Silicon Valley Bank, State Legislatures, and the Oscars

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • The Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank

  • State Legislatures

  • Outside of Politics: The Oscars

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EPISODE RESOURCES

Silicon Valley Bank

Anti-Trans Legislation in the States

The Oscars

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:00:25] We're so happy they are here for a new episode of Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Today, we're going to discuss the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and what it means for the broader economy. Then we're going to talk about trends we see in state legislatures across the country. We know many of you are very concerned about anti-trans legislation and bills that have teachers walking on eggshells. So, we're going to begin a conversation about that type of legislative work today. We always end with what's on our minds Outside of Politics. And today I will just have to turn that segment over to Sarah entirely, who is thinking about the Oscars.  

Sarah [00:00:57] Before we jump in, we wanted to share that we are going to be doing something so fun on our premium channels this spring. We loved talking about Succession together and joy of joys. You loved listening to us talking about Succession together. So, we have decided to do weekly episodes tracking this fourth and final season of the HBO show for our Premium members. Those will be starting the last week of March. So, you want to make sure and get signed up on Patreon or Apple Podcasts subscription now so you don't miss any. Those episodes will be available to our $15 a month subscribers and up along with all the regular bonus content we provide there. There's more info on how to sign up in our show notes.  

Beth [00:01:37] Also, just a reminder, we would love to see you in Orlando, Florida, for our live show with our families and friends and politics and the most magical place on earth on Wednesday, April 5th. All the information about tickets will be in the show notes. We'd love to see you there. And next up, the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. I was not aware of Silicon Valley Bank's existence until the weekend, when it was about the only thing I was aware of news wise. I watched headlines role in. So, this bank was founded in 1983 and was very niche. It makes sense that I didn't know about it because it really specialized in banking for tech startups. And while it is niche, it is huge. Silicon Valley Bank financed almost half of U.S. venture backed tech and health care companies and was among the top 20 commercial banks in the United States. At the end of last year, it had $209 billion in total assets. So, Sarah, as you were learning about the bank's collapse, what stuck out to you as the factors that sort of conspired to take this bank from such a powerful position into the hands of an FDIC receivership?  

Sarah [00:02:51] Well, when I first heard about it, honestly, I thought it was another crypto bank collapse. We had Silvergate, which was a crypto focused bank, collapse earlier in the week and I thought, oh, this is another one of those. And then I started learning more about it. And I think it's the two things are true at once. It's important to the entire financial industry and also it is very unique. Most of the deposits at this bank were over the $250,000 FDIC insured limit because most of the deposits at this bank were companies, were startups, not individuals. And so, I think the first thing to do is to remind ourselves of all these sort of fundamentals of banking and also how this bank was different. You're going to have to hold both things at the same time. It was a classic bank run. I would like to lay some of that squarely at Peter Thiel's feet because he's an easy villain, and it was his venture capital firm that started first advising people to pull their money from Silicon Valley Bank. Then we have-- like I said in the news brief-- the classic (if you've watched) It's a Wonderful Life bank run. But then I have to remind myself, well, they don't keep all our money in like a big safe deposit box, right? They use that money to make more money because they have to pay interest rates. And so, this is where I think we get into the differences, like those fundamentals apply of the balance sheet and paying interest rates and banks-- as Maggie always says-- sell money. But then we have to get into what made Silicon Valley Bank different and then therefore vulnerable inside the pretty classic rules of the financial industry.  

Beth [00:04:43] So one of those vulnerabilities comes from the fact that the tech industry absolutely boomed during COVID, which you would think would be fantastic for a bank, but it changed the banking fundamentals because instead of this bank taking money from depositors and lending that money back out, a lot of its depositors and people in its sector didn't need loans during COVID. And so, it has this capital sitting around that it needs to do something with and it put that money in bonds because bonds were super easy to acquire during that zero interest time that we've talked a lot about here on the show. Well, as the Federal Reserve started ratcheting up interest rates, those bonds became loss leaders for this bank. And so, according to CNN, Silicon Valley Bank had a $21 billion bond portfolio yielding about 1.79% interest compared to the current 10 year Treasury yield of 3.9% interest. And that's really where this starts. Last Wednesday, the bank announces the sale of a bunch of securities at a loss and says we're going to pare down this bond portfolio so we don't have future losses and we're going to sell $2.25 billion in new shares. And that's where the panic came in and where you have venture capital advising people to pull their money. I was just reading a piece before we started recording about how the classic way to make money in business is bundling and unbundling, but the third way is secrets. And when you know something ahead of other people knowing it, you can act in a very selfish way and get ahead because of it. And that's what happened here as that bank run was triggered. The people who knew this start passing it around. And this is the part that is so frustrating to me because who knows what would have happened if they had executed this strategy and kept moving forward. But people decide, I don't want to be grouped with other creditors if this thing goes bad. So, I'm going to take this moment and jump to the front of the line and get all my money out. And that sends the stock plummeting. And by Friday morning, the regulator said we have to shut this down. This is bad news.  

Sarah [00:06:55] Before we get into the shutting down, this is bad news. I want to go back to the deposit and the frothy money that was sloshing around really inside this industry period, but particularly during the pandemic. Deposits rose 85% in 2021. And I don't think it's unimportant that we, post 2008 during the Trump administration, had rolled back some of the regulations for these smaller banks-- it's a huge bank, but it's a regional bank. It's not a JPMorgan-- and said you don't have to have as many assurances. You don't have to make sure that your balance sheet can back up your obligations. We'll roll rollback some of those requirements. And here we are. And I think when you're talking about venture capital, when you're talking about low interest rates, when you're talking about free money and startups, and then you start to talk about what happened after the government stepped in, yeah, it's easy to be like, what the heck? Why are we assuring the deposits on people who were behaving as if this frothy money would go on forever? And not everybody's going to be made whole from this. And I understand that. And I understand people had to make payroll. And I'm really not mad at the startups per say, but I do reserve a lot of my ire for the venture capitalists who seem incapable of any sort of long term-wise analysis up to and including this idea of go pull your money.  

Beth [00:08:36] I think a huge problem over the past couple of years is that no one has any patience for a graph that does something other than just go up and to the right. It's like if you are not always, always, always on an upward trajectory of making more money, something must be really wrong. And there have to be corrective periods, especially when you put a pandemic and a land war in Europe into the equation, some things are going to change. I really lament the impatience with this bank as I read more about how this went down. And in addition to thinking about regulations within the banking sector, I think we have to ask some questions about the incentives for decision makers at individual organizations. If you are a corporate treasurer who receives this announcement and you owe fiduciary duties to your shareholders, there is a lot of pressure to jump the line, to get your money out, to make the most conservative decision. That's what you tell yourself about it. And I wonder if we need to think about bank runs and these types of incentives and beyond the banking industry itself ask what can we do to give people some economic patience? How can we ensure that exercising your fiduciary duty doesn't always mean immediately pushing the panic button? Because that's what's going on in our economy right now. It's so fueled by confidence. And I was thinking about the question of, like, does this hurt the industry overall? What the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have been talking about all weekend. Everybody be cool. Most of our banks are very well capitalized. It is not inevitable that we see bank runs everywhere else or that we see this caused the entire economy to go into freefall. What makes it inevitable is panic. And I think we set up a lot of incentives that cause officers within individual organizations to feel like panic is their only option.  

Sarah [00:10:35] And I would like to talk about the fiduciary duty in the middle of a very unique situation, in the middle of a pandemic, where in a financial sector that was already pretty frothy, it just gets flooded with cash and the decision is to pull it into bonds? So SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) had about 56% of its assets in securities; whereas, a bank like Fifth Third has about 25%. Bank of America has a 28%. No one said, "Is this wise? Is this going to go on forever? Is this money that is just inundating our systems in the middle of a global pandemic the new reality?" Because I'm could answer that question for you, and I'm not a financial expert. The answer is, of course it's not. Of course, it's not. Okay, well, then what happens if they raise interest rates? It's pretty predictable that if they raise interest rates, you're both going to get lower yields on those bonds and you're going to have the tech sector needing some of that cash and all your deposits. To me, that's the part that's so upsetting. It's like this was predictable and I don't think the run was the answer. And I think it was good and right that they should have been trying to prop up some of their assets, could have done it sooner. And it wasn't just that they were doing this stock sale and trying to keep it a secret, it's also that Moody came along. It was like, we're going to drop your writing. And they're like, could you maybe just not tell anybody. And Moody is like, no, that's not how it works. And then you get this run. But I just think, to me, this is indicative of a bigger issue inside that sector that's already villainized. And so, now you've got on Monday, the government coming out and saying, "Okay, we're going to share all these deposits, even the ones over $250,000," which isn't that rare. They almost always do this and they are going to wipe the equity and they are going to wipe some of the value inside the bank. But this is a sector with not a lot of love lost with the American people. And while I understand this is not a taxpayer funded bailout, I don't think that's what this is; although, of course, that's what Republicans are going to say from here 'til kingdom come. And I do think assuring that deposits is the right thing to do, it is frustrating. It's like, regulate this freaking sector. How many times do we have to go through this?  

Beth [00:12:52] I saw Republicans praising these this morning for what it's worth. I saw Mitt Romney saying it's the right call to insure all of the deposits beyond that $250 k limit. I saw Patrick Henry in North Carolina saying that. So, I think that this probably won't cut along party lines as neatly as it could. I think this was probably the right decision because we are in such a precarious place economically and because the Federal Reserve is trying so hard to get us through the pandemic and through this inflation with a soft landing instead of a recession. So, the last thing we need is the banking sector falling to pieces. So, I understand why they did this. I do think we should take the moment to ask what we're doing if we are always using a systemic risk exemption to exceed that $250,000 limit. Maybe we just need to raise the limit. Maybe we need to say all depositors are fully insured at certain banks and then tighten up the regulations to have that FDIC backing.  

Sarah [00:13:48] And then it seems crazy to me that we treat individual depositors and company depositors the same. Why we do that? That don't make any sense.  

Beth [00:13:54] A lot of work to figure out what we want to do next as this story develops. So, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has caused stock prices to go down in other banks. It has also led to regulators stepping in to close Signature Bank, which is a crypto focused entity based in New York. The government has announced that it will also make all of those depositors whole under the systemic risk exception. I would personally like to understand the rubric around crypto focused banks and what we're doing there and where the FDIC really belongs as a backstop and who is putting their money in riskier ventures that should understand that risk and should undertake it.  

Sarah [00:14:34] I hope this is the end of the bank runs for now, but the beginning of the conversation around this regulation. And I think it will be and I think we hopefully will pass some regulations and maybe we don't immediately dial them back when everything's calm again, just a suggestion.  

Beth [00:14:50] I also hope that this doesn't increase that feeling of like spooked-ness that's happening in tech anyway. We've had tech layoffs. We have seen the frothiness, as you described, Sarah, pull back as we have come out of the pandemic and people have started living more in the world and not just on their screens. And I'm concerned that investments, particularly in the healthcare space, are going to be impacted really negatively by how big this story has been. And so, just to encourage you as you read about this, to look for those factors that make this, as Morgan Stanley analysts have said, highly idiosyncratic and not something that should be read across to other regional banks or across the broader economy in general. Next up, we're going to turn our attention to state legislatures. Sarah, I had a hard time preparing for this conversation because I do not want to do a despairing "all is lost, these bills are the worst, these people are the worst" kind of discussion. So, as I was putting certain topics into categories, what types of legislation are we seeing across states? I realized that for me there are sort of three questions that are interesting around this. What constitutes a social harm and how do we agree on what is the social harm? And once we've identified a harm, what kinds of harms can and should be addressed through legislation? So, I thought we might just hold those questions in our minds as we go through these bills. And I think the heading for these bills is that Republicans going into 2024 want to set up a Protect the Children theme, and they have decided that the treatment and full social participation of transgender people constitutes harm and they need to protect the children from that harm and are attempting to do that through legislation. But it's not just in the transgender space. When you look at what legislatures are doing around marijuana, around gambling, there's lots of spaces where I think we kind of need to walk back and say, how do we decide what is a social harm?  

Sarah [00:17:10] I think about this in a much more politically raw way. To me, the strategy here is so self-evident. It follows many, many of the playbooks that exist for abortion, opposition that existed for gay marriage opposition. And it feels to me like so many of the legislators here and the Republican Party generally, particularly state parties, smell blood in a way they didn't with those previous issues. To me, it feels very much like, well, we finally found a culture worry where there's not enough people to be empathetic about. Like, we finally found this issue where it really doesn't touch that many people's lives, so we can get away with villainizing this group to our political ends. And I don't think that's true, but I think that's what was motivating them. I think back about my own experience in city commission when we passed a fairness ordinance and I had an opponent who ran an opposition to the fairness ordinance and who basically was motivated less by the gay and lesbian protections and very much by the language surrounding transgender rights, and I see that playbook again here. What I hope is that we can learn the lessons they don't want to learn, which is when this playbook comes out, how can we respond in a way and organize in a way that is more productive?  

Beth [00:18:48] I don't disagree with you about the raw political calculus for certain parties. What I struggle with is then, how do you not see this in all-is-lost kind of framework and it's just a contest of who holds the state houses. I spoke with someone over the weekend who surprised me by bringing up transgender issues in our conversation. It wasn't even a political conversation. This is not a political person. It just kind of came up and you could tell, like, this person is thinking hard about this and is really trying to understand and develop some opinions in a space that just feels hard. And I think that where you have raw political actors influencing the culture through these bills as they are, that's what takes me to those hard questions because that's where I feel like we can make progress with each other. Our legislators in Frankfurt, here in Kentucky, do not listen to the public well-- they don't. We just saw that in the abortion space where we had this very hard line taken against abortion. And the public has an opportunity to vote on a really narrow referendum, but that a referendum that pretty clearly expresses the will of the voters. And the legislature continues to go hard charging against abortion expansion, against LGBTQ rights. I mean, the Kentucky Lantern, one of the new media outlets covering the legislature here described the past few weeks as being dominated by sex and gambling. So, not exactly where I think the vast majority of people believe the issues are here. And I just want to figure out how to open up some space and have good conversations about this stuff that don't lead you to believing that the only answer is for every state in the nation to be flipped to blue, to have any hope of respecting families who are in the midst of supporting and loving transgender people.  

Sarah [00:20:49] Well, I think there's two conversations there. One, the very few areas, maybe the only area that I agree with Steve Bannon is that politics is downstream from culture. And so, we're absolutely having a cultural conversation around gender and biological sex, just like we were having, and continue to have a cultural conversation around women's rights and abortion. And just like we were having a cultural conversation and continue to have a cultural conversation around gay and lesbian rights, and particularly around marriage. We live in a multicultural democracy, right? We're a pluralistic society. The name of the game is persuasion. Unless you want to break up the union or make it illegal for people of certain political beliefs to participate in our democracy. You don't think those options are on the table? I hope not for most people. So, at the end of the day, the name of the game is persuasion and compromise. So, in some ways, our legislators don't listen. I was just in Frankfurt for the Kentucky Commission on Women meeting and they've introduced like twice as many bills as they usually do. They just want to be heard on all this stuff. They want to be in front on these culture wars. But then another way I texted my friend, who's a psychologist, we had talked about the transgender bill at church, and I said, "I'm going to share our state rep cell phone number with you. You should text them. You should say I'm your constituent. This is my experience as a mental health professional." And she's like, "Well, they took that part out." They took the mental health professional part out. Is it still a heinous bill? Of course, it is. Yes, it is still a heinous bill. But they took out the criminal liability for mental health professionals. And as I look back at the time I spent in my twenties and thirties organizing around women's rights and gay rights and the massive amount of change and persuasion that happened over that time, I have to remind myself, it can happen. And also, again, it's not this destination we reach and then we're done. That's what I hear as the undercurrent. It's like this is so harmful and heinous. And also, I thought we were done with this, but we're not ever going to be done with this. We're not ever going to be done with this because we are not going to transform every state into a blue state. We're not going to transform every American into agreement on every cultural issue. And some people get harmed more than others when that experience or that identity or that group is at the center of these cultural moments and we use them as avatars to work out our bullshit. It's incredibly harmful, but I don't think it's a reality we're going to avoid, whatever the issue is.  

Beth [00:23:35] That's why focusing on harm helps me. If I want to have a conversation with people in my life about the drug bills, for example, asking what is the social harm in a library hour with someone in drag? If we put it in the terms of an adult shows up to read to children in costume, that sounds not socially harmful to me. If we talk about what drag is and represents, maybe the conversation gets more expansive. But then when you think about what these bills have to include to be at all constitutional, to not be so vague that they are clearly void, to not run afoul of the First Amendment, which protects our free expression, then they become redundant. We already have bills that protect children from sexually explicit messaging in public places and elsewhere. So, just trying to think through that harm, what is it that we're trying to do here? And you realize the more you peek into these bills, that we're not trying to do much. We're just trying to say a lot. I think you're right when you say our legislators are filing all these bills because they want to be heard on it, not because they actually want to do something. So many of these bills that come from interest groups and that's why you can track them across many states; not a lot of state legislating tends to be localized anymore because interest groups roll out these proposals and they're introduced all over the U.S. So many of these are purely about messaging, purely about what we have to run on, purely about making our opponents take hard votes. And that is discouraging in a sense of what it says about our politics. It's somewhat encouraging when you think about how much harm will flow to people in reality if these bills are adopted and implemented, because there isn't a lot of constitutional there-there as you look at some of the worst of these. And that's something that Ron DeSantis is finding out. The Florida education bill is a tough one to get through the court system because it is just almost like someone's uncle's opinion got broadcast and they wrote it down and signed it into law. But it's not easily enforced. That doesn't keep teachers from feeling terrible about it and threatened by it. But hopefully, at the end of the day, the harm is minimized in the enforcement of it.  

Sarah [00:26:01] The trans kids who are showing up for these hearings and saying, this is what this means to me, this is how it affects me, are incredibly brave. They should not have to do that. But that is often the work of our democracy, is we come up, we show up and we say, you're hurting me; let me explain how. And what I don't want to do is keep trying the same things we tried with abortion and gay marriage, which is you're a terrible person; what's wrong with you? I was at a meeting this Friday and they were, like, they're evil. And I was like, I don't think that's helpful. I don't think it's helpful because if you're telling me they're evil, you're telling me that they're less than human. And so, what do we get to do to them if they're less than human? Do we get to prevent someone with anti-trans views from running for office, from voting, from speaking? I'm just trying to play this out. I want to be fair on both sides to say when we're talking in these very intense ways, how are we playing this out? And what we both do is we throw kids into it and say, "Well, that means I'm right and you're a psychopath because you want to harm kids," when everybody thinks they're the other side is harming kids. Now, I have a belief about what actually harm kids. I think we have some good public health data on what actually harms kids. But this is what we do. We scale it all the way up to you hate kids. You want to harm kids. I don't want to be in this doom loop anymore. I don't want to be where we are on abortion, where we actually have rights being rolled back nationwide, constitutionally. I just got the Supreme Court decision I was looking for when it came to transgender and gay rights. I don't want that rolled back. And so, how do we do things differently? How do we get inside seemingly hopeless situations like these state legislators? But we've been fighting for these rights when they really, really seemed hopeless, when women couldn't vote, when you could go to jail for being gay.  

[00:27:59] So, I just want to stay hopeful, stay organized and motivated. And I don't think saying these people are evil monsters and even though I think some of them are at best uneducated and at worst, truly craven. I'm not defending any of these state legislators. I think some of them are just cowards and they just do the votes that their leaders want them to take. But some of them are using this in just really base political ways. But that is the reality of a democracy. We're not going to get rid of that. We're not going to regulate our way, vote our way, organize our way out of people using power in really ugly ways. Okay. So, how can we out-organize, how can we out-persuade to be moving forward in a empowered, hopeful, clear-eyed way so that this bullshit runs out of steam? That's what I want it to do. I don't want people to suffer as it moves through the court system. I want it to run out of steam before it ever becomes a law. And I do think there's a way to do that, even in the reddest of states. But it's an engine. It needs fuel. And I think we have to acknowledge-- and I'm not saying let's all walk away and say if nobody's disagreeing with you, then these bills will all die on the vine. They won't. But there is an energetic dynamic here that I think I saw play out over and over again in these previous fights that aren't even over, that I would like to diffuse this time.  

Beth [00:29:46] I'm not really sure how to diffuse it other than the slow patient work of one conversation at a time where I don't impute the raw, craven political motive of a legislator to a citizen. I testified in Ohio when I was working in Cincinnati about the impact of having a person's rights vary by county in line with fairness ordinances, saying we need a fairness act for the entire state because it doesn't make sense for your rights as a gay person to change based on the county that you're in. And the organization, Equality Ohio, that I worked with to offer that testimony was so impactful because they always talked about how their mission was to change both hearts and policy. And I think that that's where it has to be in the transgender space. And changing hearts in the transgender space is even more complex because you're asking people to develop a sense of fluidity around several layers, not just who might I love, but who might I be. It's a deeper sense of fluidity that you're asking people to develop. And an extraordinary number of people have already proven capable of developing that fluidity-- not enough. And so, that slow patient work of having conversations, admitting what we don't know, admitting what's a hard question I find makes people much more open to some ambiguity and some difficult calls, than doubling down on the fact that any questioning here makes you a bad person. And I think that's what really connected with me with what you were saying, Sarah, about not seeing people as monsters. And we're talking about that. We're talking about the people. You can point out the gross political calculus of political actors, but there are a lot of people who are responsive to those political actors who are persuadable.  

Sarah [00:31:56] I completely agree with you. And, of course, what's so hard is that often with so many of these bills, the kids caught in the middle aren't citizens in the fullest sense of the world. They can't vote. They have no place to participate outside of testimony or having these conversations in their own lives. But that's a big ask for a kid. And I think what I want to say when all this legislation centers so much on such young lives, I want to be really careful to do what's so hard all the time with kids, which is to affirm your feelings and to give them a steady foundation of love and support. It's a hard line to walk. And so, what I would say if I had a trans kid in my own family? What I would say to every trans kid, LGBT kid who feels attacked by this legislation, who feels hunted? Is to say the centering of humanity is true for you too. These are laws. They're an exercise of power in the most personal way inside your life. And also, the spark of humanity in you remains untouched and untouchable by these people. Remember that. Remember that. The centering of humanity is true for everyone. Nothing they can do can touch that beautiful spark of humanity inside you. Don't let struggle or suffering or real discrimination or oppression reduce you. It is hard. It is inevitable in life. It is heartbreakingly common in some lives, but don't let that blind you to the bigger reality of your precious value.  

Beth [00:34:00] I think that gets to the reason that I don't want to do an all is lost conversation around these bills because I do not want kids or parents of kids who are struggling to hear, "Look at this slate of awfulness. It must mean there's no hope for you." Because I believe in the resilience of people in this space who are doing the work and putting one foot in front of the other every single day. I believe in all of the kids for whom it is bananas that this issue is even up for debate. I do not see a political future where these issues resonate with voting citizens the way that it does today. And that is not to say that I put all my hope in the kids. That's not fair either. But I just want to say, as an adult, here kind of in the middle of my journey, I don't think this is forever. And I don't want the message to be either dismissive of the harm and the suffering or so focused on the harm and the suffering that the possibility of what comes next gets lost. Because I think the possibility of a world where people are able to just be who they are with a lot less weight attached to that is here. I can see how we get through this tunnel. I do think it's slow patient work, but I can see it as getting through this tunnel. And I want all of you to be with us as we get through this tunnel.  

Sarah [00:35:33] Well, nothing is permanent. The good or the bad. We don't reach a promised land in democracy where our work is done, and how whatever hellscape a certain legislator has created is also not permanent. There is no status in both good or bad times inside of human existence and not inside of democracy. And I think the mistake we made and we continue to make inside a lot of these conversations is centering just the oppression and trauma inside certain identities. I want to be really careful about that, not because I don't believe that there is oppression and trauma. There is. There are real hardships depending on who you are inside American society. But we can't end the discussion there, especially not with young people, because there is grit and resilience and beauty and humanity inside those identities as well. And that has to be the center. That has to be the center. I think we've become allergic to this idea that we can gain anything positive by going through something hard. I don't want to turn this to everything happens for a reason. Nobody does. I've been on the hurtful end of those kind of comments in my life. And also, the thing is, in my life the most heartbreaking, difficult things in my life have had a positive impact on me. That's why I love Stephen Colbert's quote so much. I love the thing I wish most had not happened. And I think this is an opportunity for a lot of things, but it's an opportunity to teach our kids, to show our kids that there is more than trauma and oppression and harm inside these moments in American culture, inside these raw political moves that there's more going on here, and to let them see that and feel that themselves.  

Beth [00:37:46] Sarah, for Outside of Politics today, I'm just going to be here listening because I don't care about the Oscars.  

Sarah [00:37:50] You didn't watch anything?  

Beth [00:37:51] Well, no. Nothing attracted my attention this year. Last year, I caught a little bit enough to know that the slap was happening. And so, I was like, well, I'm interested now. This year, the only thing I saw was the Costume Designer Award, and I'm glad I saw that. I thought that was lovely. And then I immediately moved on to watch SNL that I had recorded from the night before.  

Sarah [00:38:11] Okay. But now wait a second. First of all, did you notice that her note card was the same exact color as her dress? Give Ruth Carter a third Oscar. That was her second. That was a big deal. Give her a third one just for that alone. Amazing. Now, listen, this was a big mainstream year. You saw Top Gun. You saw Avatar. You weren't even a little bit invested?  

Beth [00:38:32] No, because I knew they weren't going to win anything as they really didn't.  

Sarah [00:38:35] Now, I think Avatar won something. Didn't they win best visuals? 

Beth [00:38:38] I mean, whatever. But they weren't going to be the movies that were taking the actor and actress and best picture home.  

Sarah [00:38:47] Right. Because they didn't deserve it. They were fine. They were good. I enjoyed them, but they were not as good as Everything Everywhere All at Once. Have you seen that?  

Beth [00:38:54] I have not seen it. So that's part of why I wasn't invested.  

Sarah [00:38:56] You should see it.  

Beth [00:38:56] I pretty well had the sense that that's where it was all going and I hadn't seen it. I'm not against seeing it. I probably will at some point.  

Sarah [00:39:04] It's good. And so is Banshees of Inisherin. That's my other favorite that I absolutely adored. Well, I will say this. I was bored this year. Can't quite figure out why. I mean, I think part of it was it was very predictable. We all knew for the most part he was going to win. Literally, not a person in that room was surprised. Michelle Yeoh won because she deserved it-- not Matt. But it was very predictable. There was a moment where All Quiet on the Western Front kept like racking up some technical awards and I was like, "Hmm, can we have a surprise winner?" Like when Moonlight won, which was amazing. But I think that was part of it. They added in all the technical categories, again. There was a great moment during the shorts winner where we sang Happy Birthday. That was fun. The acceptance speeches were lovely. But it was just lovely. I will say Naatu Naatu brought the energy. That performance was incredible. I love the Bollywood on the Hollywood stage, but I don't know. I think it all started with the carpet. They made the carpet champagne. It was so boring. Everybody's dresses just kind of blended in. I think I'm just going to like squarely [inaudible]. We should have kept it a red carpet. And they were just like so tightly trying to squeeze everything in. They didn't allow for any spontaneity or fun. And also, they threw in some commercials. Like I didn't want to see a trailer for The Little Mermaid, even though I'm legitimately excited about The Little Mermaid. But don't put an ad in that. That sucks. Keep this thing rolling. I don't know. It was a little off this year. The lovely moments were lovely, but I was bored.  

Beth [00:40:36] I read this morning that the carpet got pretty gross fast. And I thought, was nobody a mom on the committee that decided this? Any of us could have looked at that carpet and said, "Ooh, about 5 minutes in, you're going to wish you hadn't."  

Sarah [00:40:48] It's going to be nasty. Yeah, I don't get it. I found myself wondering if this was the year. Are we going to be done? I bet you they didn't gain any audience share, which they were really looking to do. I wonder if it'll move to a streaming service next year? I don't know. I don't know what the future of the Oscars is. I mean, they had a crisis team. They took your suggestion last year.  

Beth [00:41:10] Just a year too late. Well done everybody. 

Sarah [00:41:12] Just a year too late. I mean, Jimmy Kimmel cracked so many jokes about the incident last year between Will Smith and Chris Rock, so I don't know if it was that hanging over the whole ceremony that made it feel weird. I really don't know. I'm going to need some more time to think about it, but I would be surprised if we get a full length Oscar ceremony in primetime television next year.  

Beth [00:41:34] You know what I would watch? I would watch a version of the Oscars where everybody was at home and somebody knocked on the door like Ed McMahon with the big check like he used to do, like, "You won! Oh, my God." Where somebody just showed up and surprised them. I think that would be very entertaining. And I think the streaming service would have the money to make it extremely exciting to watch something like that. Just needs a little pizzazz.  

Sarah [00:41:57] Well, I want the formality, though. I don't want to lose the dresses. I don't want to see movie stars in their loungewear. No, I want the full red carpet experience.  

Beth [00:42:05] See, that's why I think it would be fun. They have so many of these, though. Like, how many times do we need to watch everybody get dressed up? I think that's part of the problem. By the time you get to the Oscars, I've already watched clips of all these people accepting awards for these movies. I don't need to see them do it again.  

Sarah [00:42:20] Well, I don't watch the BAFTAs or the SAG Awards. I didn't even watch the Golden Globes this year. And still, it makes me sad. I feel like this shared sort of watching experiences of American society are fading. I do wonder if some of this is just the inevitable changes in the movie industry itself. The peak was like the nineties where they were making all these movies that made money on VHS that were so good, and we're still like human and everybody was invested in them. We were all watching Good Will Hunting. 

Beth [00:42:55] I loved Good Will Hunting. 

Sarah [00:42:56] Because it's a great movie, but they don't make a lot of movies like that anymore. And everything everywhere, all at once, in a way, was like that. But it's not a quiet movie. I mean, it was like it's a spectacle. I mean, it's a multiverse experiment, right? And so, I don't know if it's because we've left that stage of moviemaking behind where people were really invested in the films. Because even with the addition of Top Gun and Avatar, that's not the same kind of Oscar bait.  

Beth [00:43:21] I had no emotional connection to Avatar whatsoever. It's beautiful. I applaud them. I do not care what happens. I do not need anybody to win an award for that movie. It is what it is to me.  

Sarah [00:43:33] So, I think it's just a combination of all that. The movies have changed. People are less invested in them. Because the movies have changed, the award show has changed. On top of that, you have TV changing and the entrance of streaming and they're all just sort of compounding at this time and creating an environment where no one wants to watch.  

Beth [00:43:54] Well, it takes some magic out of the industry, too, to have the writer’s negotiations looming to see how difficult the industry is for all the people working within it. I think the Alec Baldwin situation, where you have someone dying on a movie set, it is hard to go from some of the industry realities into this glitz and glam space and just be like, "Cool, yeah, let's do it. Everything's awesome."  

Sarah [00:44:20] Yeah, we've definitely lost some of the magic. I mean, Nicholas was talking about the most thanked person in Oscar history is Harvey Weinstein. It's a fun little piece of Oscar trivia for you. And I think there was so much writing this year about the Bloodsport to be nominated. There was a best actress nominee who people really felt just machinated her way into a nomination. And so, it's like the C-SPAN effect on Congress. It's like we're seeing way too much of this, and it's stripping this sort of magic out of the movies. Even though I still love the movies. I still loved many of the movies nominated. But it's like we know too much to really enjoy the award shows anymore.  

Beth [00:44:57] I really think I've solved it here. I think surprise people at home. Have Jennifer Coolidge surprise people at home with an Oscar. Just "Congratulations. Enjoy your Sunday. You won. I hope it's awesome for you.".  

[00:45:09] Thank you all so much for joining us. Thank you for listening. We appreciate and always attempt to honor your time with us. Please do not forget to check our show notes for information on our Orlando show and how to get access to our Succession discussions that are coming up and much more. We'll be back in your ears on Friday. Until then, have the best week available to you.  

[00:45:45] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:45:50] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:45:56] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh.   

Beth Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller. 

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