Fall in love (or asleep) with Cori Schumacher!

Full disclosure: Derek hates this podcast. With a passion. Didn’t want to run it. Here’s the review he sent to Rory:

I find Cori’s opinions soft, predictable, conformist, complainist, her life story dull and her stories anything but spectacular enough to warrant asking our readers to give it an hour of their lives. I know you dig her stuff, and that’s cool, but I couldn’t find one moment that might lift the interview from complaint-fest to… 

how to change the world. 

If that’s what she’s trying to. 

I felt like I was stuck at a party in Portland listening to the same old tired tropes, getting drunker and drunker trying to drown out this grim women burning my ears. 

But, above all, it has zero relevance to our readers. 

Pretty harsh.

So I gave it a listen. Holy fuck, I could not disagree with Derek more. I found Cori to be intelligent, articulate, and downright inspiring. We all bitch and moan about shit that goes down in our respective communities. Cori not only successfully defeated a giant shoreline development, she one up’d herself and ran for local office.

An LGBT environmental activist winning in a Republican town, in the same election that gave us Trump? That’s pretty badass. Never one to keep my mouth shut, even when I should, especially when I should, I hit up Derek. Wrote what I knew was sure to rile him:

Rory said you don’t want to use the podcast with Cori. I knew when I listened to it you’d hate it. Progressive female LGBT activists don’t generally appeal to middle aged straight white guys. You’re either board or threatened by them. I get it. I assume you’re in the board/can’t relate category. No judgment whatsoever. Taste is just that.  

Worked like a charm. Anytime you mention to a straight white guy that they are a straight white guy, they get defensive. After all, they are the most oppressed people on the planet, right? Throw in the “oh are you threatened by women” insinuation and you’re sure to get a reaction. No harm in some occasional trolling.

I’m pretty sure Derek’s right though. He knows what he’s doing in the surf world. He created Stab. No magazine was more inclusive to women. Well, if they were willing to get naked and pose for faux artistic erotica.

Interesting that Derek was thrilled with the Anastasia Ashley podcast (Editor’s note: wasn’t. Didn’t want to hurt Rory’s feelings.). Pointed that out to him:

Fuck, you obviously felt that other woman, the butt model, I don’t recall her name, was interesting enough to post. And I thought she was terrible. I wasn’t the only one. The comments were brutal about her lack of substance and irritating affected accent. When Rory tried to get her talking about life all she could come up with was something along the lines of “I want to do good things, like help people and stuff.” From what I can tell, the only thing she’s ever done, is have a nice ass and post pictures of it to instagram. She’s interesting to you, but not me, and apparently not to BeachGrit readers either. And please don’t try to claim I’m somehow engaging in “slut shaming” like you insinuated Cori & Co. did. I’m as sex positive as it comes.   

Cori on the other hand, is a woman raised as a conservative Christian, comes out as gay, quits her athletic career to get an education, helps defeat a giant development project, then inspired by that experience, successfully runs for local government in a Republican area, that interests me. That inspires me. There are other people who will feel like me, people who read BeachGrit.

I’m willing to bet you have a lot more “intellectually muted left-wingers” that read BeachGrit than you think. Not everybody feels like you do and not everyone feels like I do. Isn’t a diversity of viewpoints awesome? 

After my incessant nagging, Derek caved. Probably just to shut me up:

I couldn’t agree less but I love the fire!

I’ll post when I get home….

Here’s Rory’s take:

I think you’re wrong about the podcast. I don’t think her story is dull.  I think it’s uncommon and would speak to a lot of people who don’t feel represented in the surf world.  And I think that’s a good thing.  Sexuality and women’s surfing is worth discussing, whichever side of the coin you fall on.

As far as the readers, I think they’d listen, some would get angry about it.  That’s fine, it’s still engagement. And we do have female readers.  

So, long story long, I harassed Derek into posting this. Sorry Derek. Now you know why Rory wants to strangle me.

I’m sure most of you will agree with him and hate it. Don’t blame Derek, blame me. But fuck, some of you might not hate it.

As Rory always says “leave your mean comments below.”