Chapter 1: Who is Kat Rosenfield and what does she write about?
This is Interrupted by Matt Jones on NewsRadio 840 WHAS. Now, here's Matt Jones. Welcome, everybody, to Interrupted by Matt Jones. This is episode, what are we at, Billy, 29? 27, 29, whatever. We're getting close. And I am happy to be joined by, you know, I get a lot of people who say to me, Matt, I love these conversations. But then you usually bring on people that you agree with.
And so I was thinking to myself, all right, who's somebody that I agree with sometimes but not always and who I always find interesting? And Kat Rosenfield is joining us.
Chapter 2: How does Kat define her role as a culture writer?
She is the culture writer for... for the Free Press, and I always think it takes very balanced, interesting looks at various issues. Kat, thank you very much. We've never met, but we've followed each other for a long time. Appreciate you joining us.
Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.
I have to say, it's interesting. I have sort of a policy that if somebody that I don't know writes something, if I disagree with them, I just never really respond. But I actually do respond with yours because I generally think you always have a really balanced perspective.
Chapter 3: What changes has Kat observed in her audience since joining The Free Press?
And it feels like you get a lot of people who... argue slash disagree with you on your writings, but aren't mean necessarily, and that you actually will debate online. Am I right about that? Yeah, I do my best. Well, that feels like I've seen you do it some. You write for the free press, so what does it mean to be a culture writer for the free press?
So culture is the water that we all swim in. It is something that we have our own place in kind of contributing to and helping to shape. Unlike politics, which most of us, especially at the national level, don't have any influence over, we are all making and consuming culture at the same time. So culture is like what's happening between us socially.
Chapter 4: How do cultural narratives impact societal issues?
It's how do we treat each other? Who are we to each other? It's also art. What kind of art are we making? What are we watching? What are we reading? But, yeah, so it's sort of nebulous. How do we connect with each other as people? And I write about that. You might also some people call me a social critic. I like culture writer better because I think it sounds fancier.
But I background is very fancy there on your screen. So I could see you want to be sort of a higher class.
Yeah, yeah. The wallpaper that I bought from Etsy to put on one room in my house so that I could do interviews without having to leave the house or put pants on. Definitely very posh.
The posh pantless background. I like that. Now, when you started, how long have you been at the Free Press?
Oh, maybe about 18 months, something like that.
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Chapter 5: What was the significance of the Minnesota incident discussed?
Okay, so this was happening when you started. It is interesting because I think when the Free Press started, it had one sort of audience slash, at least to me as a reader, sort of...
view where you would say this is what that is and then over the last probably 18 months it seems to have kind of flipped where i think people make um generalizations about it since barry weiss went to cbs have you noticed that your audience has changed as you've been writing or or how people look at what you what you write how it's being consumed
That's an interesting question. So I have noticed definitely within the past year or so that I catch a lot more strays online from people who have what I would refer to generously as Barry Weiss derangement syndrome. You know, Barry Weiss isn't taking their calls and I am the next best thing. You know, I'm also a small Jewish brunette. And so, you know, and I'm affiliated with the free press.
So why not yell at me? But in terms of the readership, It's hard to say. I practice the exquisite art of not reading the comments because that's a good way to drive yourself crazy. Do you really do that, though?
I try to do that, and I'm not able to. Are you able to not read the comments?
For the most part, yeah. I stay busy doing other things.
I need to figure out why, but go ahead.
Um, so, uh, what was I saying? Oh, right.
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Chapter 6: How does Kat analyze the role of media in shaping public perception?
My readership, you know, my, my sense is that there are people who, um, you know, knew my work when I was a columnist at unheard, which is a British magazine. I was there for quite a number of years and then moved over to the free press.
And I'm doing the same thing there that I did at unheard and that I was doing prior to that, which is just trying to make sense of what I'm seeing in the world, what it means, what's happening in the culture. Um, And I would say the free press has more of an American audience than the British magazine that I was previously writing for.
But apart from that, I think that the people who are coming over as readers tend to be in search of something that fills in some of the blanks that are being left by the kind of contemporary legacy media landscape. People just want to get all sides of an issue. And the free press, you know, whatever else you think about it, that is something that it does.
Do you... Okay, so Barry has now gone to CBS. And I always thought for years that the free press is kind of like you said, a good way to hear different perspectives. And there's been this criticism of her since she's gone to CBS and all that's come with it. Have you found like a... MAGA audience coming and joining you more since then, or do you think it's kind of still the same?
I haven't seen that.
You haven't really seen that. So you, yourself, I want to give my listeners who might not be familiar with you an example of a story you wrote recently that is what led me to write you, which was you were writing about what happened in Minnesota, the Renee Good. And it was interesting the way you wrote
about sort of how we got to that situation and all the various ways, which is what I really liked about it. You weren't saying this is right, this is wrong. You were sort of talking about all the forces that led to that moment.
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Chapter 7: What lessons can be learned from the Me Too movement?
Can you give people an example kind of what you were talking about?
Sure. I think that the big thing about Minnesota, what happened to Minnesota, is I was so struck by not the actual shooting, which is, of course, horrible, but by what preceded it. And you see these videos of these two women interacting with ICE agents.
And it's just very painfully clear that they misapprehended what the stakes of that situation were, what kind of a situation they were actually in. And obviously the results were very tragic, and I really wanted to understand how did it come to this? How did this happen? because that is a culture question.
You know, you can leave aside the politics, you can leave aside what you think should or shouldn't be happening with immigration, and just see, okay, well, this is what is happening, and this is what did happen. And if we can understand the contours of it, maybe we can prevent it from happening again. And my sense of
this shooting is that it arose from this sort of miasma in which everybody who was in a position to influence this series of events failed to take it as seriously as they should, was treating it like some kind of game or some kind of role-playing exercise or performance. That is true of the ICE agents. It's true of the president, the Department of Homeland Security.
It's true of local officials who encouraged people to engage with ICE in a way that led them to misapprehend what was going to happen, what the stakes were. I think the least culpability rests with Renee Good and her wife. And that's what's really so tragic about this is that they were the least responsible for all of this. And they paid the ultimate price.
I think that's a really fascinating view. And I actually...
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Chapter 8: Is there still a unifying culture in today's society?
I think I sort of agree with it. Kind of, if we could, let's go through some of those. I mean, to me at the start is this notion of how we got here is the way politicians and the media have treated immigration as an issue to begin with. This notion of an invasion of these immigrants.
And then for the other for the folks in Minnesota, this notion of an invasion by ICE to our state and that the two of them, both sides sort of treating it with this invasion language almost sets up a conflict that is inevitable. Is that kind of the way you look at it?
To a certain extent. So my take on this is, irrespective, again, of what you think of immigration, we voted for the guy who wanted to do mass deportations. I mean, I didn't personally vote for him, but we as a country voted for him. He's the president now, and so we're doing mass deportations. That's going to be how it's going for the next few years.
And I think that the way the administration has chosen to go about this, the way they've chosen to message it, the way they've chosen to execute these ICE raids is making everything worse. I think it projects incredible lack of seriousness, the way that they're presenting the information about who is being deported. It's on this website called Worst of the Worst. Okay, you said that.
You said, let me, I'm going to read from your Twitter. You said, so they show the people and it's called worst of the worst and they almost make it look like a cartoon, right?
Yeah, it's a cartoonish presentation. Basically, because of the way that DHS and ICE are behaving and communicating, and I'm not saying it's everybody, I'm just saying, you know, the leadership and a certain number of people who are unfortunately being caught on video all the time acting this way, are contributing to the notion that ICE are basically like cartoon villains.
They're acting, you know, in many cases, the agents are behaving like They are cosplaying Rambo meets the bully from a 1980s teen comedy. And you have, yes, this website that presents the information on who's being deported, which is important information that people should be receiving, presenting it in this incredibly unserious, sensationalistic way.
The graphics on this thing look like they were designed by the person who was doing the on-screen graphics for Maury Povich's You Are Not the Father segments in the 90s. Yeah.
Or The Apprentice, right? Where he comes from. I mean, it is sort of like, I feel like a lot of times these videos look like reality. They look like a way to try to grab ratings when this is supposed to be a very serious thing.
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