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Social Justice - A Conversation
Unknown Speaker 0:00
You're listening to locally produced programming created in pay you envy studios on Public Radio, K, u and v. 91.5. Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV and the Boyd School of Law.
Unknown Speaker 0:18
I'm Lana weatherald. I'm a third year law student and welcome to social justice, social justice,
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the conversation conversation.
Unknown Speaker 0:26
Hello, and Happy Thursday. Thank you once again for returning to social justice a conversation. I am a third year law student named Lena weatherald, who goes to the Boyd School of Law in Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm joined alongside Professor Charles Stan, who is a professor at the Boyd School of Law here in Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, but also teaches at UNLV is Honors College, we're happy to bring you another great show today with a bunch of varying topics, hopefully topical and recent. And with that, I'll let the professor take it away. Thank
Unknown Speaker 0:55
you, Anna. Good evening, everyone. So we wanted to get the program started today with a sort of like a sports story having to do with Miss Hamby, who is or was a star for the Las Vegas aces, and now has been traded to the Los Angeles sparks basketball team. And a very interesting article in USA Today about the whole situation, why she was traded and why the ACES didn't do not want to have anything more to do with her is the fact that she's she's carrying a baby, and the physician of the team, apparently, from what from what she says. And she was told that her act of you know, carrying the child was a betrayal to the team after after they signed the contract with with her. So my question is that if she signed a contract, and she was not pregnant, and she became pregnant, sometime after the contract was signed, was that a betrayal to the team as well? Or now that she has been traded? Did you as an organization, tell the Los Angeles team that she was pregnant before you traded her so that they knew about it? I think as I think if what she says it's true, I think it's kind of appalling, in fact, that a woman's you know, we're back against a woman's right to choose and a woman's body and all the rest of those essential issues. But I've never heard of somebody bringing life into the world and considering it a betrayal. You
Unknown Speaker 2:41
know, what I was saying to the professor on this end is sort of something you notice with the WNBA, in the NBA has become this way, but the idea of a superstar League and the idea that you sort of have a few key players sort of holding the whole thing together in the Las Vegas aces, you know, they were champions. And so this was a team that it got a lot of media attention in the past year and sort of brought the WNBA to light in a way that it hadn't been previously. And these girls were, you know, these? Well, these women were they were really, really sort of charismatic and they caught the eye and the attention of you know, ESPN and ABC and all these, you know, big sports media markets. So you see it now, where you don't want to have sort of the traction of these superstars, the traction of these people that are making the sport more popular, be stopped, you know, stopped in its tracks. And that's what's happening here. You know, what I was saying to the professor's you see, sort of with Candice Parker, who she was the star of the WNBA, like we're talking about here brought light brought media attention to the WNBA that hadn't previously been seen. And she's still working. Still to this day. I mean, years after her sports career has ended, she is still constantly on TV constantly promoting the brand and whether that's her choice or not, I'm not sure. But it's certainly a thing that you're seeing is that these superstars, you know, do not these WNBA superstars in particular sort of do not get to walk away. And they do not get to have their own lives because they're held so, so tight and held so close, and they're so important to, you know, building the brand that has suffered so long. And I think that's sort of what's at play here is it's a superstar League, the WNBA much like the NBA, and they don't want to see the superstars, especially off a championship squad. Not there or finding something that's more important than basketball, which I'm sure she believes motherhood to be.
Unknown Speaker 4:24
Yeah, well, it would be. I understand now that the league is investigating this awesome. Wow. So it would be it would be interesting in the in the under the rubric of everybody deserves their ability to respond. It will be interesting to see what the people who run the aces, particularly the coach and general manager as to how this all played out, because something obviously went off the tracks here. But I agree completely with what you say allowed because it is a superstar league. And they're really in a kind of competition, which is like Prometheus trying to carry around the world with the NBA where the NBA has so many.
Unknown Speaker 5:13
I mean, right. Internationally recognized internationally. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 5:18
absolutely. So so so that's how we begin our program. And we were going to sort of take a jump from that into politics, having to do with lost documents and missing documents and documents that's appear, like out of Aladdin's lamp, right. Like,
Unknown Speaker 5:38
who stole the next set of documents? Who are we going to hear stole more documents? Who's next?
Unknown Speaker 5:43
It's quite, it's quite fascinating, because, you know, originally is this all started with President Trump. And I think it's I think, I think it's fair, I think most people would say it's fair to differentiate his possession and attitude toward the documents, visa vie, Joe Biden, Joe Biden basically expressed bewilderment, or, or lack of knowledge or what have you. I think I think it's interesting to be to be fair, though, that the documents were discovered in his, in his environments, and before the midterm elections. So this was not devolved to the public, which might have affected the midterm elections. And it was a couple of months, even after that, before they were finally disclosed. So I don't know. I mean, I can I can give a rationale or motivation for Donald Trump to have the documents, but it's kind of hard to explain one for Joe Biden, right. Because whereas Trump was the president, and he had access to all these documents, not right, yeah. Oh, and then like Joe Biden, what was he doing it all stuff? It's very, it's very odd, because and then and then, of course, the ultimate the icing on the cake is, is, you know, Mike Pence, and they show up in Mike Pence is Mike Pence is ours now, the how is that his office? How is that because Mike Pence really had she was he was a traditional Vice President Mike Pence figure had more than any figurehead. He had really no say in foreign oil. And what got me was the fact that before this, this news came out. He was condemning Joe Biden, which is, which is
Unknown Speaker 7:35
yeah, they're both hypocritical, because they're both doing Yeah, they're
Unknown Speaker 7:38
both doing it, you know. And then I guess it was this morning that Trump was saying that they were picking, Trump was saying that they were picking on Mike Pence, that Mike Pence is very honest, and he's the most honest man he ever met. Well, I guess that's partially that may be partially true, since he was the guy didn't who didn't allow him. I guess this group there, you know, but But Well, it's kind of hard. But I think it ties in. I think it ties into the whole things, the way things are done in Washington. Right, that everything is covered up. Right. You know, I believe, I believe in, you know, in the sunlight policy. I believe that except for and we've discussed this previously, except for those those matters of intelligence of secrecy that have a national effect on our country. I think everything should be out in the open. I think that when they have these hearings, I don't believe in these close hearings. Right? I think people should know exactly
Unknown Speaker 8:36
what's going on and who they voted for and what exactly
Unknown Speaker 8:39
what the deal was right. And, you know, I think especially especially now, with all the issues we have with the Ukraine and everything, you know, what our what our policy is going to be because apparently we're going to be giving them these advanced tanks now. And the advanced tanks are supposed to be a carrot to get Germany to give the Ukrainians the leopard tanks. And I don't see this the situation they're going away. I think it's I think it's it's gonna grow and, you know, hopefully not grow to an extent where, you know, we get involved directly in this thing. But when you read about some of the things that have happened, visa vie the bombings of some of these cities. It raises a fundamental question as to what's the role of the West and what's the role of the free world in responding to it. You know, I just finished finally finished this book after reading it for quite a while. The pope in the war, about what happened during the Second World War visa vie the Vatican's position to, you know, try to help those people who were you know, going to be victims of the Holocaust, right? And it was very sober. Right now, it was very sobering that they they basically did nothing. But not only did they not do anything to help the Jewish people in Eastern Europe, but they actually helped with the worked with the Germans to identify those people who were Jewish in Rome, and that they were deported also. So the essential question in the Ukraine is, at what point? Is it? Is there a threat to the world of inaction versus the threat of a war? The other way? And how do you how do you what point is there? You need to take a very dire action, because you see something that's so so so monstrous, right? I don't have the answer. Right. There maybe?
Unknown Speaker 10:43
Well, and unfortunately, I don't believe our elected officials do either. And I don't think we have sort of a foreign policy consensus or code on how to handle that issue. So I think the point that Professor makes us a good one, we need to view this situation as, as probably one that will not de escalate, and will only get worse and will only sort of snowball on top of each other as more countries or especially, as you mentioned, Germany decides whether or not they need to get involved or the US itself decides whether or not they get involved. I think the understanding needs to be that this will not be a Russian back down. But this will not be a you know, a white flag. This is this is something that I think we're going to have to continue with for for years. Unfortunately, I don't think this is something that's disappearing overnight. So when we consider foreign policy actions, I think they need to be long term. And I think so many of us thought that this could be a blip or something over sort of instant destruction. And that's sort of not what we've seen. Scary, scary thoughts. Scary? No,
Unknown Speaker 11:37
it's it? Well, it is. It is. It's very political, ultimately. Everything is the society politically,
Unknown Speaker 11:45
not so much. Yeah. Based on a humanitarian, based on the you know, saving democracy. It's based on what's going to please a party. And when we wield so much power, and we wield life or death really for for millions. Yeah. Isn't that sad?
Unknown Speaker 11:59
Yeah, I think I think it's, I think it's all over the world. You have these
Unknown Speaker 12:03
right? Yeah, correct. It's not isolated to here. Maybe it seems more acute, because we are so polarized, and we live here. But you're right. 100%. I
Unknown Speaker 12:11
think that, you know, Timothy Snyder, who's who's at Yale, and who's written a number of books about the legitimacy of democracy and whether democracy can survive. I do believe that we're in an age now, where democracy is under attack in a number of countries, not just here, but in Hungary and Brazil, and Turkey. Oh, absolutely. All over the globe. And the game plan basically, for these people, is very similar. If you look at Trump's reaction to the election in 2020. If you look at Bona cerros reaction to the election in Brazil, just recently, there's parallels there are parallels there. And I think, worldwide. It's very, very hard for an idealistic person to come into these situations. I've heard examples is the woman I heard who was the Prime Minister of New Zealand, right? And she, she had enough
Unknown Speaker 13:11
well, and she was good at her job. And isn't isn't that something that we have someone not only a woman, you know, put all of that aside about who she is. But that just is good at the job. Respondent responds well to tragedy responds well, to economic sort of stimuli responds well to I think all of the media training that you see, she had always held herself so well and was so articulate, and she did not she wanted nothing to do with it. No, our best and our brightest, you know, people. She's obviously from New Zealand, and this is not American. But I do believe this is an American problem as well, our best and our brightest want nothing to do with politics. Why is that?
Unknown Speaker 13:44
Yeah, well, I think I think it is very hard for an idealistic person, like you say, right to be able to function. In a world of political world, where basically everything is for sale. Yes. You know, it reminds me of the biblical the biblical morning, that Christ give Christ gave a guess it was Lazarus, and he visits Lazarus house. And he talks to Lazarus and he says, do you, he says, Do you believe? Do you believe in me? And Lazarus says, Yes. And he says, Do you do good and to help people? He says, Yes. And then the third thing he says, that's, that's well and good. He says, What would you need to do now is give up everything you haven't follow me. And the Bible records for counts that if demand goes away, very sad, right? But it's very hard to keep your morality and your integrity in these situations, especially when you are it's determined to you to get elected is money, right? It's it's raising this enormous amount of money. Yes. And you have to, I mean, the next election, it escalates every election we have, but 1,000,000,002 billion $3 billion, whatever it is right? To get elected. Right? And, and
Unknown Speaker 15:11
then you, you finally do get elected, right. And then the power is not what you think the power comes with a whole drudge of things that are completely undesirable. It comes with a sort of, once you, your life is out there publicly, you can't take it back. And you're always going to be up for scrutiny. And I think so much of what comes with becoming a politician or becoming sort of someone that at least has the guise of wielding power is, is you're up for Europe for public debate. And then people get to have these crazy conspiracy theories about you, like I had seen about her, I'd seen horrible, horrendous things about her online, like, you know, claiming she was like a lizard person type things. I mean, really, these are the things that are out there. So I do I do just, I think when you're a good person who's altruistic who doesn't hold office for the purpose of power, and then you finally obtain that power and find out what that really means. The good ones don't want it. The good ones don't want to be up for public debate or public scrutiny or subject to the lizard people sort of conspiracies, right. I just, I think we have no longer Yeah, made it desirable to hold positions of power. And if we do, the kind of person that wants it in the kind of person it would be desirable for shouldn't be there in the first place. So
Unknown Speaker 16:24
it's interesting. You know, I just finished the Andrew Kurtzman book and Rudy Giuliani. Interesting, and that is an interesting book.
Unknown Speaker 16:31
He's like, he's an interesting guy. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 16:33
he's a guy. I had met him a couple of times, really. I actually met him. You know, one night I was I was walking home from work. I talked to him like 2025 minutes. Wow, he was very nice.
Unknown Speaker 16:45
I do believe him to be intellectual. I believe him to be a smart guy.
Unknown Speaker 16:49
I met him. I met him at the funeral of a family I knew whose brother was a police officer, and was killed in the line he showed up. And the book is the book is very fascinating. Because on the one hand, you have the cataclysm of 911, right. And the man was a
Unknown Speaker 17:14
leader. I mean, my God, he did for something unfathomable, unfathomable,
Unknown Speaker 17:18
he, he went, he went in my memory to in Google funerals. He even officiated at a number of weddings for people who had lost members. 911, right, who are getting married, right? And then he gets out of office, he leaves the office, and he had a law enforcement background and everything right? And then he just he just complete metamorphosis, right into, you know, having this firm that he was associated with, representing basically everybody and anybody.
Unknown Speaker 17:55
And that's great. They're almost turned into a bit of a grifter. Me,
Unknown Speaker 17:59
but it's, it's the money though, right? Well, there it is. You get into these positions, you need the money to get elected, you get elected, and you're always battling to keep your ideal as the money flowing. Right? Yeah. And then you leave, what will you leave office, and especially in Washington, all the lobbying groups are after you? Yep. To represent them. So whatever you were making in money for, as a congressperson of House of Representatives of Senator
Unknown Speaker 18:30
nominal, now you're talking right, compared to what it is now, four
Unknown Speaker 18:34
or $5 million. And you're fronting for the same people that you opposed.
Unknown Speaker 18:39
Well, and isn't it interesting, you know, as it's almost it's almost done wrong, right? Because as you as you age, and you sort of decline and you become less capable and less, you know, there's less vitality there. I guess, the more money he gets, I mean, you could definitely see cognitive decline and just how we spoke and how he was, and then he's in charge of sort of way more than he had ever been in his capacity as mayor. You know, I that's, that's what scares me is as this guy got older and less capable, and became clearly just more tired and a little more out of it. I mean, this guy was not speaking with the same sort of tact. He was not as articulate. He was not as voracious. He was just he was limited in it, man. And you could tell and then to give him that position to give him that much money to give him that much power. I'm not surprised. This is how Rudy Giuliani went down. I'm not surprised that the Trump administration was allowed to take advantage of him. He was he was old and he was rich, and he was tired. And he thought this was his last hurrah. Well, you look, yeah, I
Unknown Speaker 19:43
don't know. It's, it's, it's interesting. No, he was one of the people who was heavily involved in, you know, the attempt to overturn the election. election and there were countless others. Do you
Unknown Speaker 19:56
think that if someone told him, Rudy Giuliani, In 2002, that this would be who he was in 2020. Would he have believed you? Would anybody have believed you that that's who he was? Well,
Unknown Speaker 20:08
I think, I think that his ultimate aim was to be president. Yeah. And I think that he believed after 911 he wouldn't be able to launch onto that presidential bid, just like Ulysses Grant did after the Civil War, or George Custer wanted to do, except he was killed with a Little Bighorn. Right. But I think that politics is corruptive. I worked in politics. And I think there were clearly things that he knew were wrong, right? I mean, and like so many who worked in the past administration, it's too late to be right there to be writing these books. Everybody's got a book out. But the time to act is one of the thing
Unknown Speaker 21:05
well, how can you I think there does come a point of no return for a lot of these folks, right? You can't have doubled or tripled down on a sort of a way of thinking or a belief or a moment or a choice for so long. When you're doubling and tripling down on these things. How do you walk it back? How do you say, well, actually, this was pretty bad. I shouldn't have done that high. Why shouldn't have been there? This wasn't me. You can't I mean, you can't So then it becomes sort of sort of like a pit. They're digging themselves deeper and deeper into this hole of lies and treachery and eventually, treason. So I Yeah, you see how it happens. But man, oh, man, for my have the mighty fallen with him? Yeah, because if you just asked me, you know, coming into high school or college about Rudy Giuliani prior to any of this with the Trump administration, I would have put them down as a pretty admirable dude and good God now. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 21:52
Well, I think I think I think too, what's what's interesting, is, as far as politics is concerned, that the political system we have is, is completely irresponsible, irresponsible unresponsive. Yes. So what we want to do, what am I saying? When I say we I'm not saying,
Unknown Speaker 22:16
me and the professor rightly, as a liberal, colloquially, but
Unknown Speaker 22:19
as a society? And of course, you have a situation now, where we have this investigation of what actually went on. On January 6, they're locking people, okay. They're, they're locking people up, but they're not they're not locking people up for long enough for for whom it could be said, we're actually the people who organize the thing. You know, it's been it's been two years, okay. It's been two years. And I just laugh when I hit when I see this special prosecutor thing. Because to me, it's, it's an attempt to avoid doing something. To me, it's an attempt to keep stringing thing out and keep stringing anything out. I think if there are not any indictments in this thing, I think you can kiss kiss goodbye, the American system of justice completely. It will have no it will have no credibility. It doesn't have a lot of credibility, right as it is. But what's interesting is the most likely indictments are probably going to come from Georgia, from Fani Willis, who's the district attorney of Fulton County, the grand jury has finished up. She seemed to be pretty clear yesterday in what she was saying that there will be there are going to be indictments. And I'm thinking to myself, you have this woman who femoral evidence is a dedicated prosecutor, right? From like, from a county in Georgia, with maybe 1000s of the resources of the FBI, the Justice Department, and she's the one that has to and she's she's the one that's doing this? Because no, because no one else
Unknown Speaker 24:09
or I thought we were the country of law and order. Well, well,
Unknown Speaker 24:14
you know, it's really, you know, it's really mortifying, if you really think about it, right, you know, where you have all these resources. And the resources are not being applied. Either because people are afraid to apply them while they think it'll go away. Or
Unknown Speaker 24:32
even worse, that the point is moot, right, that there's no even if they do do anything. It
Unknown Speaker 24:39
really makes you wonder. Just a quickie on this that. Doug Liman the guy who did Jason Bourne movies, right, he's come out with a new documentary on Kavanaugh interests which will soon be available for release, including apparently love information that was bad worried when the initial investigation was supposed to be done by the FBI and they didn't do it? Well, there you go.
Unknown Speaker 25:05
Well, there you go. Something to look forward, well maybe not look forward to but at least be interested in as it comes out in the next coming weeks. We do want to thank you for tuning in with us this Thursday. A little reminder that we are taking emails, we'll take requests for anything you want to see the professor and I discussed or anything, any sort of questions you might have about the show or what we're doing here. So you can go ahead and send those emails out to me. My email address is w e t h e l one. That is the number one@unlv.nevada.edu. Thanks for listening, guys, and we'll see you again next week. Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at weather one that's w e t h e l one@nevada.unlv.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles Stanton, contact him at CHA R L E S That's Charles dot Stanton s t a n t o n@unlv.edu cn N Exxon
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