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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Lovett.
Chapter 2: What is David Sedaris's new book about?
I just wrapped a great conversation with the writer David Sedaris, who's out with a new collection of essays called The Land and Its People.
We talked about his father's support for Trump, why no one cared when David was bit by a dog, what you can't talk about in a healthy relationship, Moby Dick, International McDonald's, the word queer punching down, why he avoids pride parades and what he fears most about getting old.
And speaking of pride, over on the Love It or Leave It channel, this week we are doing a pride special with Marcin Delicato from Hacks, Drag Race winner Mikey Meeks, Otsko, Kotska, and the legend himself, Bruce Valanche, plus many more guests. Check out Love It or Leave It every Wednesday and Friday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, now let's go to my conversation with David Sedaris. David Sedaris, so nice to meet you. So nice to have you here. Oh, thanks so much for having me.
Chapter 3: How does David Sedaris view his father's support for Trump?
Ten years ago, after Trump won the first time, you wrote an essay for the Paris Review about arguing with your father over whether Trump is an asshole. And then the next day, your dad says to you, so are you still talking to me? And I thought that was interesting because he didn't say, I'm not talking to you. He said, are you still talking to me?
And I often feel like with, especially inside of a family, when you're arguing about Trump, There's this understanding that whether it's admitted or not, you know he's a bad person and there's something a little bit wrong with voting for him. And people are looking for some kind of forgiveness or lack of judgment, even though they know they did something wrong.
And I'm wondering if you felt that when you were talking to your father, other people in your life that voted for Trump.
Well, with my dad, it started... Really, he was like a Republican, like just wanted to keep more of his own money. And then he voted for Jesse Helms, which was a thing, because Jesse Helms, we grew up in Raleigh, and he was on the... He did editorials on the news.
Chapter 4: What unique experience did Sedaris have with a dog bite?
And even as a kid, you were like, wow, that guy's really severe, you know? And then he ran for office, and it really... So it really, when he voted for Jesse Helms, it just became a different thing. And then conservative radio came along and then he started listening to Rush Limbaugh and then Fox News came along. And so then he was just in it all the time.
He was in it in his car and he was in it at home. And it was on all the time like a rage machine, you know. And then when he moved into an assisted living when he was like 95, and he didn't know how to work the TV. And for the first time, he wasn't up. He wasn't being agitated every minute. And toward the end of his life, he regretted.
He told me he regretted voting for Trump, which was interesting to me. But I have a friend in England who is a politician, and he and I pick up trash together, right? When I first moved to the countryside in England, my boyfriend Hugh wrote a letter to the council saying like, what's going on with all this trash on the side of the road?
And they invited us to the clean and tidy advisory board, right? To a meeting. So we met this guy who's a local politician and he goes and picks up trash himself. And so I do it myself every day between four and six hours. And sometimes he comes with me, right?
Chapter 5: What are Sedaris's thoughts on being labeled 'queer'?
And he was a Tory, but now he's reformed. Now he's Nigel Farage. And he said, you're not going to want to talk to me anymore. And I said, oh no, that's not the case at all. I would never stop talking to him over that. He answers any question I ask him. And I appreciate that. I'd like to know why he feels the way that he does. We've never raised our voices to each other.
I think it's a great relationship.
Chapter 6: What relationship advice does Sedaris offer?
And when my dad was like, you're right. Well, I think part of it too, I mean, my dad, North Carolina, gay marriage was illegal in North Carolina. And then they introduced like a resolution that would make it extra, extra, extra, extra illegal. And my dad was so happy to tell me he voted for that. So happy to tell me that. And I happened to be in North Carolina at that time.
And my sister-in-law, her sister is gay. And I said, why shouldn't she be allowed to marry her girlfriend? It sends the wrong message. And I said, what message is that? And then he couldn't really answer. He'd heard the answer on the radio or on TV, but he couldn't quite remember what was wrong with it. He couldn't quite recall those words. Anyway, he was a dick, you know, just a complete dick.
And that was like the least of it. Do you know what I mean? It wasn't like he was a dick because of that. He was like a massive dick anyway. And then there was that. Right, right.
Chapter 7: How does Sedaris reflect on aging and its challenges?
No, for sure.
But even like what you're saying about this, the person who said he went reform, like, oh, you're probably not going to want to talk to me. Like, I've never heard a liberal say, I voted for Mamdani, but you're probably not going to want to talk to me. Like, there's some kind of acknowledgement inside of it that it's an act of
like not sabotage, but like of, I'm so mad about everything, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna vote for these terrible people, or I'm gonna become extreme. My reasons are legitimate, which you don't appreciate, but I know on some level I'm doing something wrong, right? Like that to me is what I often hear from, and I feel that inside of when families are having these kinds of arguments.
And I'm wondering if that's what you felt from your dad, even though you felt like he was also
I felt it was more like that me being gay had something to do with it. It would be like saying to a Jewish friend, I voted for the Nazi party, you're probably not going to want to talk to me. Whereas you would say to somebody who wasn't Jewish, you would say, yeah, I voted for the Nazi party. And you wouldn't add, you're probably not going to want to talk to me.
Because you can see how your vote is going to make this person's life more miserable.
I know towards the very end of his life, your father did say, really acknowledge how much success you had and kind of like what you had built. But at the same time, like he's looking you in the eye and being like, yeah, I'm just voting for the thing that is gonna make your life worse. And I'm just doing it because I have some of my friends from the radio. Like, what is that?
Like, is there any acknowledgement?
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Chapter 8: What does Sedaris learn from international McDonald's experiences?
Like, what do you think that was? Like, why couldn't he, why did he care more about what he was seeing on the television than he did about you?
Oh, because it was all about money. Just money? I mean, yeah, ultimately it all came down to money. I mean, if, oh my goodness, if, you know, if a candidate said, I'm going to bring back concentration camps, but I'm going to knock $2 off your taxes, my father would have voted for that person because it would save $2. I mean, $2 was that important to him. It's not like he didn't have $2. Right.
Ultimately, it was all about money, about keeping more of his money.
I was looking at one of your older diaries. In 1990, you and your dad and your brother Paul spent 18 hours in a pickup truck together driving from Illinois to North Carolina. For someone who is now saying your father was a dick ā You also spent a lot of time together. My father and I, I don't know what we would talk about if we were in a car together for 18 hours. Do you remember that drive?
I remember it clearly. Yeah. But if my father and I were in a car for 18 hours, then he just would have criticized me for 18 hours. But my brother was there. And so that made it fun that my brother was there. But yeah, I often think of that. I was moving to New York City. So I was leaving Chicago. And then I had some stuff I was going to bring to North Carolina.
And then I was going to go, I was going to paint a house. My father had rental property. And I was going to paint a house and then use that money to move to New York with. So we drove from Chicago to North Carolina. And I painted the house. And I don't know what the deal was. Maybe that I was going to get $2,000 for painting the house, right? And I painted the house.
And he said, I'll give you $500. I mean, everything about my father prepared me for Trump. You know, someone works for you and then you don't pay them. Or then you say, I'll pay you a quarter of what you're going to pay me. You get a quarter or you get nothing. He was always a dick. He might have driven me.
That was nice of him, but it wasn't like he was just taking a day's vacation from being a dick.
Now it's all these years later and you're telling the Wall Street Journal that you bought a $2,500 coat for your tour. Things have changed. Things have picked up for you. You're traveling around the world. Talk to me about what international McDonald's has taught you, seeing McDonald's in other countries and what it teaches you about the world and about America?
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