Episode 43: Best Of

Off-Kilter is on a break this week so we’ve rounded up up some of our favorite conversations to hold you over in the meantime. We’ll be back with new content next week. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.

Back in July, Rebecca spoke with a self-described feminist Muslim, Iranian-American comedian, Zahra Noorbaksh, who shared how she uses comedy to break through bigotry in America. Next, Dylan Matthews of Vox unpacked why it’s such a big deal that Sesame Street now has an autistic character. Listeners need no introduction for our last guest, Randy Bryce, who is running to unseat Speaker Paul Ryan in Congress joined us at this summer’s Netroots Nation conference. What’s so exciting about Bryce’s campaign, apart from the opportunity to replace a far-right extremist with a solid progressive, is seeing a working guys’ guy go from obscurity to stardom for all the right reasons.

This week’s guests:

• Zahra Noorbaksh, Iranian-American Comedian
• Randy Bryce, candidate for Congress in Wisconsin’s 1st District
• Dylan Matthews, Vox

Transcript of show:

REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): Hey Off Kilter listeners, the show is on a break this week so we’ve rounded up some of our favorite conversations to hold you over in the meantime.

VALLAS: You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. Islamophobia is hardly a new phenomenon in the U.S. but in 2017 with President Trump in the White House it’s on steroids. Can comedy be a tool for busting myths and fear inducing misperceptions about Islam? And maybe even for pushing back on xenophobia fueled attacks on Muslims in America? Zahra Noorbaksh, she is a feminist Muslim, an Iranian American comedian and co-host of “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim” a podcast whose provocative work calls that very question. I met her at the Sundance Creative Change retreat earlier this summer and got to see her workshop her new one woman show, “On Behalf of All Muslims” which is set to tour this year. And Zahra, I’m so thrilled to say welcome to the show.

ZAHRA NOORBAKSH : Thank you for having me.

VALLAS: So I asked a question there that I know you have views on but I don’t want to let you speak to those yet because before I do I want to ask, how did you get into doing comedy of all things?

NOORBAKSH: I, well there’s the dorky question and then the technically true correct question. Which order should I give them in?

VALLAS: I think you should pick.

NOORBAKSH: Alright so technically I got into comedy when a friend of mine who was running this talent show for the Iranian Cultural Center at Berkeley was like I want you to do your set at this talent show with like 500 parents with all these stories about your dad and just like string them together in one routine. And I did it and it was amazing. And I was like I want to do this. And I started going to all these Iranian benefits where they would always say like oh let’s have some comedy from Zahra Noorbaksh, and you know it was really exciting. They paid me, I was like I already, like two years into comedy, like I skipped. But then they would tell me come back do more stuff, just don’t do anything political and nothing about religion and definitely don’t talk about sex and don’t mention your atheist boyfriend. Do you have any new material? And I was like nope, no, I don’t that’s about, that covers the gambit. Like all I have is stories about my dad. So I ventured out into the mainstream comedy club scene, this place called The Brainwash. Where you like are performing in front of maybe 10 to 20 people who were trapped there because they’re doing their laundry. And they can’t leave and it’s a laundromat/cafe. So it’s a great place to just sort of like, everyone is stuck and it’s a great spot to do comedy.

And I totally bombed. And it was a miserable set but I really wanted to do it again and that’s when I knew I wanted be a comedian. But the dorky answer is when I was 10 and we were drawing X-Men cards my guy friends because I was a huge tomboy were like what’s your X-Men’s power and I said my X-Men’s power is the ability to make anyone laugh. And I was like, huh, I probably want to be a comedian because that’s the dorkiest superhero power of all time.

VALLAS: Dorky but also enviable as someone who tries to be funny and often fails I will say. So now to the sort of second part question which is you don’t just do comedy, you do comedy about a whole bunch of topics that as you just laid out people have told you to stay away from because they’re not kosher to do comedy about. So how did you get into doing comedy about being a feminist Muslim?

NOORBAKSH: So I started out just trying to do jokes about my family and sort of coming of age stories and not really touching on anything political. But then I would get off the stage and inevitably an audience member would come by and say, “How come you didn’t talk about being Mexican? Oh you’re not Mexican, oh are you Sicilian? How come you didn’t talk about being Sicilian?” And it was just like, and then it was Greek and then I would say oh no I’m Iranian. “Oh how come you don’t say Persian, my friend says Persian, how come you don’t talk about that?” And I would just notice that while all these other white male comics would go up and do their set about like dating or whatever, my audience was always distracted. You know, they wanted to know where is your family from, what are you doing here, your name is different.

Like my name was always the first give away, right, because people would say, “Now coming to the stage Zahra Noorbaksh.” Like, where is that name from? So because they were distracted with all these question they weren’t laughing with me, they were distracted. And so I just decided to declare all of my [INAUDIBLE] at the top and then see what happened. And the more I did it, the more interesting it was to me that like, this sort of reverse effect happened where you know, there is all this talk about how we need to create relatable humor, and relatable and humanize our experience. But when you enter into it was the expectation of relating, then you get the opposite effect because audiences are smart, they want to solve puzzles. If you present to them a charlatan, they’re curious about their humanity. And if you present to them your humanity, then they want to know well what makes us different actually though. And so then I was having the reverse experience, right. Where I would put out up top, here are all the ways that I’m not at all like you. And then my audience would do the work of searching for the ways of where we’re the same rather than me having to enforce that.

VALLAS: Do people ever come up to you and say that they were offended or they thought that you were joking about something that’s actually a serious subject?

NOORBAKSH: I think my favorite response was a friend of mine who was like, cause I’ll say up top, “My name is Zahra, I’m a feminist Muslim Iranian American comedian. I also identify as a pork eating, drinking, pre-marital sexing having, bisexual marriage and atheist now kind of Muslim.” And then from there I went into this rant about men and one of my friends said I’m so busy being offended by what you said about men that I forgot that you were Muslim. And I love that, I love that because I think not because, not that I want to erase my Muslim identity but because right now Islam is on such a siloed spotlight. There’s this way that we’re like always examining it, with careful tools or not so careful tools. But it’s being examined and I love that because I sort of put it all up top then in the comments afterwards I’m being asked about everything else, you know? People aren’t asking me about like how Muslim I am or how I practice or how I observe. I’m getting questions about my relationship dynamics which is what I want.

VALLAS: So sort of getting people, without telling them to get there but getting people to this stuff that is actually past the labels where they were distracted when you weren’t bringing it up.

NOORBAKSH: Exactly.

VALLAS: So how is your comedy received by people who are Muslim?

NOORBAKSH: All over the place because who are Muslim are all over the place. You know, there’s sort of this experience of I call it, I call it ‘Kindergarten Islam’. I think there is this way that we all have to go to Kindergarten of Islam school as Muslims and non-Muslims. Where you know, as Muslims we sort of grow up thinking like, OK well my family is a traditional Muslim family and I learned really soon that that doesn’t make any sense. My first sort of venturing into this career and the work that I do began as a memoirist in 2011 I was in the book, “Love InshAllah: The Secret Love Live of American Muslim Women” and one of the great things about being a part of that anthology was you were in a book of 25 stories all by Muslim women and all these stories contradicted each other. I remember was first writing it and I would say the traditional Muslim, I had a traditional Muslim family. I would get red lined everytime and they were red lining everyone who wrote that. And they said listen, the editors, Ayesha Mattu, and Nura Maznavi said you and all 25 of these other women are writing traditional Muslim family. So what is that?

So I get, some Muslims who come to the show who are like whoa I don’t do that, I don’t practice that way, you know and of course there’s the common understanding that Muslims don’t eat pork but then I, in my show, that’s not, I don’t leave it at that. That’s the start of a conversation about how well you know, my husband, he’s atheist, he doesn’t eat pork because politically he believes that it’s wrong, that pigs are closer to human beings than even primates and that they’re a smart creature and they shouldn’t be killed and slaughtered and so he won’t eat pork. So I don’t eat pork anymore but not because of my Muslim-ness but because of his politics. Does that make him more Muslim than me? You know, what are all these traditions about and why are we essentializing Islam to these really basic rules and labels? And so, you know, Muslims who haven’t had the experience of sort of questioning their practice or observance or even their experience of Islam outside of the general knowledge of like well, there’s Sunni and Shi’a, that’s it, then have all kinds of new questions realizing that there’s 70 sects of Islam, that it runs the gambit in terms of practice and that a lot of what we think is traditional practice is really just what our parents passed down to us. And on the non-Muslim side you know, then it opens up for, a lot of what I hear actually and see is that people have this sort of like oh this is a very universal story question mark, like surprising themselves that they’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid in terms of like, what you talked about earlier, Islamophobia and xenophobia and thinking that there were so many differences when really actually it’s as complex as people are complex.

VALLAS: And that’s part of what your comedy actually takes on head on. I’m thinking about one joke that I heard you make in particular as part of the show that you were workshopping this summer at Sundance. You told a joke that was very much rooted in the story of how you got your family to be ok with you being with an atheist white guy. Tell that story, and it very much has to do with what the definition of a Muslim is.

NOORBAKSH: So I told my dad, I tried to explain to him that my boyfriend now husband, but at the time boyfriend was atheist. And in Farsi there is no word for atheist, there’s just seven slurs. “He who denies God, then saw God, then denied God,” “jerk,” and it just goes down from there. And I told him, “well you know he’s not really,” sort of waffling and my dad says, “What is atheist, some kind of Christian? It’s OK, it’s OK, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, it’s all the same damn thing. We all believe in God, we surrender to that God,” I was like, “Uh, he doesn’t really believe in God so much as he believes in science.” And my dad was like, “That Tom Cruise stuff?” And I was like oh, God, this just got worse now. And then my mom jumped in and my mom was like, “Is he Jewish? Because if he’s Jewish then he’s circumcised and he has to get circumcised and no man will do that for you. Is he Jewish?” And I said, “I don’t know.”

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: Which is the only acceptable answer right?

NOORBAKSH: I don’t know, yeah, Mom coming in with a trick question. Is he circumcised? Of course I don’t know Mom, I don’t know the answer to that. [LAUGHTER] And my dad said, “Listen, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist, the word Muslim just means one who surrenders to a force greater than himself, that’s it.” And I said “He’s not spiritual, he believes that we have religion due to the lack of a real economic infrastructure. He doesn’t believe in God, no God, not any God.” And my dad took that in, and he thought for a minute, and then he came back with, “Well, does he believe in gravity? Gravity is a force greater than him, if he surrenders to that force, cannot change it, he surrenders to that force, he’s a Muslim.” And so that was it, gravity makes you Muslim.

VALLAS: It’s brilliant right. So it’s sort of this creative definition that gets out of all of the kind of essentialisizing as you said, and I love that story so much and I want to ask is it true? And maybe if it’s not lie to me and tell me it is.

[LAUGHTER]

NOORBAKSH: Yeah. Yes, the story is true, that’s how my dad came to it and one part of a one hour show that I have called “All Atheists are Muslim” which is about sort of the process of revealing to my parents that like, hey guess what I have a boyfriend, guess what he’s atheist, guess what this is what that means. And it also came at a time when I was 25 years old and thought of myself as this really independent young feminist woman who never needed her father’s approval but all of a sudden I was like you know, a total mess and seeking dad’s approval and being like hey, I really, it’s really important to me that you approve, I don’t know why, I shouldn’t care but please be ok with this. And he sort of brought us together.

VALLAS: So you’ve written about, and I’m sort of getting back to the question that I ceeded in the opening which is a huge part of why I’m so excited to talk with you for this show. You’ve written about how following the election lots of people have looked at you and said oh my God, a feminist Muslim comedian, this is exactly what this country needs right now, referring to of course living in, I hate calling it this but Trump’s America with Islamophobia being sort of what we’re hearing handed down literally from the White House and embedded in that question is sort of this hope that through comedy, someone like you might be able to show people that you know Muslims are just like the rest of us. But you’ve actually come to reject this as a theory of change and I would love to hear you talk a little bit about that progression and why you’ve landed there.

NOORBAKSH: Well one of the things that I notice was happening with the show “All Atheists are Muslim” was that it did do a lot in terms of getting people who were trying to understand Islam, trying to understand Islam, trying to understand Islam to sort of like open out and realize that it’s not about understanding this religion, it’s about realizing that you’re sort of, you’ve essentialized a whole group of human beings and locked their identity into being about their religion. And you’ve forgotten all of these other questions about family, about love, that we are used to ask when actually we see plays and we see shows. When we go to a play, we don’t go to a play to see you know, and understand one aspect of a person’s identity, we go to see an entire story about, that’s rich with conflict, not a story that’s there to make you connect with somebody.

And it’s always really like, it’s interesting because in doing “All Atheists are Muslim” around the country, it did have that effect where it sort of like, allowed people to realize what they’d been doing in terms of what they’ve been expecting of Muslim artists, writers, comedians, to explain explain, educate, educate, sort of them broke them of that self. But the other thing that I noticed happening was that I would get people in the audience who were actually anti-Muslim and that’s why they came. Because they thought that I was making some commentary about Muslims as atheists, which was really interesting. And actually part of what I loved about the title, I loved that you couldn’t tell what side I was on. And so it brought all these different people to the crowd. But what they walked away with was they would say well your family is one of the good ones. And then they would compartmentalize it that way and leave with that. And this polarization of you know, this idea, this notion that we have to catch the bad ones and we can catch the bad ones by essentially forcing all of the quote, unquote good ones to confess their story, confess their relatability is a huge problem. A big symptom of xenophobia and a very scary stepping stone when we start talking about internment.

VALLAS: And that seems sort of embedded in also the title, the name of your podcast, “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.”

NOORBAKSH: Yeah and that’s actually why co-host Tanzila Ahmed, that’s why we started the podcast was that we were both noticing this phenomenon where in her audiences and readership she also discovered that the things that make her a good Muslim to non-Muslim folks are the same things that make her a bad Muslim to Muslim folks and vice versa. There was just no winning you know, like and I noticed this as well that when I saw I eat pork and drink and am married to this atheist guy then some non-Muslim audiences will see that as ways that I am less Muslim and therefore more American. And on the other end of it, the flip would always be true to that like because my husband is a doctor and I’m married and that’s very traditional and that’s making me more Muslim. And therefore less American. And it was like this is kind of gross and sort of a problem and kind of a really difficult space to do any kind of art from when you’re being pinned as either on this end or that end and neither end really wins. What is this polarization about? Where does it stem from and what can we do to sort of have an impact and shift it. And so we decided to create a podcast, “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim” and it’s basically, it’s a girlfriend podcast where also a part of our being girlfriends is that we talk about the news all the time, we’re both politically minded, we both seek to have impact and create culture shift and it’s been really rewarding doing that show.

VALLAS: So in the last minute or so that I have with you and frankly I wish I had all day because there’s a lot more that I want to hear you talk about. So if your goal in your work is not reliability, it’s not hey I’m going to show people that there’s a good Muslim out there and therefore it’s going to help them see that oh my God, Muslims are people too like me. What is your goal with your work and what is your theory of change?

NOORBAKSH: My goal and my theory of change is to tell my story. I think that I’m certainly not saying that people shouldn’t tell their story, I’m saying that don’t fall for the trap, the xenophobic trap of having to explain yourself because that is just exposition and every good writer is taught that you don’t just throw exposition out there. It’s bad writing and it’s a double edged sword because, actually I don’t even know if I’m using that idiom right. But American idioms often don’t make any sense to me. But it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work in a lot of ways. When we’re trying to reach people by saying like we’re the same, we’re the same, we’re the same, then we as an audience, as a smart audience are trained to be skeptical of that. And the guidance that we have to navigate this is as old as all the tools of good writing have always been which is talk about what makes you different. Talk about the conflicts in your life, everyone else will do the work of figuring out you know, how they connect to you.

VALLAS: Zahra Noorbaksh is a feminist Muslim Iranian American comedian. Her one woman show “All Atheists are Muslim” was directed by W. Kamau Bell and dubbed a highlight of the international New York city fringe theater festival by the New Yorker magazine. I had a great time getting to know her a little bit at the Sundance Creative Change festival and her tour, her one woman show “On Behalf of all Muslims” is set to tour this year. Zahra, where can people find out more about you?

NOORBAKSH: Come check me out at Zahracomedy.com, and I will tell you where to find me.

VALLAS: Zahra, you’re awesome, thank you for doing what you do and really a pleasure to have you on the show.

NOORBAKSH: Thank you, this was a great conversation.

VALLAS: Don’t go away more Off Kilter after the break, I’m Rebecca Vallas.

[MUSIC]

Hey Off Kilter listeners, the show is on a break this week so we’ve rounded up some of our favorite conversations to hold you over in the meantime.

You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. Last week, Sesame Street introduced its newest character, Julia. Julia, who’s been in Sesame Street storybooks and digital resources for about two years now is the television show’s first autistic character. Here to talk to about the significance of Julia is Dylan Matthews. He’s a reporter with Vox who recently wrote on the topic. Dylan, thanks so much for joining the show.

DYLAN MATTHEWS: Thanks so much for having me.

VALLAS: So, help us understand, who is Julia? What’s the deal? Why is she new on the scene for Sesame Street?

MATTHEWS: So, Julia is part of a project that Sesame Street and the Sesame workshop has had for a couple years now, in partnership with a number of autism groups, and in particular in collaboration with some researchers and autistic self advocates to have a form of representation for autistic kids on the show. And also to sort of provide a model for non-autistic kids for what to do when you meet an autistic classmate and sort of how to understand their differences and get along and play with them. In a lot of ways it’s the same message that the show has always had. Which is you know, we get along better if we can work and play with each other.

VALLAS: So Julia, as I mentioned is, and as you have now explained isn’t new to the show. She’s been part of this storybook project, so she’s been part of sort of Sesame Street resources that parents and schools can use. But this was her first time appear as part of Sesame Street’s show, on TV. What do you view as the significance of her making that jump?

MATTHEWS: Well I think the show has a much broader viewership the way it works now. They have a deal with HBO where the episode will initially air there and then will be available to public TV stations. So it has sort of the same broad reach that Sesame has had for four decades now. And even families that might not have an iPad to use the Sesame Street app that she’s been in in the past, can now sort of show their kids on the TV. It’s also significant in that it shows Julia interacting with sort of, key characters in the show that are favorites of kids and fans. A lot of the episode is Big Bird getting to know her and getting to know sort of how she is different and learning to get along with her. Elmo is one of her good friends on the show. And so I think that’s really significant and gives sort of kid views an entry to the character.

VALLAS: And Big Bird and Elmo are two of the characters that watchers of Sesame Street will know well. So is there, I guess I’m sort of hearing you say there is significance to her being friends with the characters that kids who watch the show view sort of as their friends.

MATTHEWS: Right, it makes her feel not lot like a sort of tangential like, side character. She’s playing with the big muppets, so to speak. And I think another thing that was really significant about how the show chose to present it is that the arch of the episode is one of Big Bird wanting to be friends with her and wanting to learn how to get along and play with her. So it’s portraying befriending autistic kids as something that you should want to do. That sort of, good friends will try to do. And that’s really significant and huge. It’s not like he’s being nice to her out of a sense of obligation, he sort of wants to play games with her and have fun, the same way he does with all the other muppets.

VALLAS: And part of what viewers see and folks who haven’t seen or maybe are not regular watchers of Sesame Street. I will confess, it’s been awhile since I watched Sesame Street until reading your piece this past week. But folks can actually watch the first half of the episode where Julia appears. It’s embedded in the article that you published on Vox’s website this past week. But part of what happens as you describe, they play a game. And it’s not the neurotypical muppets game, it’s Julia’s game, and she actually teaches them how to play. So one of the points that you actually make in your article is that it appears that Sesame Street’s tack here is that the audience for what they’re doing is not autistic children who may be watching the show but actually neurotypical kids.

MATTHEWS: Absolutely. And I don’t want to discount how important it is for autistic kids to see kids like them on the TV. Representation is so important and it’s great that the show’s doing that for them. But there are more neurotypical kids than autistic kids and so I think that the predominate viewership will be them. And I think it’s important for them to learn that it’s not OK to ostracise people because they’re different. That sometimes things that are obvious to you might not be obvious to someone else. That other people might play in a different way and that’s OK and you can actually have fun learning from them in that way.

I know I remember people in elementary school people being pretty vicious about kids who had sort of, differences or didn’t fit the mold. And we know from four decades now of good social psychology research about Sesame Street, that’s pretty good at modeling pro-social behavior. That there is even some evidence that sort of delinquency and crime might be reduced for kids who’ve watched Sesame Street. And so it’s an important educational resource to teach kids how to interact with each other in a sort of, productive and cooperative way. And that’s extra important when you’re dealing with a sort of vulnerable population of children that typically might be mistreated.

VALLAS: Your article in Vox is a very personal one. It’s not just reporting the news that Sesame Street has added Julia as a character and that she’s now had a central role in an episode on their regular show. But you also share personal experiences growing up with autism. And being around kids who were not always friendly and not always inviting to be somewhat diplomatic. I wonder if you would be willing to share a little bit of that experience and how you think things might have been different if Sesame Street had been taking these kinds of steps back when we were kids.

MATTHEWS: Sure, sure. So I open the article with sort of one anecdote from my childhood which was my folks had a group of friends that would sometimes get together and the kids would play downstairs while the parents were up talking. And there was one day, I guess I must have been sort of two or three, where we were all playing hide and seek. And I had never played hide and seek before. And it’s my understanding that a lot of neurotypical kids pick up on this very fast. I just didn’t. I had no idea what the rules were. I would ask people what the rules were and they would not tell me what the rules were.

VALLAS: Kids are the worst. I just need to say that.

[LAUGHTER]

MATTHEWS: Kids are the meanest people in the world. [LAUGHTER].

VALLAS: They really are.

MATTHEW: But I went upstairs to ask my mom sort of, to explain this to me. And she sort started getting going and then one of her friends was like, “No, no, no, you shouldn’t coddle them, he needs to like figure out what the rules are for himself.” And like I get where all of that’s coming from. Parents get all these mixed messages of you need to be tough on your kids or you need to be sort of ultra supportive of your kids and it’s hard to make the right decision in those cases. But what was so powerful to me about episode was it was specifically about how to include kids in situations like that. And how to make sure that everyone is sort of operating on the same page and there is nothing sort of shameful or like cheating about laying thing out to people who might need that.

And also there is something interesting in how, as you say, Julia has her own game that she presents to the other muppets called ‘boing tag’ that’s not like how tag is normally played but it’s her own variant on this. And the kids ask her to explain the rules she sort of gets them in on it. And is a way, she’s modeling for them how she would like them to include her in the future. And how what resources she needs to be an equal participant and to play and have fun with them. And so that felt very poignant for me, given that memory and given some of those experiences.

VALLAS: Do you think that the audience is not just neurotypical but also parents with neurotypical kids?

MATTHEWS: I think there is a degree to that. I mean, parents are very protective of their kids and sometimes that can extend to sort of skepticism of other people’s kids. And I think one thing that the show models is that it’s not dangerous for your kids to be playing with kids with autism. That this isn’t some some of dangerous dark mental illness that’s going to, I don’t know, leap out and your child. And it’s a real worry for me. There’s been a lot of narratives especially after certain shootings, I’m sure you’ll remember after the Sandy Hook massacre there was a lot of speculation that the shooter might be on the spectrum and that that might have played a role. There is no evidence that people with mental illnesses or people on the spectrum are at all more violent. Indeed, typically we’re victims of violence much more than the general population. But it leads to a sort of popular stereotype especially among adults and parents. And so, that’s something I worry about a lot and I think having a character like Julia who is clearly like, benign and wants to have fun and is not a threat to anyone is really valuable in combating that.

VALLAS: So something that you point out in your article is that for a long time, there’s been one autism group that has sort of, as you put it, the most purchase in hollywood and the entertainment industry. And that’s a group called Autism Speaks. Probably most of my listeners are familiar with that group, it maybe has the most name recognition when it comes to groups that work on issues related to autism. And they are often work with celebrities, I won’t call out a bunch of names but they often work with celebrities to do, kind of, benefit concerts and sort of, you know, big flashy affairs that are fundraisers. But the people who are affiliated with this group have said such things as likening autism to being kidnapped. Or as you point out having a fatal disease. And you even highlight that one of the group’s fundraising videos features one of the executives at the organization recalling a time, as you put it, that she thought about driving off a bridge to kill her autistic child. Tell me a little bit about Autism Speaks and the significance of a different approach in the entertainment industry and also, to some extent, educational entertainment with Sesame Street, that is not that Autism Speaks way.

MATTHEWS: Yeah, I think some of the problem with how Autism Speaks has approached things is embedded in the name. That there is sort of an assumption in the name Autism Speaks that people with autism can’t speak for ourselves and that we can’t advocate for ourselves and that we need an organization of neurotypical people as our sort of guardians and protectors. And you see that in some of their iconography even. Their icon is a big puzzle piece as though we’re like riddles for the world to solve. And one thing that’s happened in recent decades is groups like the Autistic Self Advocacy Network have come up run by autistic people for autistic people based on the premise that we can express ourselves. We might be sort of social in different ways that the neurotypical people but we have voices, we can advocate for ourselves. And that conversations about us should include us. There’s the common catchphrase is “Nothing about us without us.”

And Autism Speaks has been without us for a long time. They only recently actually autistic board members. And so Autism Speaks worked with Sesame Street to a degree on this. We should say that up front. But they also include the Self Advocacy Network, they also included researchers and it’s not an episode that portray autism as some force kidnapping your children and victimizing parents. It presents Julia as a person with differences. And I think that’s huge.

VALLAS: And we should give a shout out to Ari Ne’eman would founded the Autistic Self Advocacy Network who is a good friend. And also Julia Bascom who now runs the organization. So doing amazing work with Sesame Street here. The last sort of line of conversation I want to broach with you is something that people who don’t have an autistic friends or co-workers or aren’t aware that they have them might not really be aware of. I really love how you present this in your reporting on this episode and what Sesame Street is doing.

You talk about the importance of helping people to understand that friendship can exist even among non-verbal kids. There often is sort of this, I don’t know if it’s fear or if it’s just lack of exposure, lack of understanding where people think well, “Oh, he’s non-verbal.” Right? Which sort of mean, what, is this kid going to go sit in a dark room and no one is ever going to see or hear from him and so he’s not really a full person. But that isn’t true and it is a deeply offensive and incredibly limited, I would go so far as to say neanderthal level view of autistic people. And this show is doing a lot to help educate, probably even adults. Talk a little bit about what it might be like or what it is like to be a person who is nonverbal but is still a person.

MATTHEWS: Yeah, and I think the key thing is that nonverbal doesn’t mean non-expressive or non-social or non-communicative. That there are a lot of ways that people on the spectrum, people with autism can communicate that don’t involve sort of traditional, sort of eye contact person to person talking. A lot of people rely on writing or speech to text. iPads have actually been a huge thing in the autism community for expanding expression. There are a variety of tools that people can use to communicate and I think that’s crucial because a lot of people see people who don’t like the speak or are largely non-verbal and assume that they can’t speak up for themselves or they can’t sort of have a voice of their own. And they can, it just isn’t in the way that the neurotypical people do.

And this is an interesting thing in the episode is that Julia is mostly non-verbal, that she says a couple of words but primarily doesn’t communicate that. And I’ve seen some sort of, autistic people express some concern about that from a perspective of wanting her to voice herself more strongly and not be spoken on behalf of as much as happens in the episode. And I’m definitely sympathetic to that. But I’m also sympathetic to having a character who is largely nonverbal and who still is able to play with kids and get along with them and communicate with them. And modeling that just because a kid in your class might not like, hold a conversation with you doesn’t mean that they they’re not interested in being your friend or playing with you. And so I thought that was an interesting creative choice on their part and as long as it sort of evolves to include her having her own thoughts and opinions and expressing them in her own Julia way, I think could be a very interesting and valuable model for the show.

VALLAS: Dylan Matthews is a reporter with Vox. You can find his most recent column on this subject, titled “The Subtle Brilliance Of Sesame Street First Episode Starring An Autistic Muppet” at Vox.com. Dylan, thanks so much for joining the show.

MATTHEWS: Glad to be here. Don’t go away more Off Kilter after the break, I’m Rebecca Vallas.

[MUSIC]

Hey Off Kilter listeners, the show is on a break this week so we’ve rounded up some of our favorite conversations to hold you over in the meantime.

I’m so thrilled to be joined by Randy Bryce, you know who he is, he doesn’t need much of an introduction for folks who are listening to this show because he’s the guy running against Paul Ryan. Randy Bryce, thank you so much for joining the show.

RANDY BRYCE: Thanks for the invitation it’s a pleasure to be talking with you.

VALLAS: So I’m really excited to hear your views on a lot of things but I really want to start with your personal story. What spurred you to run? You’re, we were just talking before the tape started rolling, you’re actually a regular person, not someone who came up, you know, in politics. What spurred you to actually run for office here?

BRYCE: Just things that are going on, you know in our district and then seeing that amplified onto the national level. Looking at how bad things have gotten for working people since Scott Walker, and I call him the banana republicans have taken over, pretty much taken over Wisconsin. It’s not just how horrible the policies have been that have reduced everything as far wages, since he’s been in the middle class has been disappearing from the state faster than any other state in the country. He talks about how we’re getting more jobs but the poverty level in increasing at the same time which tells me that you know, what kind of jobs are there that are coming in? They’re horrible jobs and seeing this being taken to the national level it’s gotten to the point where you know, it’s almost like on behalf of our state’s honor to do something because he’s Speaker of the House.

VALLAS: So you’re known as actually being kind of a working guy’s guy. That’s a lot of the press you’ve gotten and that makes you very different as sort of a political persona and a political individual than Paul Ryan who in many ways is sort of the opposite of that. I’m curious to hear you speak a little bit about your district and what people in the district that you’re fighting to represent think about Paul Ryan and what kind of reception you’ve had in challenging him?

BRYCE: Well it’s been, it’s overwhelming working class district and there is you know, there are cities, the urban population areas and then in between there’s a good rural population too. Lot of farmlands that I pass to get to the freeway to go north, that’s where my job site is. But from, I mean the big thing I hear is health care. And it’s not just what they’re doing now, I mean first of all they’ve had over 7 years to have some kind of alternative in place to just, all they’re doing is repealing. They don’t have any plan to replace, they’re even talking about well let’s just take it away. Basically, let’s just take it away. And we’ll worry about something later. And I mean you know that it’s all tied in with tax reform which is part of this, and I refer to it as wealthcare, it’s not health care, it’s wealthcare because you’re going to have millionaires that are going to be getting more money. That’s the tradeoff, everything politically is like trading off. You get something and somebody gets something in return.

So they’re taking away basic healthcare which I mean for my son that’s me worrying about him going on a sled ride going down the hill in the wintertime. For me, being a cancer survivor, that’s, my thanks for surviving cancer is being listed as a preexisting condition. For my mom who’s in the video, that’s her independence, that’s her ability to go to the grocery store, to go visit my dad who has Alzheimer’s, that’s living in assisted living right now. That’s a huge issue. And it’s not just that I would say that’s a big thing overall. Now Paul Ryan is having these captive audience townhalls. I’d been calling him out saying he hasn’t had a public town hall in over 600 days, well his campaign, Politifact did me on it, so —

VALLAS: I saw that. Turns out they were wrong.

BRYCE: So I have to correct myself, it’s been over 650 days that he’s had a public town hall. [LAUGHTER] And now there’s a billboard in his district in Janesville, some PAC came up with some money that is counting how many days it’s been, I want to say 671 days now. But the number changes every day he doesn’t have one. And people are now, these private events that he’s having with the captive audiences, people are starting to call him out. They’re like wait a minute, we heard you kept telling us you had all these great ideas. Where are they? You’re not doing anything. You have, it’s a Republican congress, senate, you have a Republican kind of in the White House and even a right leaning, a conservative Supreme Court. You can pass anything. You have the ability to pass anything your heart desires and even the Supreme Court is going to say yup, it’s constitutional. That’s the same thing they did in Wisconsin, they redrew lines so that they could stay in office, we have thousands more votes of, on behalf of Democrats than we do on Republicans yet Republicans win more seats. That where the political world is going to.

VALLAS: And it’s an interesting way to put it, right. They obviously have all the levers of power under their authority, right as you said. But I would argue it’s actually worse than doing nothing, they are actively working in concert, Republicans in Washington and in all of the different branches of government to take things away from working people that they need to actually make ends meet, to thrive, to put food on the table, to know that they’re going to have a secure retirement, to know that their kids are going to be healthy and have an opportunity in this country, all to pay for those taxes for the wealthy as you were describing. Do people in Wisconsin understand that? Is that being made clear and are they aware of Paul Ryan’s role as the architect of that agenda?

BRYCE: It’s starting to become clear and that’s the main focus of our campaign which is why I’m running. Everybody in the district will know that he’s the ringleader of what’s going on.

VALLAS: So tell me a little bit about, instead of what you’re against, right, which is all the things we’ve just discussed. What is your campaign about? Obviously it’s change, it’s about putting someone in that district who actually represents folks who are from the district as opposed to the donor class and that’s been very clear from your campaign. What are the kinds of policies that you would fight for if you were in Washington instead of Paul Ryan?

BRYCE: Well being in favor, the health care advocate, Medicare for all is one of the things that I feel should be something we get started right away. Senator Tammy Baldwin who’s also coming up for reelection has a terrific idea to start covering people from 55 on up.

VALLAS: So actually lowering the Medicare age.

BRYCE: Correct. And I think that’s a brilliant idea, that’s, I don’t see this Medicare for All happening overnight, it’s going to be a process, so when people, when I say I want to get to there and I’m, sometimes people try to put me on the spot, well how long is that going to take? It’s like, realistically I don’t know. Within 10 years, definitely.

VALLAS: Policy takes time.

BRYCE: Right but the next step, I mean I see it, you know, taking steps to get there I think is a great idea. That 55 and older is one step, and then I’d like to start lower and go from like birth up to maybe mid 20s. Because you’re going to have the healthiest people paying into it, that’s going to help keep it solvent and then also as far as children, then if a parent loses their job and health care has been tied to work, a parent’s place of work, they’re still going to be covered because kids shouldn’t have to suffer because a parent gets laid off due to no fault of their own.

VALLAS: You also mention wages, and that’s been a strong piece of your campaign has been really talking about working people who are working 2 and 3 jobs in some cases and still not able to actually make ends meet, not make it into the middle class. I mean Donald Trump campaigned heavily, if he had any policy in his campaign last year around helping communities who have been left behind and that’s what he and Republicans are claiming to be doing right now even though it’s the opposite of what they’re doing as we’ve been discussing. We’re now actually at a point where the minimum wage in this country, the federal minimum wage has not been raised in 7 years. And that’s a big piece of what’s going on there. Would raising wages be part of what you would do in Washington?

BRYCE: Absolutely, I’m in favor of a minimum wage of $15 an hour. I mean, there’s this misconception that it’s high school kids just having a job, it’s not. A lot of, especially single mothers are working jobs and dependent on whatever they can, working 2, 3 jobs. If they’re not getting 40 hours a week they’re not getting health care. And I mean personally I experience working 2 full time jobs, not having a day off, like a day off was one shift on a Sunday, 6 hours on a Sunday. That was my day off, that’s going on all too frequently now and we find too it’s not just the fact of doing the right thing so that you know if you talk about family values you work your hours then you go home, you spend time with your family.

VALLAS: Sure.

BRYCE: You should be able to do that with one job. You get time with your kids, time for your own self, just to rest, relax. And if you have extra money it’s, you can buy things. Otherwise what you’re doing is you’re saving and one you have a couple extra dollars to buy something else that’s contributing to helping boost up the economy. And that’s, it’s just a no brainer. You know it help creates the demand and then you need to create a supply for that demand which in turn is going to create more jobs.

VALLAS: One of the things that is one of Paul Ryan’s favorite talking points that makes me bang my head against the wall more than anything is that he likes to say that the difference between being in poverty and not being in poverty is a job. As though people who are struggling to make ends meet are in that condition because of laziness or because they’re not working hard enough. Is that something that, have you had the opportunity to actually have an exchange with him about your differences in views and if you haven’t, what would you say to him in response to that?

BRYCE: No I haven’t. First of all, he hasn’t been very present in the area. I’ve never been invited to one of his telephone town halls which are basically paid infomercials with taxpayer money. As far as jobs go, looking at the government jobs right now in the county of Racine, we had the county executive come who’s conservative but he addressed the Racine County Democratic Party meeting and I gave him credit right off the bat just for coming and having that dialogue.

VALLAS: Sure.

BRYCE: But it was brought up, he was like we have so many jobs available for working for the county. Which is you know, government jobs. Turns out a lot of them are temp agency jobs. And I know personally from talking with other people these temp jobs, you go in and you work for say 60 days before they have to hire you on a permanent basis or 30 days, whatever the contract reads, and you don’t have any benefits as a result of that, basically you’re getting paid a wage and the temp agency is making money off of you. That’s how, that’s their service but just doing that. And when you get close to that day where you think you’re going to get hired on as a full time employee because you bust your butt, you show up a half hour early, you stay 15 minutes, 20 minutes, a half hour, an hour late trying to help show that you’re a hard worker and deserving of this job, to get let go and it’s like oh we’re sorry, we don’t need you anymore.

And then to hear about somebody else coming to take that same job. So it’s not, it’s not the person, they’re a burden because you have to provide benefits. It’s almost like you know having a kid and then it’s like aw, I got to feed him now.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: Kids need food, it’s true.

BRYCE: Right.

VALLAS: So I would love to hear a little bit more about your personal story and how it influences your policies that you’re in favor of. I think when people talking about Paul Ryan’s personal story I think the closest we can get is that back in his kegger days when he was in college he was dreaming of cutting Medicaid right? That much we know. But your personal story is very much connected to why you hold the views on policies that you hold.

BRYCE: Right, shortly after getting out of the army one of the first jobs I had was working with homeless veterans. And I saw from how like this hero worship of you know, these are our heroes. This is the military, USA, USA with the chants and all that. To going and finding out that 60% of the homeless population was made up of veterans at the time. And I think that number’s better, but just the fact that you can worship one group of people while they’re dodging bullets and wearing the uniform and waving the flag, then when they come home and you see them laying on the side of the street you walk by them and they’re considered a burden on society. I would say just that thought process there has a huge effect on how I carry my thoughts out. And then getting involved with the union movement and knowing that even somebody that doesn’t pay dues into the union, they still, the job site that they come on to if they don’t belong to a union, that job site is still safe because of things that unions have fought for. So everybody benefits from that. And it’s just a thing of just fairness. It’s like we have so much, this country is so fantastic and there’s an abundance of everything. There’s no reason why people can’t have enough and it’s been, that’s been a huge issue for me is just making sure people have enough. There’s no reason why we can’t do it, and it’s not that I have a problem with rich people, I have a problem with greedy people.

VALLAS: And with fairness as you were describing.

BRYCE: Exactly.

VALLAS: Especially given that the entire conversation that we’re having in Washington right now is all about how can we give tax cuts to millionaires paid for by everybody else. So in the last couple minutes that I have with you, where is the campaign headed in the months ahead and what should folks be looking for as they get excited about your candidacy?

BRYCE: We’re working on continuing the momentum that we have. It’s just kind of been shot of a rocket and more and more people are asking how can we help. A lot of national groups are getting involved with us. So we’re planning to have more events within the district. Aside from meeting people that want to, it’s like we’d love to give you money, can you come out and visit us? And that means a lot, just the kind of support we’ve been getting from around the country. But we’re going to be involved, having some kind of community service projects within the district, people coming to visit our district, to meet the people that you know, that they’re helping support to get rid of Paul Ryan.

VALLAS: My last question for you just because I’m personally curious and we were talking a little bit about this before we started rolling the tape, you overnight went from a regular guy in Wisconsin, doing regular work, having a family. To being something of a national celebrity. What has that been like as an experience?

BRYCE: I still feel like a regular guy. That just, every time somebody comes up and is like encouraging, hey keep it up, thank you for doing what you’re doing, that’s at times very surreal just especially the amount of travel, going to different places and just meeting people I never thought that I’d meet that just, it’s really amazing how many people also want to help make the United States a better place to live.

VALLAS: Well Randy Bryce, running for congress, I am deeply, deeply excited by your campaign and hoping very much that it’s you who folks in Wisconsin get to turn to to represent them instead of the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan after the election takes place. But I really appreciate you taking the time, glad that you’re here at Netroots and I look forward to seeing where your campaign goes from here.

BRYCE: Pleasure to talk to you, thank you.

VALLAS: And that does it for this week’s episode of Off Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m your host, Rebecca Vallas, the show is produced each week by Will Urquhart. Find us on Facebook and Twitter @offkiltershow and you can find us on the airwaves on the Progressive Voices Network and the WeAct Radio Network or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.