writer about serious things and a serious documentary maker. you ve already told me a little bit about yourjewish family history, you ve explored in documentary form holocaust denial. you have written a book this one, jews don t count, which looks at what you see as the failure of the progressive left, particularly in the uk, to take full account of anti semitism as one of the discriminatory prejudices that taint society, you think somehow. ..as your title suggests, jews don t count. is it easy to tackle these serious subjects when your reputation is that of a very funny man? i don t know. i mean, for some people, it will be. for me, it isn t. the book has got quite a lot ofjokes in it. i don t really see clear boundaries between funny and, i guess, intelligent or whatever you might call it. that wasn t a very intelligent sentence, so it doesn t bear that out very well. but what i mean is
against that kind of an outcome? if the rule of law were failing, it s conceivable that i might. i also wonder, though, michael, because a lot of people, they may actually think that it s true even when it s not. i would hope that as you evaluated a situation like that you would be doing it based on facts. but you hear the perception of so many people, maybe on both sides of the spectrum depending on who is commander in chief, and they do feel like those conditions are basic live all met. so what does that mean? reporter: it s frightening, brianna. when you get into the cross tabs of the day you look, for example, at what percentage of americans think former president trump bears a i great deal of responsibility for the events of january 6th. the number overall is 60%. but when you then look at republicans or trump supporters versus others,ing it s significantly different. it s roughly two-thirds who say, no, he really doesn t bear much
thereby delaying the vote on the bill. by this morning, when he finally quit, he had gone on for more than 8 1/2 hours speaking on the floor of the house, and good for him. aside from, you know, the content of his speech, which doesn t bear much shouldn t require too much of your time. frankly, as a tactic, long speeches, very, very, very long speeches are a tried and true way for legislators to dramatize and draw attention to their objections to something that is going to happen anyway, and that is what he did. but he did that until after 5:00 in the morning. and then they reconvened the house in the 9:00 a.m. hour and it was clear very quickly that that part was over. over with an exclamation point. on this vote, the yeas are 220. the nays are 213. the build back better bill is passed. [ cheering ]
elected officials who do this, and there are very few of them in colorado at least, know exactly what they re doing, that it doesn t matter, if we put something on television and say it s false, they still have the ability to get it out so the trick for us going forward, and i think the challenge for a lot of local journalists covering elected officials and members of congress is to figure out how do we report on what they re saying if it s cruel or false or bigoted without just relentlessly amplifying it, but also without simply ignoring it? so for us at 9 news in colorado, we ve gone public with the double standard to acknowledge how it benefits politicians like congresswoman boebert, who is willing to say things that aren t true or bigoted or are cruel. and at the same time is unfair to all of the other public servants who choose to hold themselves to a higher standard.
..as your title suggests, jews don t count. is it easy to tackle these serious subjects when your reputation is that of a very funny man? i don t know. i mean, for some people, it will be. for me, it isn t. the book has got quite a lot ofjokes in it. i don t really see clear boundaries between funny and, i guess, intelligent or whatever you might call it. that wasn t a very intelligent sentence, so it doesn t bear that out very well. but what i mean is the book is complex. it s trying to draw some quite complex intellectual ideas around how anti semitism has been a neglected thing that the people who are very obsessed with identity politics have left behind. i see no reason why a joke in the middle of that would deflate or subvert an argument. i think that s a weird thing that people assume that, the minute you go into comedy, you re somehow upending what you re saying. intellectually, i don t see that at all. iam glad. i mean, it s a privilege, really, that, despite being a comedian a