Not the Quiet One

January 25, 2024 4:30 AM

Penn Jillette Wants to Talk It All Out (SL Cracked Interview) Jillette has renounced libertarianism (after being asked to MC an anti-masking event) and is terrified of Trump. He still has a lot on his mind.
posted by thecaddy (63 comments total)

Kind of refreshing seeing someone be all “wait, the rest of those guys are assholes, I don’t have to be one of them” instead of merrily tripping down the rabbit hole.

I fundamentally an untrusting person when it comes to redemption stories, but this still gives me a bit of cheer.
posted by Artw at 4:49 AM on January 25 [71 favorites]

I've always been a Penn & Teller fan but disagreed with some of what Penn believed and said. Now I guess we're on the same page. It's nice to read about one of my heroes becoming a slightly better person rather than a worse one.
posted by mmoncur at 5:15 AM on January 25 [71 favorites]

That was a fascinating interview. Jillette comes off with a refreshing degree of honesty and humility.
posted by Thistledown at 5:19 AM on January 25 [9 favorites]

Good re:libertarianism turnaround........, but man, the mealy-mouthedness in the Israel conversation and 'lol cultural judaism' and lack of analytical heft re: deference to "well gee shucks smarter people know about this I don't know anything" was disappointing.
posted by lalochezia at 5:22 AM on January 25 [12 favorites]

Gettin’ kinda tired of right-wingers having grand revelations that bring them to a point of view they would have mocked me for having a few years ago. Penn seems like a decent and sincere guy, but jeesh.. how old is he? It took him this long to realize that Ron Paul is full of shit?

‘A libertarian is someone who believes the government has no business making his girlfriend use a car seat.’
posted by chronkite at 6:03 AM on January 25 [44 favorites]

I get the impulse but it’s a good thing that people are open to change. Late is better than never, and mocking them for it is only going to make other people more reluctant to publicly admit their mistakes.
posted by star gentle uterus at 6:26 AM on January 25 [71 favorites]

Biden’s done an incredible job. Accomplished almost the impossible. His stuff on Israel and Ukraine is four-dimensional chess....I think he is in an actual impossible situation

Lol he's a fucking moron and knows nothing about any of this, he was dumb to even bring it up. Every time this dude opens his mouth about politics in any capcity is just pure drivel whether it is smarmy uninformed libertarianism and now smarmy uninformed aesthetic liberalism which is too bad because he is otherwise an all-around entertaining personality #StickToMagic
posted by windbox at 6:27 AM on January 25 [14 favorites]

I identified very much with this:

As a good friend of mine said, “I don’t mind being called an asshole — I don’t want to be an asshole.”

I think he's right at the point of understanding that his privilege allows him to have wrong opinions on things and he has to be careful with that. I can relate to that.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:33 AM on January 25 [21 favorites]

And when he realizes that brown people can have right opinions on things and still need to be careful about it, he may truly awaken.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:35 AM on January 25 [8 favorites]

The Cato Institute still lists him as a H.L. Mencken Research Fellow.
posted by brachiopod at 6:42 AM on January 25 [7 favorites]

I understand the urge to run the standard MF purity tests on him and declare a fail. But since he's someone I've always enjoyed who has held opinions I've always hated, it's nice to see him turn the boat around, even if I still don't think he has the fully correct course set.

If he were presenting himself as having it all figured out now, that'd be one thing. But since his headlines are that he's been wrong about a lot and he's working on shutting up, fair enough for me.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:46 AM on January 25 [108 favorites]

I've really loved him as an entertainer, so I'm happy to see that he's making progress and being less shitty of a person.

I'm also frustrated to see he still pulls "identifies as" bullshit (especially frustrating to see from somebody with a trans kid) and the "four dimensional chess on Gaza" has this left-leaning Jew rolling his eyes.

In conclusion, Las Vegas is a land of contrasts.
posted by Tomorrowful at 7:01 AM on January 25 [10 favorites]

Entertainer, not a politician, not running for anything, has bad takes on politics, don't listen to assholes *, don't vote for an asshole *.

*Vonnegut Cat Asshole illustration.
posted by djseafood at 7:09 AM on January 25 [3 favorites]

After reading this I don't get the feeling Penn has changed, so much as the world has changed around him. He is still an asshole but far from being the biggest asshole in the room.

He's always had this kind of immature and techbro-ish, Ayn Rand concept of "reason" -- and the Trump, anti-mask, crowd does not.

The fact that Penn likes Biden, I think says more about Biden than it does Penn.
posted by Foosnark at 7:10 AM on January 25 [13 favorites]

Baby steps, people.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:27 AM on January 25 [35 favorites]

...and the "four dimensional chess on Gaza" has this left-leaning Jew rolling his eyes.

I think he's describing the multitude of levels of issues a world leader has to contend with if they are to have any hope of doing anything correctly or constructively in that particular part of the world, rather than any sort of deep-mastery Biden may be exhibiting. He's describing the stage rather than the player.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:40 AM on January 25 [35 favorites]

Perfection is the enemy of the good.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:43 AM on January 25 [49 favorites]

It makes little sense to deploy the circular firing squad against a person who can catch a bullet in his teeth.
posted by credulous at 8:40 AM on January 25 [86 favorites]

Funniest thing about PJ is how he really hates The Amazing Kreskin.
posted by ovvl at 8:47 AM on January 25 [2 favorites]

I thought his ire was with Uri Gellar. Penn and Teller have always made it a part of their act that they are fooling you and are lying/misdirecting to make entertainment. Gellar, on the other hand, employs the same kind of trickery but will never break kayfabe about it.
posted by dr_dank at 9:00 AM on January 25 [1 favorite]

It makes little sense to deploy the circular firing squad against a person who can catch a bullet in his teeth.

Wouldn't that be the best reason for a circular firing squad?
posted by The Manwich Horror at 9:11 AM on January 25 [16 favorites]

After reading this I don't get the feeling Penn has changed, so much as the world has changed around him. He is still an asshole but far from being the biggest asshole in the room.

Honestly I’m just very used to watching people with brain worms on one asshole thing slide into going all in on all the other asshole things so it’s just interesting watching someone not do that.

Really it should be unremarkable, but boy is that not the way of the world right now.

/watches all the “atheists” that dabbled in Islamophobia and TERFdom turn christofascist because really the bigotry was the point.
posted by Artw at 9:47 AM on January 25 [20 favorites]

"the revolution! Starting in the most unlikely of places!"



I remember being quite impressed with Penn + Teller Get Killed when I finally got around to seeing it. Including (spoiler alert) maybe the best ever use of a cheesy pop song for its final punchline.
posted by philip-random at 9:53 AM on January 25 [1 favorite]

I don't know jack shit about this guy or his show other than he's been a bit of a poster child for Libertarians. Read the interview anyway, and there's a lot of good stuff here:

Without being overly dramatic — but, I think, being accurate — there’s a small chance, but still real non-zero chance, that we’ve destroyed our country with monetizing hate and monetizing aggression and monetizing outrage. What makes you the most money is outrage and hate.

On Biden, re: Israel:

He’s certainly not doing enough to help Palestinians. He's certainly not doing enough to help people over there suffering — which is also true for you, also true for me, true for everybody. I think he is in an actual impossible situation — I think that any action or a lack of action is wrong. It’s so far beyond what’s possible.

This is also why I almost never talk about I/P here or elsewhere: I don't see any solution, at all. It's easy to say "Biden could withdraw all support for Israel and/or demand continued military supply hinges on adhering to US-imposed policy limits," but that statement fails to account for the broader context of potential domestic electoral fallout. If doing so puts Trump back in the Oval Office, the future for Palestinians is vastly worse. If continuing to do nothing saps youth vote energy and puts Trump back in the Oval Office, the future for Palestinians is vastly worse. Not one of us has access to the Biden team's projected electoral impacts of their foreign policy options.

(Calling a spade a spade: "Vastly worse" = open, unmasked genocide instead of the current fig-leafed slow genocide.)

On Libertarianism:

I completely have not used the word Libertarian in describing myself since I got an email during lockdown where a person from a Libertarian organization wrote to me and said, “We’re doing an anti-mask demonstration in Vegas, and obviously we’d like you to head it.” I looked at that email and I went, “The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change.”

On shutting up:

It’s so easy to say that we’re all one world and that there shouldn’t be anti-Semitism, there shouldn’t be racism — it’s so easy to be lovey-dovey and peacenik. But I say this without any qualifications: I’ve never experienced any of that (hatred). Never. So every time I’m making an argument that has anything to do with race or misogyny or anti-Semitism, I want to say back to me, “Wait a minute, Penn, you grew up cis male white in Massachusetts — I think you need to shut up.”

Upstate New York transplant to Massachusetts, but otherwise: same.
posted by Ryvar at 9:58 AM on January 25 [51 favorites]

I thought his ire was with Uri Gellar.

You're thinking of James Randi.
posted by those are my balloons at 9:59 AM on January 25 [3 favorites]

I thought his ire was with Uri Gellar.

You're thinking of James Randi.

Does anyone have an up to date magician enmity chart?
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:02 AM on January 25 [36 favorites]

Wouldn't that be the best reason for a circular firing squad?

I don't know, have you even *seen* the teeth on that guy?
posted by loquacious at 10:11 AM on January 25 [2 favorites]

He's courageously alienating his Trump audience with this interview. I'm sure they will send him hate mail detailing his error of opinion (or need to skip that part if they are simple followers).
posted by Brian B. at 10:13 AM on January 25 [2 favorites]

paper chromatographologist : Does anyone have an up to date magician enmity chart?

Sorry, it disappeared.
posted by dr_dank at 10:13 AM on January 25 [28 favorites]

He's courageously alienating his Trump audience with this interview.

"If these voters could read, they would be very upset with Penn!"

I doubt he will catch much flack for what he says, unless Trump makes the mistake of calling him out directly. AFAIK, Jillette isn't doing the interview on the right wing echo chamber circuit, and I don't imagine Fool Us is going to suddenly end with a political monolog.
posted by pwnguin at 10:26 AM on January 25 [2 favorites]

> He's courageously alienating his Trump audience with this interview. I'm sure they will send him hate mail detailing his error of opinion (or need to skip that part if they are simple followers).

Based on what he says in this interview, he's also potentially alienating his "culturally Jewish" and Libertarian followers.

I've always liked Penn before, but like him even more after reading this interview.
posted by milnak at 10:26 AM on January 25 [7 favorites]

“ Does anyone have an up to date magician enmity chart? ”

Easy. Just write the names of every magician on earth in a giant circle and then connect every name to every other name with invisible thread.
posted by chronkite at 10:43 AM on January 25 [3 favorites]

are you implying the "radical left" are in fact magicians?
posted by philip-random at 10:49 AM on January 25 [5 favorites]

"If these voters could read, they would be very upset with Penn!"

I agree, but their movement is talk radio and editorialized news, to avoid the thought demons in the world. Someone will dumb it down for them, because his is a family-friendly show.
posted by Brian B. at 10:52 AM on January 25

I thought this was a great interview, and Penn comes off as someone who is thoughtful but who knows he will not always have the right answer.

The "culturally Jewish" thing didn't bother me (yes, IAAJ). American Jewish-ness (and possibly International Jewish-ness) is complicated by the fact that many of us are religiously agnostic at best, so there is an open question about whether Judiasm is a religion, an ethnicity, a culture, or what. I think "identifies as Jewish" is probably clumsy language, but I got the idea of what he was getting at.

Also, if anyone in this thread thinks that the Israel/Palestinian situation is not impossibly complicated, and thinks they know everything the Biden Administration is doing behind the scenes, they are fooling themselves.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:57 AM on January 25 [20 favorites]

This site is full of smart people who say smart things. Really enjoyed reading every comment here.

Thank you.
posted by chronkite at 11:00 AM on January 25 [16 favorites]

Can we please keep the Israel Palestine discussion in existing threads for the sake of the poor mods.

I think there are a lot of people on this site who have already taken the path that Penn seems to have recently started down. Part of that journey is a departure away from the moral clarity/simplicity of a black and white worldviews. There are two kinds of critics of libertarianism. Those who are ideologically opposed and on the opposite end of the spectrum and those who have come to reject the idealism in its flavors.
posted by interogative mood at 12:40 PM on January 25 [2 favorites]

In contrast with an earlier comment, I think redemption stories are essential, and that the word, the idea itself, is the finest in this or any language.

I'm not talking about an onion-wrought teary confessional on some chat show or other as part of a self-relaunch, but I am talking about acknowledging that paths exists that will take a person from arsehole to human, and that a post-arsehole life is available to everyone.

I also think it's important to know that it's a process, not a magic trick. If you're able to achieve, say, a 10% year-on-year decrease in personal arsery then you're doing OK. I'd be very suspicious of anyone who thinks they can throw a switch and -- presto chango -- not an arsehole. Also of anyone who thinks they personally aren't an arsehole.

Finally, thank you for the opportunity to use the word 'arsehole' so many times. I'm quite spent.
posted by BCMagee at 12:41 PM on January 25 [15 favorites]

Reading this interview was a relief to me. I can easily imagine Penn Jillette's Libertarian leanings leading him into the well-trodden Libertarian-to-fascist pipeline*. His Trump insights are valuable, if not news to anyone in this thread, and I'd like to hear more about that and see it reach a larger audience. Penn is good at explaining the mechanisms of fraud and how people are conned, and all of that applies to Trump and the MAGA grift.

* really more like an automated car wash... scrub off a layer of pretense and look at that fascism sparkle!
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 12:54 PM on January 25 [20 favorites]

I wonder how much of Jillette's change of view comes from having a child who is not cis, and a realization that the American Right is pretty much married to a platform of hatred towards trans and non-binary people. Jillette clearly loves and is delighted by Moxie, and he's not a stupid man. He has to be aware what kind of future his politics was building for them.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:57 PM on January 25 [39 favorites]

Thought same, GenjiandProust.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:33 PM on January 25 [3 favorites]

Oh.

Yeah, no, that’s probably entirely it.

Goes the other way too of course (Musk, etc).
posted by Artw at 1:38 PM on January 25 [3 favorites]

Yeah, no, that’s probably entirely it.

To be fair, after a career of being pro-vaccination, it must have been interesting to wake up in bed with a movement that rejected vaccinations and masks. I don’t think he’s lying about that, either. “I disagree with these people about a lot of things, and I have to go now” is an entirely valid Road-to-Damascus moment.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:09 PM on January 25 [23 favorites]

Thanks for that addendum, Genji. I’ve had two massive ideological aboutfaces in my life - in both cases it started with other people either directly reaching out to build bridges / or writing things that challenged my worldview. This is what I think of as the “undermining the foundations” stage, where the usual backstops that keep you from entering a state of ideological freefall are pruned away. Eg, Bernie Sanders is a great touchstone for debunking erroneous views on what socialism is and stands for when reaching out to rural white (US) conservatives.

Then there is an inciting event, which in my experience needs to always come not from another person - we tend to treat what other people say as an ideological challenge and naturally resist letting one specific person potentially lay claim to having changed us. Which is why the following rings so true for me:

I looked at that email and I went, “The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change.”

I’ve had that exact moment twice, where a sort of personalized corollary to the anthropic principle kicked in: “the fact that I am here, now, in this situation, is proof positive that whatever lead me to this point was wrong.”

A lot of groundwork by people who cared about me was laid down years in advance so that moment could proceed without anything interrupting its early momentum, but this reads like the genuine article to me in terms of how a sea change actually kicks off. That or - at his income level - he needs to tip his PR team like half a million bucks for that single sentence alone. YMMV.
posted by Ryvar at 3:04 PM on January 25 [21 favorites]

> I wonder how much of Jillette's change of view comes from having a child who is not cis, and a realization that the American Right is pretty much married to a platform of hatred towards trans and non-binary people.

He was libertarian, not American religious right. Libertarianism (of which I'm not a follower) openly supports trans women, trans men, and genderqueer people and cisgender people.
posted by milnak at 4:01 PM on January 25 [2 favorites]

Libertarians should support trans people, but I doubt I'm alone in knowing many men who call themselves Libertarian and are unpleasant transphobes.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:09 PM on January 25 [22 favorites]

I have to admit I often do not rtfa* because I read the comments and get the gist and don’t have the energy (or something) for a long article as well. But I read this one, and I think it’s pretty great. Would recommend! It probably doesn’t matter, but I am culturally Jewish (8 years of Hebrew school! I remember maybe 5%), currently agnostic, and wasn’t bothered by anything he said.

I feel like most people know what this means but a little voice told me some people don’t like this sort of thing because it alienates new people. New people I hope would feel comfortable asking if they don’t know! I did when I got here, a few times. Anyway, I believe the two options are read the f*cker already or read the f*cking article depending who you ask.
posted by Glinn at 4:45 PM on January 25 [9 favorites]

‘A libertarian is someone who believes the government has no business making his girlfriend use a car seat.’

Is this a pedophile joke? An octogenarian joke?
posted by lostburner at 6:39 AM on January 26

Well, you wouldn’t make a joke about a libertarian having the retirement age for each state laminated.
posted by Artw at 7:12 AM on January 26

Well, you wouldn’t make a joke about a libertarian having the retirement age for each state laminated.

I dunno, that sounds like a pretty good megacorp management joke.

"Smith! You loafer! I got you for..."
*pulls out card*
"...two more years! Get back to work!"
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 7:27 AM on January 26

> Is this a pedophile joke? An octogenarian joke?

it's a hilarious joke.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:33 AM on January 26 [12 favorites]

Libertarians should support trans people, but I doubt I'm alone in knowing many men who call themselves Libertarian and are unpleasant transphobes.

Also, while I understand that the more Republican-adjacent voices have been propped up by the media, Koch Bros, etc, I can't be the only one that noticed that many of them appeared to go AWOL regarding the recent anti-choice/anti-trans legislation and there's an ideological battle going on in the party rn.
posted by Selena777 at 7:45 AM on January 26 [3 favorites]

I found this cogent and frankly a relief, but I've become very adept at emotionally and psychologically checking out when a person who sounds pretty smart starts trundling down a path to, say, "vote blue no matter who" or whatever intellectually lazy position they've used as a placeholder for their thoughts on a subject they probably haven't thought that hard about yet. Biden isn't playing uni-dimensional chess, he's sitting at a VR gaming tournament playing Uno. But to be honest, if you haven't devoted a whole lot of thought to electoral politics, voting prophylactically against the worst name on the ballot is a sound position to take, just not a very evolved one.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:50 AM on January 26 [1 favorite]

Perfection is the enemy of the good.

And if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 8:06 AM on January 26 [3 favorites]

and if a thing is worth doing well, it's worth telling jokes about.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:19 AM on January 26

and if a joke is worth telling, it's worth it to explain it after, in detail.
posted by Jarcat at 10:59 AM on January 26 [1 favorite]

I kind of think that if one of the main arguments you have against a political candidate is that his jokes are mean and that's what you want to platform on Rolling Stone vs like 'oh hey this guy will trample on way more human rights than the other guy' then... maybe you still kind of don't get it at all

Why Rolling Stone had to platform this vs say interviewing adrienne maree brown and doing their best to turn her into the cultural icon that this country needs, now that's a different but also very frustrating convo
posted by paimapi at 11:38 AM on January 26

I kind of think that if one of the main arguments you have against a political candidate is that his jokes are mean

Seems unnecessarily harsh. He doesn't spell it out, but Jillette's using the joke example to imply Trump is a psychopath.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:58 AM on January 26 [13 favorites]

paimapi: "Why Rolling Stone had to platform this vs say interviewing adrienne maree brown and doing their best to turn her into the cultural icon that this country needs"

This wasn't Rolling Stone, though. It was Cracked. It seems relatively self-evident why a comedy website interviewed a famous comedian/magician.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:20 PM on January 26 [7 favorites]

During my research I interviewed a guy who said he was a libertarian until he did MDMA and realized that other people have feelings, and that was pretty much the best summary of libertarianism I've ever heard
posted by Artw at 12:37 PM on January 26 [16 favorites]

and if a joke is worth explaining in detail, it's worth making a callback to it later.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:24 PM on January 26 [4 favorites]

I kind of think that if one of the main arguments you have against a political candidate is that his jokes are mean

I think the point is more that he has no sense of humor AT ALL. He doesn't tell "mean jokes". He simply says mean things. Pretty sure I've never seen him laugh. I'll never forget him sitting there glowering while Obama roasted him at the press correspondents dinner. Absolutely no ability to tell or take a joke.
posted by WhenInGnome at 4:01 AM on January 27 [11 favorites]

milnak: Traditionally, I think there's been Libertarian support for these causes. But of late, a lot of Libertarians and Libertarian groups have been skewing hard towards the alt-right. This article is from 2018, for example, and another from 2022. I've voted for Libertarian candidates in the past and know some folks who are members in their local Libertarian Party, so I find it very disappointing that this shift is happening.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:13 PM on January 31