Transcript - America This Week, May 9, 2025: "Conclave: Matt and Walter Watch Vatican Smoke"

Did life imitate art in the choosing of the new Pope? That, plus "If Impressionists were Dentists," by Woody Allen

Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: So we’re recording on Thursday morning, technically-

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: ... Eastern Time, and very recently, last time I checked, I think it was like 28 minutes ago or something like that, this happened. Can we see the black smoke?

Rev. Tom Reese: We were not surprised by the black smoke. We expected black smoke tonight, but we expected it a lot earlier. At the last conclave, the smoke appeared around 7:30 in the evening. This was an hour and a half later.

Isabel Lammers: It’s a very intense prayer that the one who comes.

Matt Taibbi: I like the way that they watch it on a screen for the uninitiated.

Walter Kirn: Dude, people love tradition. Come on.

Matt Taibbi: I know. I know.

Walter Kirn: You just saw it right there why in a strange sense, conservatism is the natural state of mankind. Just having one unspoiled fricking tradition is just got everybody shivering.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. So people come out from all over the world just to watch-

Walter Kirn: To white or black. They were expecting the black smoke tonight.

Matt Taibbi: Yes. Yeah. Exactly. And for those who are not Catholic, don’t know, don’t care, whatever, black smoke means we came to no decision.

Walter Kirn: In the election of the new Pope.

Matt Taibbi: Yes.

Walter Kirn: We came to no decision. And it also means, I think for people who aren’t Catholics, that when Donald Trump or something dresses up as a pope, it is somewhat ridiculous, but then so are tens and tens of thousands of people waiting for the color of smoke to change and crying about it. Now, I’m not saying as a non-Catholic that there’s something contemptible about that. I’m just saying that if you’re Fellini, or let’s say one of the great Italian film directors who would make movies about these spectacles, they called them surrealism.

Matt Taibbi: Yes. I mean, popes are funny just by nature of who they are. I mean, people disagree about how funny popes are, and I should know this because my career nearly ended because I once wrote a column called the 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope and was condemned by members of Congress.

Walter Kirn: That’s the American version of Baudrillard’s The Gulf War did not Happen.

Matt Taibbi: But look, I can’t look at the papal hat and not laugh, and it’s only one of many hats that they have. I mean, they have many costumes for the Pope.

Walter Kirn: We discussed at nauseam on Monday night, the couthness or uncouthness of Trump’s AI as the Pope meme. But then people deluged me with Fauci as Saint Francis, and I said, I got to say.

Matt Taibbi: Oh yeah.

Walter Kirn: He didn’t pretend to be a saint, just a Pope.

Matt Taibbi: No, I know. Or Robert Mueller as Saint Francis. Right? Remember the vote Votive candle thing?

Walter Kirn: Oh yeah. There were Fauci votives too.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. No, that was-

Walter Kirn: And there are Luigi votives, by the way, right now.

Matt Taibbi: Are there Luigi votives?

Walter Kirn: Darn right.

Matt Taibbi: Okay. So that happened, and we might as well take a live shot of nothing, check the live shot of nothing happening right now-

Walter Kirn: Okay.

Matt Taibbi: ... Which the world is eagerly tuning in right now to the non smoke emitting chimney-

Walter Kirn: Right. Okay.

Matt Taibbi: ... Which is one of the most popular live streams in the world at the moment.

Walter Kirn: There it is.

Matt Taibbi: What’s your color commentary there, Walter?

Walter Kirn: Well, should red smoke appear, we know that we’ve reached the final stages. But the ability to look at, you know how you stare down the empty subway track waiting for the subway to come, and even though you know it doesn’t help, you can’t stop doing it?

Matt Taibbi: Right. Yes, that’s exactly right.

Walter Kirn: Yeah.

Matt Taibbi: That’s exactly right.

Walter Kirn: Whatever that is, this is on a cosmic scale.

Matt Taibbi: Yep. Yep.

Walter Kirn: Each person who’s looking also thinks delusionally in some way they won’t admit that they can cause the smoke to come or that they’re maybe causing it not to come. In other words, there is deep psychic personal involvement on the part of all witnesses that has nothing to do with rationality. And this is the greatest reminder ever of my thesis that if you think human beings are run by rational forces, you haven’t met any.

Matt Taibbi: This joke will only probably work with NFL fans. But you know what I think should happen before the smoke comes out? I think we should hear this sound.

So that’s the sound the NFL draft, like the pick is in-

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: ... Right, and that’s how you know that your team has chosen it’s first round draft choice.

Walter Kirn: See, Matt, the other night, you referred to yourself as an ex-Catholic, and I said, no, Matt, there are no ex-Catholics and you just proved it. You have transferred your smoke watching papal anxiety to the NFL draft.

Matt Taibbi: It’s so true.

Walter Kirn: Just as the Catholic Church itself repurposed various goddesses and so on and other people to create saints. So nothing new under the sun here.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. It’s funny, I think having grown up for a significant portion of my life as a Catholic, there is a guilt/self-loathing factor that I’ve noticed is absent in people of other faiths, particularly Protestant faiths.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. The problem with being Protestant from Germanic background is the Nietzschean cruelty that replaces that guilt. In other words, your kind of default setting isn’t like, wow, I did that, but can I just defy and maybe dominate and eliminate that person? No, it’s not worth it, your Catholic wife tells you.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. Catholicism, I’m just not sure about the utility of it as a mechanism of psychological conquest or-

Walter Kirn: Well, how can we not joke? I mean, I should tell our audience that I’ve seriously considered at times converting to Catholicism.

Matt Taibbi: Really?

Walter Kirn: Yeah, I’m not kidding. So for all my levity, I’ve looked deeply into it, and I feel like now a taco bowl engagement or something. I love Catholics. They have best incense. But in any case, how can you not as an observer of human life just find this endlessly entertaining and in a weirdly grimly fascinating. Getting people to look at the roof of a building for hours and hours in the weather outside is one of the greatest achievements of human something. Spirituality, hypnotism, something.

Matt Taibbi: And look, people go absolutely bananas for the Pope. I remember the Pope came to Boston when I was a kid, and it’s funny though. There was recently an HBO documentary about the Celtics, and they were comparing, because the two events were relatively contemporaneous, the arrival of Larry Bird to the Pope, and the general consensus is that the Pope won in Boston, but narrowly. People went bananas. I still remember that moment.

Walter Kirn: People can correct me, but there is a great play by the playwright, John Guare, John Guare, I believe it’s called House of Blue Leaves, about the visit of the Pope to New York and how it disturbs life. And what I love about popes is that are they necessarily good or are they just powerful? It’s never clear. I know they’re supposed to be great authorities on God’s word, but do they have to be good themselves? Because popes that are interesting from history-