Reid discusses Iceberg Slim and whether a white person can portray the black experience with his guest co-host, Foam Chomsky, a puppet.

Script:

Welcome to The Irrationally Exuberant. On today’s episode we’ll be looking at the life of Iceberg Slim – and for you white people in the audience, no, that’s not some kind of lettuce based diet.

FC: Jesus. What are you doing?

Ladies and gentlemen, that disapproving voice you’re hearing is my guest co-host for the first portion of this episode – Foam Chomsky, the skeptical puppet.

FC: Full disclosure. I’m not really a puppet. There’s no puppet here. I’m just Reid doing a dumb voice to represent his own doubts and insecurities. It’s not a very original gimmick.

Oh, wow, Foam Chomsky, I didn’t think we were going to reveal that to the listeners.

FC: You wrote it into the script, champ.

Right. Now, you were asking what I’m doing. I’m introducing the topic of the show. Iceberg Slim, real name Robert Beck, a notorious pimp from the 1930s and through the 50s who eventually became a prolific author and activist.

FC: Yeah. What are you doing?

A comedy podcast about Iceberg Slim.

FC: You, a middle class white 35 year old male living in Fargo, North Dakota are going to do a COMEDY podcast about an African American PIMP. You, Reid Messerschmidt, are going to make COMEDY about sexual violence against women, human trafficking, and racial stereotypes – in 2018 – without any black folks or women contributing? Just you and me, a dumb gimmick that is also just you.

That was my intention, I guess. I’m the only one that ever contributes to the show. It’s my show. And I just read Slim’s book, Pimp, and thought it was really interesting and bizarre and funny in its own horrifying way, so I wanted to talk about it. Sure I’m all of those things you said, but I recently read A Fire Next Time by James Baldwin and The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Murder of Joe Louis and Whoreson by Donald Goines and Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward and I watched What Happened Miss Simone about Nina Simone and Dutchman by Amiri Baraka. I tried to cram in a lot of black culture and I think I’m pretty sensitive to the plight of women in an ostensibly patriarchal society – I consider myself a Feminist. So I think I’m . . . I think I’m good.

FC: You think you’re good, huh? Was that list meant to impress everyone?

Kind of, I suppose. But I did . . .

FC: You think that reading a bunch of books is somehow going to give you an inside track on the black experience?

I’ve watched The Wire twice.

FC: EVERYONE HAS WATCHED THE WIRE TWICE! Let me ask you this: How many black friends do you have? REAL friends.

There’s Torie at work, I like her a lot, and Robert that I used to work with, and I’m always happy to run into Peterson. I dated a black girl once. There are several I really enjoy on Facebook.

FC: REAL FRIENDS, REID!

None. But I live in Fargo! The options are limited! And I don’t make new friends easily.

FC: Right. But no black friends. So what gives you the right to make comedy about any facet of the black experience?

Well, I like to think that it’s the human experience.

FC: But sometimes you are very, very dumb. Remember when you thought that Michael J. Fox sang “For the Longest Time”?

I was just a kid! But I suppose that the fact that I had any opinion or tho...