The Supply Chain is F**ked

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Transcript

Sarah [00:00:00] I think what we're all realizing either through price increases or empty shelves or delivery delays is that we really didn't understand the size and scope. I think we're all coming to realize how dependent we were on a global supply chain that we just didn't understand. It just feels like the ultimate metaphor for what covid is teaching us on so many levels. 

Sarah [00:00:34] This is Sarah. 

Beth [00:00:35] And Beth. 

Sarah [00:00:36] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. 

Beth [00:00:38] The home of grace-filled political conversations. 

[00:01:01] Hello and thank you so much for joining us for a new episode of Fancy Politics today. We're going to talk about the economy and I know that can sound a little dry and academic, but that is not where we're going to be today. We are going to talk about what is Congress working on that could impact our real lives right away. And then we're going to talk about the supply chain. So what can you buy at the grocery store? What can you order from your favorite retailer? How much will it cost? Will there be turkeys to roast this Thanksgiving? And outside of politics, a listener asked us to talk about America's fascination with the Gabby Petito case, which we are going to attempt to do with great respect for the fact that this is a real person. We'll get into all of that today. But before we do, we have a fun announcement closely related to our supply chain conversation. Sarah, would you like to do the honors? 

Sarah [00:01:49] Yes, I'm so excited. Several weeks ago, we told you we were coming out with a holiday gift guide because we felt like the biggest gift we could give to you is not necessarily just the recommendations, but getting it to you early, an acknowledgment that the supply chain is jacked up. We've got it ready for you. Y'all don't delay. Do not delay. Fire up this gift guide. Buy your stuff, get it done. And Beth, I want to shout out a particular part of the gift guide that I'm proud of. Listen, it actually doesn't have to do with the global supply chain at all. I put a little section in my part of the gift guide for husbands or partners looking for presents for their wives and spouses. And let me just say it's not a physical present that you will need to order off the Internet or depend on. I just said as plainly as I could hire a housecleaner, this is what your partner wants. They want a house cleaner, that's it. Nobody wants an appliance. Nobody wants jewelry. If you do not already have a house cleaner, hire one. And if you already have a house cleaner, take your children out of the house and let your partner enjoy that clean house by themselves. That's it. That is my holiday gift guidance for that particular subset of the population. What do you think? 

Beth [00:03:24] Well, I think that's correct. That's all I want. Help really. Just help is all I want for the holidays. And look, I think that that is a good peek at the fact that this is a very, you know, Pantsuit Politics holiday. It's got a wide range of suggestions and ideas. It is all over the place. We wrote separate sections so that our personalities could just do what they do and we could give you our best advice from where we are. And let me say this. There are very inexpensive gifts on here all the way to pretty expensive gifts. There are things, there are experiences, there are recommendations for you to buy certain types of things locally. There are some links to products on Amazon. Because as much as I know everybody has feelings about how we shop, we have listeners in places that do not have a cute local downtown. So we have tried to think about everyone's different life experiences and we hope that we've given you something helpful so that you can have the best holiday available to you. 

Sarah [00:04:21] So it's going to be in the show notes. It's going to be in our newsletter. It's going to be on social media. You're going to be able to find it. Don't worry. So check out our 2021 holiday gift guide. 

Beth [00:04:42] Just going to pop back in here to Capitol Hill where things continue to move along, be talked about, be breathlessly covered on Twitter. Congress seems, as we are sitting down to record on Thursday, to have a deal on government spending to get us into December. And so that is one crisis averted. 

Sarah [00:05:01] That's good. That's good. Hey, let's just take a minute. We're funding the government. Government's not going to shut down. Yay! I would like to say yay. 

Beth [00:05:11] As we are recording, there is a planned vote on the bipartisan infrastructure framework. How likely it is that that vote happens today and passes depends very much on who you're talking to. We had Senator Manchin put out a statement last night that has really ruffled some feathers. But we have Speaker Pelosi in a press conference today sounding very optimistic. She said this is the fun part. You just got to keep at it. You need to think positively. And in addition to the infrastructure bill, she promises there will be a reconciliation bill and she views that as the culmination of her service in Congress. Now, while she was giving that press conference, someone asked Steny Hoyer, also in House leadership, if he thought there would be a passage of the infrastructure bill today. And he said nope. So it's unclear, unclear what's happening with infrastructure as we are recording and then in the meantime elsewhere we don't really have any progress to report on the debt ceiling discussions. Sarah, I'm wondering, as someone who has a lot of confidence and faith in Democratic Party leadership and specifically the speaker of the House to usher complex legislation through narrow majorities, how you're feeling about things? 

Sarah [00:06:29] Yeah, I'm looking for that iron fist in a Gucci glove. Listen, she is not going to call it to a vote if she doesn't have the votes. She has made that abundantly clear. She does not do that. She does not bring major legislation just to have it voted down. Now, could she have shifted to a new strategy needed for these new and exciting times? Sure seems unlikely. Well, you'll know by the time you listen to this, you'll know if they voted for it on Thursday. But I think watching her work those phones at the congressional baseball game was a sight to behold. She's on her cell phone. She's gesturing. Joe Biden was doing the same thing. He's lobbying hard. He's working the phones for this bill. So I'm feeling optimistic about the infrastructure bill and I'm also annoyed by Manchin's statement. But think like he does this a lot. Like he issues statements, he talks publicly, puts all the words out there for people to soak up, and then often sort of pivots at the last minute. I'm less confident in Krysten Sinema and what she's going to do with regards to the reconciliation. I'm frustrated that both of them are saying no without saying what they want, but maybe they're doing that behind the scenes. We are only seeing what's happening publicly. We do not know what's happening with the negotiations behind the scenes. And so I'm more hopeful about the infrastructure bill, still hopeful about the reconciliation package, the debt ceiling. I have trouble talking about it because I get so angry about the Machiavellian machinations of Mitch McConnell. Ooh, that was very alliterative. 

Beth [00:07:58] I heard reporters talking this morning about how the White House felt more confident that they could strike a deal with Sinema than with Manchin. 

Sarah [00:08:05] Hmm, interesting. 

Beth [00:08:07] And it seems like one of the sticking points with Manchin, some of the climate-related provisions. 

Sarah [00:08:13] Imagine that. 

Beth [00:08:14] Because he is from West Virginia. And Senator Sinema has said that the climate-related provisions are very high on her list of priorities. And so, like you said, we don't know what's happening in closed-door meetings. We do know that they're meeting. Sinema has been at the White House multiple times a day for several days. It does seem like she is working to try to accomplish something. I get that there is frustration with her. I get that a lot of people just don't like her. But it does seem like she is working towards some end, not just throwing up. This is too much money. This is the wrong time. Even as I read Manchin's op-ed and again, I know people are furious with him and that you just want to throw tomatoes at me when I talk like this in broad strokes. He's not wrong about a lot of things that he's saying. The fact that the government has spent an incredible amount of money this year and it's not all fully spent. The fact that we are looking at some inflation, it is probably not a bad idea to let things settle a little bit before, as everyone who supports the reconciliation bill touts remaking the economy. Like, I think he's not wrong about some of his objections. And I appreciate that he continues to emphasize that reasonable people can sit down together and get something done here. I know that is not where a lot of the Democratic Party is on Manchin, but as someone who just kind of uncomfortably sits under the tent with y'all, I appreciate where he's coming from on some of these issues. 

Sarah [00:09:48] The problem is now if we push a pause on the reconciliation package that Mitch McConnell insists is the only way to raise the debt ceiling, then we're past the deadline for the debt ceiling, which I have to believe is part of Mitch McConnell's original calculations. 

Beth [00:10:04] I am angry at Mitch McConnell. I am angry at Senator Sanders. I am angry at the Progressive Caucus. I have some frustration and anger with the moderates in the House who I generally enjoy. I just want everyone to recognize that there are moments on the calendar and we're in one of those moments when you can be mad at the system justifiably all day and still recognize that you have to work within that system. This is one of those moments where, yes, the system is broken when it is this hard to ensure that the government doesn't have to furlough workers and pause the issuance of Social Security checks, something is wrong. And that something transcends Mitch McConnell and it transcends the narrow majority that this country gave Democrats in the House and Senate. Something is wrong and in that wrongness, we still have to keep things running. And I think that's why I just am willing to see some things get paused and reshuffled and reprioritized if it gets to some deal that looks like government functioning through all of this. And it's really hard for me as a person who is very open to the ideas in this reconciliation bill to feel amazing about going full steam ahead on that when we are in this extremely precarious position about just keeping the government funded and just keeping the United States from defaulting. 

[00:11:32] This is an awkward segment for us because we know that so much can happen between the time we're recording it and the time that you're listening to it. But we did want to keep talking about it because it's extremely important, not just politically, but in terms of the kinds of things we care a lot here about - how government can work for us and how it can work better. So we wanted to spend some time here, but we're going to move on now to the supply chain. Why is it so hard to buy things right now and receive them in a timely manner? And why do they cost so much? We're going to get into that. 

Sarah [00:12:15] Beth, I ordered a piece of furniture in gosh, I believe it was July. It is supposed to arrive at the end of October. I'm looking forward to that day as I've been waiting months and months for this arrival. That's not the only thing I've been waiting months and months for. Do you have any supply chain issues in your personal life? 

Beth [00:12:36] I have been very lucky. I do have a friend who several months ago had her refrigerator fail and trying to get a new refrigerator is a situation. She had to for the whole of the summer, borrow college dorm size fridges from neighbors and just use several of them in her kitchen. She said that there were times when she'd be like, which one is the milk in, for God's sake? So it was a real disaster for her. And those experiences that we're having in our personal lives mirror what is an increasingly fragile global situation. On Wednesday, we had an industry group, the International Chamber of Shipping, write an open letter to the heads of state at the United Nations. It's about as global counsel as you get, saying our global transportation systems are collapsing and you need to do something about it. And they have been continually failed by governments and taken for granted. And that is going to get worse before it gets better, unless you do two things, really. The first thing is end the fragmented travel rules and restrictions that are impacting the supply chain, all of these ideas about who can travel where dramatically affect the people who by sea and by air and by rail, take goods around the world and increase the global vaccine supply so that the people who do this work can do it safely. And then we have The Washington Post, I think sums it up even more succinctly for those of us who are sitting in the United States when they said the commercial pipeline that each year brings one trillion dollars worth of toys, clothing, electronics, and furniture from Asia to the United States is clogged and no one knows how to unclog it. 

Sarah [00:14:25] So the supply chain is clogged, broken, on the verge of collapse, depending on who you ask. So what is the supply chain? So let's just break this down really quickly. It is a network of people, organization systems, things, information processes. And what they do is they take raw materials, they move the raw materials to suppliers who create the products that go to the manufacturers that are then distributed to the retailers that then go to the consumers. Sometimes it's a single raw material, often it is several raw materials you're going to hear us talk about not just the products themselves, but sometimes the packaging. Those all have to be transported to suppliers and manufacturers and then again transported to from distribution to retailers. And so this is a very complex, interconnected process. And for years it has been a very tight process with very little room for error. 

Sarah [00:15:35] You know, the Japanese really pioneered this idea that's called just-in-time manufacturing. So we send the parts, be it raw materials, be it supplies to the factories. Right when they're required. So nobody's stockpiling, nobody's warehousing. It's just in time. It gets there just as we need it. And that is very dependent on forecasting. We find all this cost efficiency. Because we have technology that helps us accurately forecast when things will be needed, so nobody has to warehouse them, they're just they're showing up right at time. But that also increased dramatically the complications of the supply chain and the interconnectedness of the supply chain. And then we had COVID. 

Beth [00:16:26] And those just in time, manufacturing processes are wide, varied. Greeted with a level of almost obsession from Americans with efficiency. We have lean manufacturing and Six Sigma and all kinds of organizations have been trying to replicate this sense that we only have exactly what we need to make, what is going to be bought immediately. And we keep the profit margin as high as possible by keeping all of those inputs configured, as Sarah said, to the forecasting on what is going to actually be purchased. But in that process, you have workers not being treated very well. You have potential for a labor shortage at any moment because you only have exactly the number of people you need to get something done. And so a normal flu season or a holiday can make all of that precarious. Covid is something entirely different. You had entire plants that had to stop operating. You had industries bracing for a huge decrease in demand. So those forecasts were nobody's going to be buying this for a while. We need to shut things down. And then the opposite happened as we stayed home we coped with consumption. And so all of the people and places and things that satisfy that consumption were also impacted by covid. And none of this works with an on or off switch. It takes a lot of time once you have scaled back production or shut it down to bring it back online. And that's in part because of all of these efficiency-driven systems. And it's in part because some things take time to grow or to be raised or to be harvested. And getting those right back into shipping containers that are going to make their way around the world is is really difficult and nobody's in charge of the whole process. So where you have people doing the forecasting at companies and orders being placed and then distribution being done, I love this quote from Fran Inman, who's a commercial real estate executive. It's like an orchestra with lots of first violins and no conductor. There is no centralized source for the global supply chain who can fix everything when they see it going awry.

Sarah [00:18:51] So covid messed up every single part of this process. So let's walk through the supply chain and talk about some of the issues because when we talk about price increases when we talk about delayed delivery or deliveries or low stock, this is because of problems at every step along the way. So first, with raw materials and suppliers, there's a lot of places where the raw materials are just not available. You had meatpacking facilities where they were slaughtering animals due to covid concerns. You had meatpacking facilities where they were dealing with labor shortages. And so some of the raw materials and our food, some of the raw materials in processing plants across the world, either the plants were shut down or there were shortages. 

Sarah [00:19:36] Yeah, I had a conversation about the meat industry, specifically with one of our long-time listeners and supporters, Katharine Vollmer. She was telling me about how the way that these meatpacking plants are configured physically prohibited them from operating normally during the pandemic. Here's a little bit of that conversation. 

Kat Vollmer [00:19:57] My expertise is in meat. Last summer, quite a few packinghouses were hit with a wave of covid. They were one of the first groups to be hit. And I know the majority of your listeners have no expertise or experience with packinghouses. They are very wet environments, people work very closely together, and as automated as those are, it's hard to space people out and keep the levels of production as high as they need to be to provide the raw meat needed for the chicken you see in the grocery store to the raw materials that go into hot dogs and frozen dinners and the like. 

Beth [00:20:55] And Sarah, this helped clarify not just the meatpacking industry for me, but lots of production facilities going offline. Right. Because when so much of the facility depends on very expensive equipment on a line where people are spaced to get the thing done as fast as humanly possible, it makes sense that you can't just walk in and say, no, everybody's got to be six feet apart.

Sarah [00:21:21] Yeah, the whole entire factories are built again with that emphasis on productivity effectiveness just in time. No waste, no warehousing, no margin. There's just no margin built-in at any point in the system for a small disruption, much less a global disruption like covid. And that's what you're seeing at the manufacturing part of the process. We have massive labor shortages. When we broke up this supply chain, when we emphasized effectiveness and productivity and efficiency, we farmed a massive amount of that process out to other countries. And so when we say the interconnectedness of the global supply chain, we mean if you're receiving a product in America, well, maybe the raw material came from Eastern Europe, then it was sent to Asia and that was just part of the packaging. Maybe another section of the material was coming from South America and it was being processed in Central America and then it was being shipped. And so you're having all these different parts of one product being processed across the globe and everything because of Just-In-Time manufacturing has to go like clockwork. They have to line up exactly. If there's a delay at any part of the process, then everything's delayed. We all know that if you've, like, built a house or you've renovated like it's a very finely tuned process. And so, for example, Vietnam is America's second-largest shoe and apparel supplier, and most of that workforce remains unvaccinated. And they were able to evade the virus through lockdowns for much of the pandemic. But Delta has blown that wide open. They forced a lot of the factories to close. You have about half of the world's sailors who are crucial to that distribution part of the process, who are from developing nations where there's not been vaccine rollout as steadily as it has been in America. And so, again, any slowdown in part of that process, if it had just been raw materials, but it hasn't just been raw materials, it's also manufacturing and distribution. And so when these factories who take the raw materials and manufacture into the products that we love and depend on and want quickly are shut down, the whole process is blown apart. 

Beth [00:23:52] One of the reasons that cars have been so difficult to buy is because of exactly what you were describing, Sarah, happening around the silicon chips that basically turn everything we use into a computer now. Right. And those chips are made in stages, like physical layers in stages across the world. So a chip that is needed to go into a phone or a car will travel from Taiwan to the UK to Israel, back to South-Eastern Asia many times over before it's finished. And it's easy to say, well, let's just make more chips in the United States, but we don't have the facilities to make those chips right now. And creating those facilities is a very complex endeavor. So how we catch up here in terms of the manufacturing side is not something that we can do in the short term. We are also decades behind on the distribution side, just in allowing people enough information to better coordinate. You know, there are foreign ports that use common information access systems for carriers and terminals and shippers so that they are able to see what's going on with other companies and plan around each other. We don't have that here in the United States. We don't have a national system for all of our ports, all of our individual ports operate. Like fiefdoms, and so we really, at every stage of this process in America, have opportunities to do better, but those are opportunities that are going to take a significant investment of time and resources. 

Sarah [00:25:38] I mean, these ports are, again, another huge part of the delay. We have enormous shipping containers that are stalled outside major American ports and more cargo just keeps arriving and arriving. Shipping crews are waiting days or weeks to unload. Some major retailers like Wal-Mart and Target and Home Depot are chartering their own private cargo vessels and buying shipping containers to prepare for the holiday shopping season and to try to avoid this backlog. I read in one article that a shipping container that used to cost three thousand dollars now cost twenty-two thousand dollars. So that's why we're starting to not just see delays, but we're starting to see price increases because that price increase is going to get passed along to the consumer. 

Beth [00:26:24] And the actual shipping containers are hard to get. There are issues with just what do we wrap this meat in? What kind of trade can we use for it? Like in every industry, those inputs to the products that I never think about boxes and tape are a struggle. And all of that sits under on top of around a labor shortage at every piece of this process as well. One of the things that I learned from my conversation with Katharine is that in the United States, we've had for years a critical shortage of truck drivers, and that's only gotten worse during the pandemic. 

Kat Vollmer [00:27:05] So the truck driver shortage, I've been dealing with that for years. There are not enough truck drivers. There are not enough people with professional driving license period. You see that with school bus drivers everywhere across the board. The truck driver population is aging as well. And eventually, they're going to get to the point where they're retiring, too. And I don't see a lot of young drivers filling that gap. 

Sarah [00:27:31] And then we also have labor shortages along other parts of the retail process where people can't find workers in restaurants and grocery stores. We talked about this on the show that this is in part because of the I mean, all but complete halting of immigration during the Trump administration. So there's a shortage of immigrant workers. There's the relief from poverty as a motivator to take these low-income job provided by the federal government during covid. Again, this is just one more step in the process that was running with no margin where it needed margin, basically. 

Beth [00:28:14] And these are hard jobs. The people who are out on ships who've had to stay out much longer than scheduled during covid, that's a hard job working the floor at Walmart or in an Amazon plant. That's a hard job. And I think that's some of what covid has asked of everyone is how do you want to be spending your time? And many of these jobs are not just physically demanding and long and, you know, with hours that no one wants to work, they are also dangerous. Even as technology has made so much of this more efficient, there is an element of danger that accompanies much of this work. So. Because of all these factors converging, we are seeing undeniably some inflation, the cost of goods was up five point four percent in July from the same period a year ago. And this happens for a lot of reasons. And we've got them all happening right now. We have increased consumer demand. We have a spike in other costs because of all of these shipping issues. We have an overwhelmed logistics network. And all those factors converging are why we're seeing prices going up and there is just not an easy solution. And this is not just an American problem. You know, Sarah, to your point about immigration, the United Kingdom is issuing a lot of temporary visas to let people come in and help with just the kind of work that we've been talking about, because they know that especially with the holidays coming up, the pressure here is only going to intensify. 

Sarah [00:29:52] They're also experiencing like massive gas lines and gas, not because there's a gas shortage, but because of the driver shortage. The lines rolling out of the petrol stations, I guess we should say, since it's the United Kingdom, are something to behold. And look, I just I remember several years ago when I was driving through Southern California with my friend Dave and we went through the Port of Los Angeles and I thought. Oh, my God, I felt like I had arrived on another planet, the size and scope of that port and the shipping containers blew my mind and it was like the slightest glimpse into the fact that as far as like global logistics were concerned, I didn't have a clue. I think what we're all realizing, either through price increases or empty shelves or delivery delays, is that we really didn't understand the size and scope. I think we're all coming to realize how dependent we were on a global supply chain that we just didn't understand. And it was a global supply chain built on. Infinite growth, infinite efficiency, as opposed to margin and disaster preparedness. It just feels like the ultimate metaphor for what covid is teaching us on so many levels that, like the old ways are gone, that we live in a new world now. And the realities of that world that we had been avoiding or ignoring are slapping us in the face in a way that we can no longer turn away from. 

Beth [00:31:42] I agree with that. And I also find it deeply unsatisfying because I don't know what the answer to that is. It is amazing to me when I look around the grocery store and realize how far everything has traveled to be there. It's amazing. It's incredible to have fruit from South America, you know, that I can have a strawberry basically any time of the year. All of that is incredible. And I don't want to give that up. I don't, I want to be honest about my personal shortcomings and being willing to make a change here. I do find it eerie when I see empty shelves. I was in Target over the weekend and I noticed that where the paper towels were, there were just rows and rows and rows of empty shelves. And it always makes me feel like, oh, something is wrong and something is wrong in the creation of shelves that are never empty too. It's just harder to see all of the things that are wrong behind that when it's working. Just like I don't know how to provide a policy proposal that fixes all of this. I think it's a series of things that need to happen, investments that need to be made at a bunch of different levels, expectations that need to be altered. I don't know as a consumer how to adjust my behavior here. You know, when I was talking to Katharine about her concerns about the grocery supply chain and the fact that we really could see a very different holiday season in terms of what's available to us, she said, you know, please don't hoard things. That's not helpful. And. I think she's completely right about that, and I also want something to do right. It's hard to just sit and think, oh, well, we just might run out of some things. I might not get my cranberries this year. It's just it's difficult to kind of hold all of that together. 

Sarah [00:33:32] Yeah. I don't want to eat strawberries all year long. I'm happy for the strawberries to go away. I'm happy for us to abandon the idea that we must have every food available for Mother Nature available, you know, on our tables all year long. I would really love to move past that as Americans to eat more seasonally and to eat more locally. I think it's better for the planet. I think it's better for our bodies. And so I'm happy to pay more for my food. I'm happy to have less choice. I think that that is the reality facing us as consumers. Things are going to take longer. They're going to be more expensive, and we're not going to have the world of options available to us at all times. And I don't think that's good or healthy for us anyway. So I'm happy to move on. You know, as a consumer, that's just what I try to remember. If I can't get something that's OK, if I can't have the thing that I'm, you know, dependent on, that's fine. I'm not saying I'm not thinking smartly about, you know. What's coming and being prepared, I'm not Hawtin, but like I am, I'm ordering my Christmas presents, I'm trying to be prepared, I'm trying to build in some margin in my personal life so I don't have to put the entirety of the margin on the supply chain right. Till I give them a little more breathing space I can build in the margin personally. That's an easy thing for me to as a consumer to do is to buy early, to pay more, to accept less choice. I'm happy to do it. 

Beth [00:34:59] We'll keep talking about this. I am certain I'm going to share that entire conversation with Katharine Vollmer on the Nightly Nuance. It was really fascinating and helped me in my thinking tremendously. And we appreciate all of the listeners that we've heard from on this topic. Many of you are out there living this reality every single day. And you sharing your expertise with us has been extremely valuable. 

Beth [00:35:30] Sarah, what's on your mind outside of politics? 

Sarah [00:35:33] Listeners have been messaging us about the Gabby Petito case. For those of you who have not been following along or have avoided this by some media cave you live in, Gabby Petito was a van life YouTube influencer. She hit the road with her fiance and then disappeared. The Internet took great interest in her disappearance, and since the story broke, sadly and tragically, they have since found her body and I believe currently her fiance is on the run. Last I saw Dog the bounty hunter was looking for him. And so it received a lot of coverage, I think, because of the sort of breaking news component that it was happening live as we were all watching the sort of Internet detectives were breaking the case and they were putting the clues together. But it also received a lot of coverage and a lot of criticism because so often the crimes and disappearances that captured the nation's attention, the victims are white women, whereas women of color who disappear or who are murdered do not capture the same level of media attention. And so we've had lots of people ask what we think about this whole controversy about the, you know, the sort of true crime obsession with this case and with others and the discrepancy in coverage. 

Beth [00:37:08] One of the best things that I think that you've said, Sara, recently was that Twitter wants everything to be one thing, that Twitter wants everything to have one answer. And I think that that is a social media trend. And so it is tempting to want to take this one real woman's life and her real family's grief and story and say, how do we check all the boxes on all the cultural things we're wrestling with around this one family? Yeah, this one woman's life and tragic death cannot hold all of our feelings about America's obsession with true crime. It cannot hold all of our feelings and questions about the way that we attach to Internet celebrities. It cannot hold everything that we still need to work through about our criminal justice system or about systemic racism. It just can't do it. And so I struggle with even talking about this because there are so many people who loved her in real life and people who loved her online. And I don't want to diminish that because there is a connection between people and the folks that they follow that has, you know, lots of complex factors in it. But it is still a real connection that that encompasses real grief. And I just think it's unfair to this family to try to work out all of that stuff around what is an active investigation into a real person's death. 

Sarah [00:38:42] Yeah, we talked about true crime on a show probably a couple of years ago. We'll put it in the show notes. Because full disclosure, neither you nor I listen, watch, consume true-crime entertainment, it is not my idea of entertainment. I do not enjoy it. I understand the real psychological impulses, particularly among women, to consume this particular type of media. And we talked about that on the show, that there is this psychological need to practice to acknowledge that women are in danger, to practice what you would do to calm your anxieties in a weird way by working through true-crime entertainment. And I get all that and I'm not it's not what I do, but I understand the impulse. But it's like you said, you know, any time there is this a woman's death we're obsessed with, it's never it's not because our culture radically values women's lives. Is there a systemic racism component? Absolutely. Are white women's lives valued, particularly in media coverage, at a higher rate? Yeah, of course. I think that there is an obsession with white women, but it's always because it's holding something else. It's not because we, like I said, radically value that in particular why? It's because it's wrapped up in something else that we're working out. Right. Like it's wrapped up in motherhood or it's wrapped up in, you know, the sort of the middle-class existence or it's wrapped up in sort of the moral ness of certain sexual behaviors like it's always holding something else and it's just rap. And we're using this individual woman's life to work that out. And I think in this case, what's sort of meta about it is that does seem to be a cultural conversation about true crime, again, because I think it was unfolding live and that you had this Internet sort of detective work going on. My husband said, because my husband is even more sort of opposed to true crime content than I am, and he was like, it feels like true crime is jumping the shark finally. It feels like we're finally having this moment where like, why do we do this? Why do we watch all this? Why are we obsessed with this? Is this good? Is this healthy? Is it helping the families or the victims or the criminal justice system in any way, shape or form? And I think those are important questions without easy answers. But it does feel like this particular case gave everybody a moment to ponder this in a in a bigger way. And I just I also think, like we're making progress. We're noticing things that are messed up about the way we talk about crime, the way we treat women's bodies in entertainment beyond racial discrepancies, which are real, you know, I watched the first episode of Mare of Easttown and I was struck about how different that first episode was when it came to revolving around the murder of a young and that was a white woman. But like it feels like, you know, in the CSI days, you just the woman was nothing but a body like that was it. You saw the dead body. And then we went from there. And for better, for worse, I kind of appreciated the way this episode took so much time to humanize the victim. You got him. You got to meet her. You get to see her as a mother. You get to see what she was struggling with. And not just after you'd met her as a body. I don't know if that choice was purposeful. It felt purposeful to me and I appreciated it. And it felt like a millimeter of progress as far as how we treat female victims in entertainment. But I think you know, this conversation is important, as difficult and as wrapped up as it is in a million other things. 

Beth [00:42:26] I think that one of the questions that we're all searching for an answer to is what is the right level of coverage about everything? And I think we believe that somewhere out there there is a magic formula for how much attention something should receive. I mean, you and I were just kind of working this out about Donald Trump on a Nightly Nuance. What is the right level of paying attention to something? And it doesn't exist because I think it is completely fair to say that the disappearance or murder of a person who is white, especially a person who is wealthy, a person who has some level of fame, and I'm not talking about Gabby Petito. I don't know the details of her personal life. But in general, the life of a person who is white, wealthy and famous is going to get more coverage than almost any other person, not because that life is more valuable than anyone else's, but because as a as an entertainment item. And that's a terrible term to use connected with this. But as something that captivates attention, it is going to prompt a lot of attention. And I am sure it's true that that attention sometimes leads to useful information for law enforcement. I'm also sure that it leads to a lot of useless information for law enforcement and a lot of new obstacles in investigating those cases. So I don't think that what we're looking for is an America where the disappearance of every single human being gets the level of attention that Gabby Petito's case has received. I don't think that's healthy for any of us. I don't think that advances any goal. And so then you say, well, like, what is the goal? And the truth is, I don't know. I don't know what level of attention we need to pay to these things. I know that I don't consume true crime stuff or any kind of fictionalized procedural whatever, because I have learned it's not good for me to fixate on death and violence. It's just not good for me. I'm not judging you if you can handle that in a different way than I can. But that calibration of the right amount of attention in my personal life has been extremely hard. I don't know how to figure that out for all of America. I wish that I did. 

Sarah [00:44:47] Yeah. And it just feels weird to me, as true as I think it is that women of color receive less attention to use Gabby Petito's death to make that point, she's still dead. Her death is still a tragedy, it's still an open case, there's room for that criticism, but I don't think it has to be it's not a zero-sum game. That's what it feels like. This discussion is we can only pay attention to the deaths and disappearance of women of color if we ignore the deaths and disappearance of white women. And that just feels gross to me, you know, particularly gross when it comes to the tragic death of any human being. That's what I think bothers me about it. I think there's a place to talk about coverage. I think there's clearly an issue with systemic racism in every aspect of American life, including media. But it feels different to me when we're talking about the murder and tragic death of a human being as the launching of that conversation, because it's just doing what the problem is, which is dehumanizing the victims. I don't want to do that, I don't want to dehumanize the victims. I don't want to do that in entertainment. I don't care if it's a procedural fiction show. I certainly don't want to do that in true crime. And that's always been my issue with true crime. Entertainment is there does feel like an aspect of dehumanization like this stops being a tragedy and starts being a story. And I just want to protect against that as much as we can. 

Beth [00:46:28] And it almost is a blown-up version of the grief Olympics that we've talked about a lot. You know, on an individual level, any time you're talking about suffering, someone else has suffered more. There is some greater suffering somewhere. There is something worthier of attention and care and support and change. And the information age relentlessly asks us to rank everything, and I just I just don't want to do that ever in any context and especially here. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation, if you found it valuable, we would love for you to share it with people in your lives. Your recommendations mean the world to us. And please don't forget to check out our holiday guide that will be available to you in the show notes today and in our newsletter on social media. We'll be back with you on Tuesday. We're going to take a look at voter ID laws then. Have the best weekend available to you. 

Beth [00:47:36] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.  

Alise Napp is our managing director.

Sarah [00:47:41] Megan Hart and Maggie Penton are our community engagement managers. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music. 

Beth [00:47:48] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.

Executive Producers (Read their own names)  [00:47:52] Martha Bronitsky, Linda Daniel, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs.

The Kriebs, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, David McWilliams, Jared Minson, Emily Neesley, Danny Ozment, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sarah Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Karin True, Amy Whited, Emily Holladay, Katy Stigers.

Beth [00:48:24] Melinda Johnston, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nichole Berklas, Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

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