagements" and Hegemans own internal analytics suggests, will tell a much different story, one where liberals have more of both "engagement" and "reach". They already again, have more total "engagement" at this moment. One can follow they have more "reach" easily by numbers alone. Think of it this way, if dems typically have the popular vote in elections, then why wouldn't, after a long period of time, it be reflected on the internet via news outlets being shared on Facebook? Spoiler alert: it does.

    So conservatives, both in "engagement" and "reach", do not have the majority of Facebook interactions, when you take the aggregate sum of news leaning sites. By Facebook's own head of news feed, and by looking at websites that track these metrics, when we compare the totality of it.

    Now, this does not mean at one point in the history of the internet, that conservatives were not the top across the board, (I am not going that far back because well, I have a job and things to do) but currently and for the past few years, the left has held control more over Facebook than the right. So, while it is right to say conservatives have more of a presence on Facebook than Twitter (which is overwhelmingly used by a small portion of the population, with the totality of tweets, and mostly is left leaning), it is still not greater than the left leaning outlets. Liberals that dominate Twitter, still hold the majority sway (not as badly), on Facebook. Don't be fooled (like me) by the big number the few websites, like the Daily Wire put up. In aggregate, left leaning news outperforms right leaning ones in totality.

    SUMMARY FOR THOSE THAT WANT THE GIST:

    -Right leaning news websites do not outperform left leaning news websites on Facebook in aggregate when it comes to "engagements". When adding in "reach", Facebook admits that the left has more totality than the right for news websites it seems.

    -"Reach" is more important on Facebook than "engagements" (admitted by it's own head of news feed), but Facebook has not released this internal measurement meter, but it exists.

    Full disclosure, someone pointed out to me to what Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreings own website, Daily Wire said on their own podcast on Oct. 16th, the day after this podcast from The Dispatch ran. Many of what I say here coincides with what Ben Shapiro himself outlines and I use and follow some of the metrics. So my position has changed from Facebook being dominated by right leaning people to left wing people/news actually having the majority share of Facebook.

    Here is the podcast from Daily Wire. Start at the 36 min mark for the necessary information:

    https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1116-facebook-and-twitter-just-ushered-in-the-most-dangerous-political-moment-in-memory-2

    Thanks for the podcast! I am open to corrections on the data analytics. No, I am not drunk when I typed this, but I am tired while writing at around 4-6 in the morning.

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  8. Steven B

    I was a full time and am now a part time stay at home dad loved the conversation today! new member but long time podcast listener. I am a conservative Christian and looking back if we could have prepared better for my wife who is a family practice doctor to work less sooner we would have. We still believe from the scriptures and creation woman are meant to be doing much of the nurturing of particularly young children. Thankfully with being able to have work flexibility we were able to give my wife as much time with the kids as possible. This meant taking care being willing to take care of chores and household duties so she could be dedicated to the children, church, self care when she was off work. We did end up buying a smaller house in a more affordable part of town so she could work less and thankfully I could do online school at night to learn accounting and now have a part time job also allowing me a little bit of adult time. I am extremely blessed to work for a small business that gives me the flexibility to take care of the kids when necessary and pick my days I work.

    It was sad to hear all of the relationships that were so poor with this dynamic. Seems many times the rot of selfishness has both adults wanting to have the career and things they cannot afford and anyone who comes between this self fulfillment even spouse or children must effectively die for their dream rather than having having the love Jesus calls for to lay our lives down for our friends.

    Also clear expectations help. For any 30 rock fans we played deal breakers before we officially became engaged to go through expectations. Definitely helped set us up with what we would not tolerate in our life and family structure.

    Keep up the good work on the pod I love listening while cleaning and cooking.

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    Kaitlin Johnson

    I LOVE the discussions on here about feminism. I feel so much wiser before I even start out into the world. Agreed Sarah, David’s chore situation kinda sounds like a mess. I am tasked with:
    -feeding 3 horses and 3 dogs
    -mucking stalls, filling water buckets, sweeping, brushing, getting hay from the shed, exercising them, and cleaning tack
    If I try to do inside chores, I about lose it. My little sister saved me from burning down the house with the oven 😂

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      Jenny

      How’d you like your shout out this week?

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        Kaitlin Johnson

        Loved it 😂 It’s so special how I’m included in all this stuff. I feel quite honored 🥰

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    Matmos

    I really appreciated the discussion on the role of husband's in professional women's careers. I can say for a fact that it is only with the 100% support of my professional husband that I have been able to have the career I have. This is even more for my mom, who got 100% support from my dad when she was a high-flying professional in the 60's, a time when people thought married women shouldn't have jobs at all if they could help it. In addition to the men wanting to be alpha dynamic Sarah discussed, there's another more insidious dynamic which is very widespread, of men just not even being aware of an enormous amount of household labor that has to happen and leaving it for women to do. A brilliant woman I mentored gave up her career after she had a kid, not because she wanted to, but because her husband did not do any household or child labor. Like if his daughter fell on the ground in front of him and cried, he would call my colleague from the other room to come and pick her up. That second shift is a career killer if you're doing it by yourself.

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