Name: Ep 517 - Confessions of a Black Conservative (feat. Glenn Loury)
Uploaded: 2024-09-19T18:37:14.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ep 517 - Confessions of a Black Conservative (feat. Glenn Loury)' from Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-09-19. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ep 517 - Confessions of a Black Conservative (feat. Glenn Loury)' from Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-09-19. Transcript available.

Ep 517 - Confessions of a Black Conservative (feat. Glenn Loury)

Wow. Wow. Wes. Glenn Lowry, dude, it's honestly, I've been, I talk about you a
lot of my podcasts.
I watch yourself. I kind of parrot your talking points. I listened to you talk
and I'm like,
you know what I'm thinking about this whole thing. So it's an honor to have you.
I think
honestly, you're one of the best thinkers currently. No lie. No lie. No lie. I
appreciate
it. Thank you. Good to be here. Thank you so much, man. Um, here's, so I have a
million questions.
You know, you, you just wrote the book, late confessions. It's your memoir.
Late admissions. Late admissions. Oh dude, I'm sorry. Edit it. Late admissions.
And then the
subtitle is confessions of a black conservative. Excuse me. I read the book,
dude. It was,
I knew it was going to be good. I, cause I've been watching you for a while. So
I read the book and
it really was, you know, like books just kind of like grab you and you can't
put them down.
It was, I'm not buttering you up. I swear to God, I read it and it was pretty
great.
That's great to hear. Cause I remember you were kind of like hesitant and you're
like, dude, you know,
like, well, should I write an autobiography? I don't know if you're just kind
of like messing
around with your cohost, John McWhorter, but did you really have like a kind of
hangup? Like,
do I really deserve to write an autobiography or did you know, like I'm letting
this rip?
I don't know if I put it that way, but it was a long time coming. I've been
thinking about it a
long time before I actually got it done. So yeah. But once I got going with it,
once I got into the
thing, it kind of took over. So what was that like, like, did you have an
outline for like this
part of my life, this part of my life, or did it like the memories just
spontaneously arise as you
started kind of from the beginning? I went through different, you know, phases.
First, it was going
to be changing my mind. That was my title head working title. And I thought it
was about being on the
left being on the right, you know, a black guy, conservative Reagan affiliations
and things like
that. But then kind of going left and, you know, my back and forth, the
pendulum swing of my politics,
changing my mind. It was going to be about, you know, the friends you lose and,
you know, the things
that you have to do and, you know, things like that. But that wasn't the, that
was the cover story.
That wasn't the real story. Yeah, I remember that theme from there. Then it was
going to be
the enemy within. You know, I went through a phase when it was all about, you
know, fighting my drug
addiction and, you know, dealing with my sexual addiction and things like that.
And confession and,
you know, getting religion and losing, you know, about the devil, about the guy
sitting on your
shoulder on one side, on the other side, the enemy within. And then I realized
that the real issue for
me was figuring out how to tell myself the truth about my life. That was being
honest. It was coming
into terms with it, you know. And I finally was able to get, get something
going. Yeah,
I had an outline. I had a, I mean, I had a dozen outlines.
Yeah. You just didn't know how deep you're going to go.
I knew I wanted to do the Chicago thing. I knew I wanted to do the MIT thing. I
knew I wanted to do
the Harvard thing. I knew I wanted to do the drug thing. I knew I wanted to do
the church thing.
Yeah. So I had these, you know, but it didn't have the, um, the life that it
needed. It didn't have
the, uh, I want to say something like thematic integrity. It, it, it didn't, it
didn't have the
vision. It wasn't, it wasn't quite right. What do you think the theme was? So I,
cause I have an
idea of what the kind of the theme was for me. What do you think the theme was,
at least from my
experience of it, what do you think the theme was for you when you're writing
it or like that you took
away from it afterwards? Well, I hint at that in the preface, when I say it's
the problem of self
regard. And I, I, I say I'm, I'm playing a game with the reader. The reader has
to figure out
whether or not what I'm saying about myself is true. And I'm, I call myself
being clever. You know,
I say, uh, I'm going to tell you the worst things about myself and in doing so
I'm going to gain your
trust. Yeah. I remember I was kind of tickle and I read that. I'm like, God
damn it. He's so smart,
dude. It's such a good way to start the book. But that, that was true though.
It was, you really
did disclose, you know, a lot. And it wasn't like, you know, I read it and I
was like, first of all,
and I got to say, and this is, I just didn't know how much of the book was
going to be about you getting
pussy. That was crazy. Got a lot of what you got a lot of pussy. A lot of the
book was about getting
pussy and I growing weed. I had to, sometimes I had to turn it over and check.
I was like,
is this my life story? And I was like, no, I was like, this is, this is you
Glenn.
Well, I wasn't bragging. I wasn't trying to prove anything.
I was just telling you what you don't need to, bro. You don't need to, man.
That was the smoking
jacket, dude. I, I would try to explain that to people. I'm like, what are you
talking about?
I'm like, dude, it's the funniest thing. That was your uncle Adler's smoking
jacket?
You should have known my uncle Adler, man. Yeah. That was my uncle Adler's
smoking jacket
and he gave it to me. I mean, it was, he came to my bachelor pad on the near
north side of Chicago,
Lincoln park. And, you know, it was all set up for seduction. You know, I've
got the music
played and I got the incense burning and the weed and whatnot, you know, the
fireplace and the
exposed brick, the track lighting, the four poster bed, you know, I'm ready,
bro.
And he says, oh man, this is too much. You know, you will make better use of
this than me. Cause he
was, he was this, uh, Duke Ellington esque. He was born in the early twenties.
So, you know,
he would have been like 30 years old in 1952, 53, you know, he was, he was, uh,
he was in his prime.
He was in his prime and he transferred you the smoking jacket.
Well, by the time I, this happened, which was the late seventies, uh, he was
past his prime and he was,
he was in decline. He drank himself to death. He had, he had a lot of different
issues,
but he was a ladies man par excellence. And, you know, wait, so how old was he
when he gave you the
jacket? How old was he when he gave you the jacket? Uh, okay. This was, he
would have been
55. Oh, okay. I thought you were saying he was 30. I got you. So he, he was
like really happy.
He was still making good use of it. So what, so what was the protocol for the
jacket? Would it be
on like in the house? Would you toss it on afterwards? Like how exactly did it
work?
The coolest thing was coming out of the shower, drying off and just putting the
jacket on.
And then I don't know if you fully, I mean, maybe you recognize this, but just
like the,
the poetic nature of how it met its demise, just a scorned young lover, cutting
it to pieces. Like
there was no other way that jacket was going to lose form other than that, by
the hands of a scorned young
lady. It was like some kind of Greek tragedy. I read that. I was like, this is
beautiful.
Like I say, it was like entrails thrown on the floor. Like, you know, a soothsayer
is supposed
to come in and tell you what your future is going to be when you see this shit.
But I, I, that's what I really liked. Cause like, you know, you really can,
like you were saying like,
oh, I'll just hit a couple of key themes from the South side of Chicago, blah,
blah, blah. But you
really really went in, in the autobiography. And it was like, you were really
laid to like, you know,
just stuff out there that I think a lot of people would kind of be like,
no, I'm going to polish my image where you're like, well, I want to be
authentic, but then I don't want to
totally, you know, lose it. Cause everyone has stuff they've done that they're
obviously not proud of.
- To the point where people might be saying, you're telling me too much. They
might be saying,
why are you telling me all of this? They might be trying, trying to say, oh, it
was that bad.
You think you can get a pass by telling me how bad it was? You know?
- Yeah. But that's kind of, I think that's kind of a, I don't know. I don't, I
totally agree with what
you're saying, but I'm like, if you've lived a full life, you know, like you've
made mistakes yourself
and to be able to like make them learn from them, grow from them. And I just, I
just like when people
are like, you think you're going to pass now? It's like, dude, I'm sure you've
done stuff too. Like,
yeah. My answer would be like, yeah, dude, I wrote it down. And it's like, well,
a pass for what?
It's just like, this is my life. This is what happened. And it's like.
- Well, that's where I came out. I came out saying,
you know, it is what it is. And I have to tell it fully. And as I say in the
book,
in a way that I'm exposing myself to myself too. I'm going back over these
things and I'm asking
myself, man, how could you have done that? What was it going on in your mind?
Like, like when I
smoked crack in my Harvard office. - Yeah. That was pretty good. That was a
good one too.
- I mean, I take my whole career in my hands. Anybody could have come in with a
security key, man.
- Yeah. That and also. - That was crazy.
- That was a wild move. And also I will say, bringing, bringing, you know, the
side babe to a work
thing. Bro, I read that. I was like, no, Glenn, don't do this. No, no, dude,
that was crazy.
- In Israel. - In Israel.
- I took her to a conference at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mount Scopus
campus.
- And were people really like, did people actually like to take you
side and like, dude, what the hell were they just kind of like.
- They did, but they raised their eyebrows, but I was oblivious to the whole
thing, man.
I was getting ready to go into the Reagan administration as an undersecretary
to Bill
Bennett in the education department, which was all about family values and
everything like that.
And I was, it was just crazy.
- Yeah. But the, the thing that I'm a, this is the one question that like,
cause when I,
I read your autobiography and it sent me, I started reading them now, like impulsively,
I'm reading a bunch of them because then I started like, when I read yours,
the big question was like to that point of like, when you were like, you know,
orbiting the apex of basically worldly power. And then you, the whole thing
that the thinking
that I would get from your autobiography would be like, yeah, I shouldn't be
doing this.
I shouldn't be having extra, extra marital affairs, but I kind of deserve a
reward.
I'm working hard. I'm getting all this stuff. And if that was the thinking at
the time,
and it's honestly like, like you said, you weren't obviously the only one in
Washington,
DC that had, you know, a little sweet thing on the side. So the question would
be like,
looking back on all that, what do you think a person in like super high stature,
like deserves
quote unquote, or like, what do you think looking back on that now? Does that
question make sense?
- Well, yeah.
In the book, I talk about, um, master the universe, you know, and I got that
from Tom Wolfe,
the writer, you know, his book, Bonfire of the Vanities, you know, his
character, Sherman McCoy,
who was a bond trader. He was like 35 year old at a big apartment in the Park
Avenue or something
like that. He was living the life in New York city, had social x-ray wife and
all the museum,
you know, benefit things and whatnot. And he's making a million dollars a year.
And he's a master of the
universe. He has a side piece. He gets into trouble. It's a fiasco. You have to
read the book.
It's very funny. But I identified with that guy. I thought, you know, you know,
I'm a professor at
Harvard. I'm the smartest guy in the room. You know, I wasn't making his kind
of money, but I wasn't
doing badly. I had rea