Jon Ronson's Blog, page 2

Given everything that’s happened, I’ve uploaded the film I made with Saul Dibb back in the late 1990s. I’ve done it because of a tweet I just received: 

@daverich1You should post the whole thing, it’s an important piece of history. All the signs were there for people who wanted to see them.

Anyway, here it is: https://vimeo.com/220494752

This is an excerpt from my Amazon Kindle Single, The Elephant in the Room. It took place at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in the summer. This is why I think Twitter helped Trump get elected:

I
never saw the avocado lady’s speech. The nights were long and grueling and she
was on so late that I had staggered outside for some fresh air. But the next
day other journalists kept asking me, “Did you see the avocado lady? It was hilarious!”

“What
was so hilarious about the avocado lady?” I asked them.

“Oh,
she went on this crazy rant about avocados!” one journalist said. “It was just
this mad outburst about avocados!”

Grinning
with expectation, I hurried to YouTube to watch the avocado lady’s speech.

The
avocado lady turned out to be the actor Kimberlin Brown, formerly of the soap
operas “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.” She was
now an avocado grower. I can sort of understand why some people found her speech
hilarious. After a punishing week of relentless shrieks from the delegate floor
of “DO YOUR JOB!” and “BUILD THE WALL!” a week of relentless warnings from the
stage that terrorists and illegal immigrants lurk within our borders poised to
kill us or rape us or run us over while driving drunk, we were skittish for
fun. And there was something casually
absurd about the juxtaposition between “The Bold and the Beautiful” and
avocados.

But
her speech was not hilarious. “As an avocado grower,” she said, “I face the
impact of our trade policies. Our domestic market is flooded with imports that
harm local farmers and even drive some out of business. My neighbors, who have
raised this product for years, are being forced to cut down their groves.” She
sounded close to tears. “Since it was announced that I was speaking to you all
tonight, I have been attacked in social media with all kinds of outrageous
insults. The left wants to silence those it disagrees with.”

It
struck me that the plight of American farmers suffering because of trade deals
was worth getting concerned about, no matter where one stands politically, and
I wondered how Twitter had responded to her speech.

This
is how Twitter responded: “Okay Kimberlin
Brown get off the stage. No one
wants to hear about your damn avocado
business” and “20 bucks says Kimberlin Brown utilizes and abuses migrant
workers on her avocado farm” and “Trump has really scraped the bottom of the
speaker barrel” and “Kimberlin Brown is a soap opera actress and apparent
avocado farmer. She doesn’t mention how many illegal immigrants she
employs that are taking jobs a majority of Americans don’t want. Now she is
whining about *gasp* social media being relentless.”

Someone tweeted me today for a list of my favourite podcasts. I have 30 minutes to spare before going to an experimental auditory show on Broadway (which I hope for the best but fear the worst about) and so here goes. I’ll keep updating it, because I won’t have time to add too many now. 

By the way my new podcast - The Butterfly Effect - will be released in 2017.

NPR Politics My favourite politics podcast of 2016, because it is humanistic and non-polemical, although it is sad that brilliant Sam Sanders and Asma Khalid are leaving.

Keepin’ It 1600 They are smart and funny, but I do somewhat resent how they told us many times with certainty that Hillary would win. 

The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast I met him once and the fluidity which which he spoke was as superhuman as his monologues.

In the Dark The best crime podcast since Serial. 

Mystery Show Of course.

Round Britain Quiz The greatest quiz.

Generation Why Interesting stories told in likably soporific voices.

The Adam Buxton Podcast Britain’s best interview podcast. Americans really should listen to this. The best ones to start with are Michael Palin, Johnny Greenwood, and the Bowie ones.

Okay, I’ll add more later.

Woo!

A video posted by jonronson (@jonronson) on Nov 7, 2016 at 6:13am PST

Leeds! My psychopath tour starts tonight. I love views of train stations. In that I am like Jenny Agutter

Aa always, with his fringe cut Floppy looks like Daryl Hannah in Bladerunner

Me and Alex Jones in a Winnebago in Cleveland during the RNC in July. In the three months since I took this picture I wrote and published an Amazon Kindle Single about him, and tonight Obama actually talked about him on stage. Alex had said Obama is a demon and smells of sulphur and so Obama, being great, sniffed himself. So much has happened since Alex and I took that selfie, with our innocent eyes. The link to the story I wrote about Alex: http://jonathanronson.tumblr.com/post/151407037477/the-elephant-in-the-rooma-journey-into-the-trump

The Elephant in the Room is a 15,000 word Amazon Kindle Single.

The book is FREE for Amazon Prime subscribers or:

To buy for $1.99 in the U.S click here

To buy for £1.79 in the U.K click here

The TVs at the Equinox were showing a Donald Trump rally. I plugged in my headphones and heard someone in the crowd shout out to Trump: “Are you going back on the Alex Jones show?”

“Alex Jones?” Trump said. “He was a nice guy! You like him?”

“It was a GREAT interview!” the man called back.

“Oh good,” Donald Trump said. “Alex Jones. Nice guy.”

I was so jolted by this exchange I almost fell off my elliptical. Donald Trump knows Alex Jones?

I am basically Alex Jones’s Simon Cowell. I star-spotted him in the late-1990s. He’d been a locally renowned radio talk show host in Austin, Texas, back then, but I gave him the idea that catapulted him to fame. My idea was for the two of us to sneak into a secretive summer camp in the forests of Northern California called Bohemian Grove, where powerful men like George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger were rumored to undertake an annual ritual in which a human effigy was thrown into the fiery belly of a giant stone owl.

As I watched Trump praise Alex, I suddenly had an exciting realization. I had had no way into Trump’s world. But now I did. If I could somehow rekindle my relationship with Alex, he was my way in. The Republican National Convention was approaching. Perhaps Alex would be there. I flew to Cleveland.

Pop-Up Magazine

I’m unveiling my new Audible podcast - The Butterfly Effect - as part of Pop-Up this Spring, at their shows in San Francisco (May 31, June 1), Chicago (June 3) and Los Angeles (June 13). https://www.popupmagazine.com

Psychopath Night UK tour November 2017

Is it true that psychopaths rule the world? Or have we gone labelling-crazy?

With very special guests Mary Turner Thomson and Eleanor Longden. Neither Mary nor Eleanor appear in my book, but it wouldn’t exist without them. I’m being oblique because I don’t want to spoil the extraordinary twists and turns in their stories. If you don’t know who they are, don’t Google them. The less you know the better.

November 11th: Tyne Theatre & Opera House 

November 12th: Liverpool Philharmonic

November 13th: Brighton Dome 

November 14th: Warwick Arts Center 

November 15th: Kings Place, London (sold out)

November 16th: St David’s Hall, Cardiff

Other talks

June 9th-11th: Crimecon, Indianapolis

If you book using the code PSYCHOPATH20 you’ll get 20% off whatever package you’re interested in. This is JUST for Crimecon - not the UK Psychopath Night tour.

Psychopath Night UK and Ireland tour 2017

Is it true that psychopaths rule the world? Or have we gone labelling-crazy?

With very special guests Mary Turner Thomson and Eleanor Longden. Neither Mary nor Eleanor appear in my book, but it wouldn’t exist without them. I’m being oblique because I don’t want to spoil the extraordinary twists and turns in their stories. If you don’t know who they are, don’t Google them. The less you know the better.

March 14th: Leicester Square Theatre, London ONLY A FEW TIX LEFT

March 15th: Leicester Square Theatre, London ONLY A FEW TIX LEFT

March 16th: The Citz, Glasgow SOLD OUT

March 17th: Dundee Rep

March 19th: Lyceum, Edinburgh

March 20th: Birmingham Rep SOLD OUT

March 21st: Sage, Gateshead SOLD OUT

March 22nd: Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow 

March 23rd: Vicar Street, Dublin