Episode 4011: The Everyman Plus

Zain 0:03

This is a strategist episode 4011. My name is Zain Velji with me as always.

Carter 0:12

happened? You know, I

Carter 0:15

got kicked off our own fucking podcast.

Zain 0:18

You have to tell me what happened. I actually have no fucking idea. I thought it was I mean, I should have taken Shannon seriously. But has she just pretty much co-opted the infrastructure of this podcast, including the years of toiling that we have done? and just now put out her own podcast? Yeah,

Carter 0:32

Yeah, she just co-opted it and decided that you and I no longer were relevant to our own podcast.

Carter 0:38

And she took off and did her own. That's

Zain 0:41

That's called doing an enchi. You

Zain 0:43

You pretty much take the infrastructure.

Carter 0:49

that's not a bad analogy. But

Carter 0:52

But you and I stuck out here, just the two of us now. uh because

Zain 0:57

because she's found greener pastures is that i don't know i don't i mean

Carter 1:02

she's like i like this new format you know and we're

Carter 1:06

to a new format but i

Zain 1:07

i have to be honest when i when she said she's doing a podcast i thought i didn't realize it was with us i'm like that's great you guys can go

Zain 1:15

now i don't read most of the messages so i think my response my response to like what i what i what was clearly like a three-page update to us was fun

SPEAKER_00 1:25

is what i said yeah

SPEAKER_00 1:28

yeah i know you were you

Carter 1:29

you weren't really involved in the discussions uh but we've we've seen this before but

Carter 1:34

but what bothers me now is you used to be a one-third shareholder and so you know like if you didn't understand or didn't pay attention it was okay because cory and i could kind of make the decision and kind of carry it on now you're a person

Zain 1:45

person from the business he's gone he's

Carter 1:47

he's out he's he had to comply with some sort of ethics thing or something like that so he had to get out a

SPEAKER_00 1:55

couple of things i

Carter 1:56

have bought the third and then owned two-thirds of it but instead he just sold

SPEAKER_00 2:01

sold it back to

SPEAKER_01 2:01

to the company i

Zain 2:03

i am i am one of those brown guys that does not care about money uh which makes me a rarity um i don't know you seemed pretty happy last week

Carter 2:10

week when i gave you your cash you know did

Zain 2:13

did you give it to me i don't know where it's gone

Zain 2:17

uh hold on is there actual text message exchange with someone one a prominent person in our in our media landscape and

Zain 2:25

and the and the text was balance

Zain 2:27

balance of power the empire expands and i said i have no clue what you're talking about and

Zain 2:33

they're like new pod i'm like is it in our feed his response yes so

Zain 2:38

so that was my experience of shannon's new show but

SPEAKER_00 2:43

but when she sat down and

Carter 2:44

and when she sat down with us it drew you know prior to one of our recording sessions and explain what she was going to do you

SPEAKER_00 2:51

you didn't even pay

Carter 2:52

pay attention to that hey i

SPEAKER_00 2:53

i was like i know that

Carter 2:54

that the emails are gonna are gonna miss you no

Zain 2:58

no we got to take advantage of the situation carter now we've got shannon doing labor i feel like i feel like we as 50 as 50 percent shareholders of this business we got to take advantage of the situation well

SPEAKER_01 3:09

well we're taking the

SPEAKER_01 3:09

the money from this for

Zain 3:11

sure oh good fantastic i mean there

Carter 3:13

there was no commitment to pay her for these for these episodes right so typical

Zain 3:17

typical new democrat forgot about the money forgot

Zain 3:23

it's different you know what i mean they're not caring about money but

Zain 3:25

but you know there's one thing i care about how

Zain 3:27

how hot my future prime minister is can we talk about this steven carter oh

Carter 3:31

oh my god the ugliest man in politics david hurley goes after jamil giovanni and

Carter 3:38

and uh on his looks like Like, that was unbelievable.

Zain 3:49

Carter's already gone after Hurley. Carter's already gone after Hurley. Friends of the pod, the Hurley Burley,

Zain 3:55

in the sense that they are people

Zain 3:58

people who do podcasts and they're friends of politics.

Zain 4:01

And we like them. I like them.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Carter, you may not like

Zain 4:07

We're talking about Giovanni's trip to D.C. had

Zain 4:10

some good analysis about that i thought but then hurley just threw out there you know can we be honest about politics too unattractive physically to be successful in politics and

Zain 4:19

and that kind of took me by surprise but but i want to less react to the moment unless you want to like react to that but i'm curious like as

Zain 4:27

as a strategist which you are does

Zain 4:30

does that factor into your decision making like like he didn't say charisma he didn't say like the he did he didn't use one of those code words and actually they're not even code words because their charisma is an x factor that does not directly correlate to attractiveness but

Zain 4:45

we've talked about these terms like politically attractive politically handsome those things in the past we've talked about them right yeah

Zain 4:51

yeah i mean but he said it in such plain language that it was like it

Zain 4:57

it was like almost like yeah yeah forget the fact that the guy's articulate and smart and might have a very strident ideology and could have a bit no no the guy's just like guys he's not attractive enough And I don't even want to talk about the merits of that. But I'm really curious, like as a strategist, Carter, does that like

Zain 5:11

like that singular dimension of physical attractiveness count for anything when you make your decisions on who to work with or when you think of someone's viability? And I'm just I'm just yeah, that's where I want to go. Rather than talking about the Jamil Javadi thing, that's I think that's where I want to go. I

Carter 5:31

mean, he's not wrong insofar as attractiveness does matter. You

Carter 5:36

You can be too attractive for politics. You can be too unattractive

Carter 5:41

unattractive for politics. But

Carter 5:44

But in general, he's not entirely wrong. There's a factor that people consider when they're voting for someone, and that is, do they look like me?

Carter 5:55

Are they the every man or every woman? And there

Carter 6:00

there is a factor of whether or not they are, I

Carter 6:04

I don't want to say conventionally attractive enough, but certainly suiting

Carter 6:08

suiting or fitting into a certain norm. worm.

Carter 6:12

Now that norm has been broken a million times. So it's not the singular factor that determines someone's success or not, but

Carter 6:19

but it is a, it is a factor of, of how people, uh, respond to you. Uh, because people do make determinations based on, on people's looks. We, we know this, this is psychology. We, we've seen the, um, we've seen the, the, the,

Carter 6:38

the information, uh, come from scientific studies that people do respond to the way that people look. I think I've told the story before. There was a person who ran for finance commissioner

Carter 6:51

commissioner or something like that, VP finance for the Students' Union, and put a picture of a very attractive woman. His name was Ashley Anderson, I think. And he put a picture of a very attractive woman on his posters, and he won in the landslide. It wasn't his picture, wasn't who he was, but nonetheless, people responded to the photograph and voted for him.

Carter 7:17

He used a picture of this very attractive woman. Nonetheless, I mean, does that mean that everybody has to be attractive to be in politics? No, it doesn't. But they do need to conform to certain base rules. And one of the base rules is don't pick on people because of their attractiveness or unattractiveness. As we learned from Jean Chrétien and the Tory-led opposition, which put out that horrible ad mocking his looks. You can't mock people's looks and expect to get ahead in politics.

Zain 7:52

That's what I think was interesting here. This was not a broader conversation about attractiveness, like ability, charisma, trustworthiness, right? Because we know there's reasons that people are attracted to people, both

Zain 8:06

both from like a physiological but also in our lame political sense, right? Like they're funny, they can be relatable in many ways. But this was like a real like comment on like looks and looks alone. And it almost seemed like a singular sort of comment related to that one factor, like there was a baseline. And if you don't meet it, nothing else can overcome for it. And I was just wondering if you find that to be the case, because obviously you didn't say those words. but but i'm it's now gotten me just like you're really questioning like is there like a complete place i like that no level of additional charisma or likeability or sense of humor or anything can't overcome i

Zain 8:47

i think that was his point and i'm curious if you agree with that no

Carter 8:51

no i don't agree with that and i think that um having worked with female candidates quite a bit i find that they They they suffer a probably

Carter 8:59

probably more than male candidates with the with the, you know, the likability, lookability, you know, how attractive they are kind of model, because I think that women are especially harsh to other women. You know, the number of comments that Alison Redford got on her looks and how how she dressed and how she did her makeup was, you know, it was crazy.

Carter 9:23

crazy. And almost all of those comments came from other women.

Carter 9:29

but she fit within a conventional attractiveness standard that it, it wasn't, it

Carter 9:34

it wasn't the, the, the end all be all. And she presented good

Carter 9:37

good policies that people responded to, um,

Carter 9:40

um, and a good brand that people responded to more. And that was more important.

Carter 9:45

but you know, uh, everything adds

Carter 9:48

adds up to the total, right? When we talk about brand, everything is, everything is connected

Carter 9:54

connected within the brand structure. So if someone is overly attractive, that

Carter 9:59

that could bring down their brand structure. They may be seen as less intelligent. Marjorie Taylor Greene is an interesting example with her crossfit and how fit she was or is. That was part of a negative brand impression, I think, that people would draw from Marjorie Taylor Greene. um you

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