Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. Hope you're doing well.

It seems once again we have to come onto this channel and address a right-wing freak pretending to be a fan of music and art, or at least visibly struggling on their shitty YouTube channel and podcast to rationalize maybe the person they once were, or the heart that maybe they have on some level, not really being copacetic with the psychotic bigoted views they now have to hold for a job.

Of course, I am talking about the one and only Tim Pool, aka Beanie Man. If you've had the displeasure of seeing any amount of content from Tim's YouTube channel, you know that like a lot of other weird right-wing talking heads on the internet, he makes a lot of money and gets a lot of attention by virtue of commenting on with a lot of indignance. A lot of pop culture items that are either nominally or deeply offensive to those with right-wing views because, 'Oh, it's woke or it's blasphemous' or whatever. '

Enter in singer-songwriter Laura Jane Grace of Against Me Fame, modern punk rock legend, many would claim, who recently did a little performance at a Bernie Sanders rally of this silly ass, acoustic singalong song song about essentially, as a trans person feeling fucked by God, which if you have two brain cells to rub together, even if you haven't personally experienced what Laura Jane Grace is obviously describing in this song, you get the concept pretty easily that ‘I am a trans woman.’

Personally, I feel under fire socially with all of this hate being lobed towards trans people, all this bigotry. A lot of that bigotry tends to skew as being very religious, or at least it's coded as such. Hence the metaphor where she's feeling fucked by God.

Now, apparently this performance may have gotten a little viral online in right wing circles, made some people pissed off. Tim Pool goes on his show and says people are angry and pissed off and raging about things all the time just to have something to talk about on YouTube.

So of course, that's the lead into this whole reason for him talking about Laura Jean Grace in this video here.

"A transgender singer is sexually graphic in front of a crowd of people, which I presume largely is adults, but it's a Bernie rally, so there's probably some kids there. Totally inappropriate." - Tim Pool

If this were any other Tim Pool segment, and in many ways it is, There really wouldn't be much reason for me to talk about it, except for the fact that I find it hilarious that Tim spends a great deal of this video trying to validate his criticisms and basically provide some weight to his point of view here because he used to be a massive Against Me fan.

"I am an O.G. Fan. O. G., of course, for those that don't know, means original gangster." - Tim Pool

He even tries to impress the viewers of the video that Tim really knows what he's talking about and knows where he's coming from here because he used to know how to play all the songs on guitar.

"You had the classic song, 'Baby, I'm an Anarchist', for which I can still play on the guitar. And then, of course, you had much better songs, in my opinion, like 'Pints of Guinness Make You Strong'." - Tim Pool

In fact, it's funny because as he progressively talks about Laura Jane Grace and the song and how big of a fan he once was, it seems like the number of Against Me songs he knows how to play on guitar increases. First, it was a bunch of songs, then it was the Axel Rose songs, and then he's listing other tracks, too. He just knows the whole damn Against Me catalog.

"And they have a song called, 'Tonight We're Going to Give It 35%', and that is... I can't remember which album it's off of, but I used to play it all the time. I'm pretty sure I can still play. It's only four cords anyway. And it's about signing a record deal. What? We're going to get signed to a major record deal and get a million dollars? Let's go. And that's when I was like, hypocrites." - Tim Pool

He even goes on to play a lick from an Against Me intro.

"I can prove it. Here we go. Okay. Anybody who knows who that song is, you know exactly what song I was playing." - Tim Pool

And I just find this very funny because the time period that Tim describes in this video, as far as being into Against Me and how they're The music resonated with him at the time when they were originally hot with Axel Rose and so on and so forth, I was a big fan of the band at that same time. In fact, I saw the band live way back then, and I had all the EPs on vinyl and liked some of the stuff they did on Fat Wreck Chords not too long after that.

And Tim is just obsessed in this video with proving how hard core of a fan he was, how deeply ingrained into the against me sphere he was. He even goes on to like, Brag like, oh, yeah, I know people who knew or know Laura Jane Grace. I don't know them personally. I don't got any beef, but I know people who know people. Tim basically says all this to build up to his argument that in his opinion, now he states this as fact, but then he also backpedals a bit. He's like, 'I'm just saying. I'm just asking some questions.'

He goes on to argue that he feels that Laura Jane Grace is essentially just pretending to be trans or transed herself for money and attention, and was entirely motivated by the fact that Against Me was in a ton of debt and just needed money.

"I would say that the honest take here, lead singer of Against Me, was in the gutter. The band was not doing really well. They had massive amounts of debt. They failed. And then, 'I got an idea, trans!' And then all of a sudden, they saw a big bump." - Tim Pool

Now, if you're an actual Against Me fan, you know how bullshit that argument is. Because when you dig into the band's back catalog, tracks as early as "Disco Before the Breakdown", do very much convey a closeted queer experience point of view of some sort. So that alone would instantly delegitimize any argument that Laura Jane Grace coming out of the closet was entirely fabricated and so on and so forth. But what's hilarious about this is that Tim is apparently is such a fan, he's actually aware of this song, references it in his rant, and pooh-poohs the idea of that by saying this song must just be about either being gay or being about dating someone who's really fat and ugly.

"Then 'Disco Before the Breakdown', we are like, 'Hey, it sounds like this dude's gay.' No, I mean, literally, because either he's dating someone who's ugly or fat, or he's singing about being gay because it has the lyrics, I know they're going to laugh at us when they see us out together holding hands like this, they wouldn't understand if we told them all the reasons." - Tim Pool

Pause. You can't make this up. The guy is such a mealy mouth piece of shit.

And look, I'll be honest, it's been a long, long, long time since I have really, truly loved a new album from Against Me. I haven't really dug much the band has done since Searching for a Former Clarity. And a lot of my reasoning comes down to the band, mostly adopting a more mainstream rock sound over the years.

The idea that Against Me and Laura Jane Grace are completely beyond listenability and fandom and respectability at this point because they're just the biggest sellouts in rock and punk history is complete bullshit. Even the band's most mainstream-sounding albums in their catalog don't even come close to sounding like radio rock or even like traditional commercial pop punk, for that matter.

In fact, I don't even think Laura or Against Me could even make that album if they really wanted to. So the degree to which they can really even sell out on that front, I feel like it's not even a reality. You may disagree with that personal assessment that I have. Certainly, the opposite is arguable.

However. I feel like the last person on the planet who should be making that argument is Tim fucking Pool, because if Tim is going by the metric that Laura Jane Grace was at one time a really great underground, hard core singer-songwriter with anarchist leanings, and now she's no longer fully that, and as a result, she's a loser and a cretin, then she shouldn't be taken seriously.

Okay, if that is true of Laura Jane Grace, that applies 8, 10, 20 times for Tim fucking Pool, who apparently over here, again, sitting here like a Stan, 'I play all the songs on the guitar.' So, how deep into the ideological tank were you for every old school Against Me song? Probably more than even Laura Jane Grace was, and she wrote the fucking tracks.

In the grander scheme of things, the ideological shift that we're seeing in Laura Jane Grace as a singer and a songwriter over the course verse of Against Me 2002 to Against Me 2016 is super gradual and even minimal in comparison to Tim Pool, going from Against Me Stan, who knows all the songs on the guitar, to Russian oligarch dark paid, right wing talking head freak who releases some of the worst music known to man under the title of his podcast.

"Tell me what to do instead of dream and let me die for you." - Timcast

If and at the very least, I can respect the fact that Laura Jane Grace, in her own art and work, has actually tried to explain and contend with these changes that she's had ideologically over the course of her lifetime in her music, actually presenting them to her fans to try to give them some understanding. Meanwhile, Tim Pool over here is a million times more the sellout than Laura Jane Grace could ever be. And he gets to sit there on his shady, billionaire-funded podcast YouTube channel and pretends like he's not the textbook definition of a political internet grifter.

"Ukraine is the enemy of this country. Ukraine is our enemy being funded by the Democrats. I will stress this again. One of the greatest enemies of our nation right now is Ukraine." - Tim Pool

But yeah, wow. You've really got to give it to Tim Pool for uncovering the Laura Jane Grace, billionaire trans woman grift. Because as we all know, all rock singers, all punk rock bands, if they want to become famous and want to become millionaires and just get really big and get really huge and see tons of success, but only for a little bit, though, only for a little bit, they all have to become trans.

But yeah, there you go. Tim Pool exposed once again as a dimwit, and I think I'm going to leave it there.

Anthony Fantano, Tim Pool. Never, no.