I found the full Ron Bennington vs, Colin Flaherty on the former AA show. This was the moment for me when Anthony lost all control. This was the definitive moment that his decision to go from the funny man to the poltisperging route ended up being his cake stomping moment in the eyes of the average Redditor. This segment is probably the most memorable in the Compund Era because when we hit around the 1:00:00-1:02:00 minute mark was when we seen that point completely become apparent when Ants pause and rebuttal of the; "I am still hilarious," line comes in when you see the sadness in his forced smile. Just watching Anthony completely squirm and not having the ability to assert himself.
Ron just masterfully interjecting made what could of been a boring segment into one of the most interesting segments probably in the history of Compound. We truly ended up getting to see what the fall of grace of the once beloved shockjock, to being in the blacklisted, alt-right echo chamber really did to him. Anthony should of just stuck to being funny, opposed going down the poltisperging route. This segment just shows he just doesn't have the tenacity or the aggression required in that space of discourse. Also this just shows that Anthony as a host just didn't have the ability to manage this type of show format, especially with the type of guests he would try to book. This is while in the end of the Compound days, Anthony was only relegated to a gaggle of no-name D-list comics.
Anthony in the beginning should of not of hid all of his content behind a paywall, and also tried to do what he was good at. Which was being funny, but at this point after the Sirius contract going belly up, his initial maybe success of Compound beginning to go off the rails with the Artie and Anthony debacle. At this point I think was when he should of realized that perhaps he should of not of went with the paywalled Compound like format, but go the open to watch, podcast format. He realistically should of done that after the Sirius firing, and probably eased the fuck up a bit with his frustrations politically. Making more or less fun out of a stressful situation is difficult, but that is in many ways of what the art of comedy truly is. Him trying to deflect at this point of the Compound not meaning to be an alt-right show, to Ron then masterfully spelling out the problem with this iteration of Anthony's shows format just explained it all.
His Compound cope just shows that I think there is somewhere in him that knows that direction was a mistake. Maybe Anthony would of been in a different direction if he embraced the prevailing clips that circulated on YouTube around that time of the O&A segments. That is actually how I ended up getting familiar with the show in 2011-12 when I first started listening to them. It was mainly through the YouTube clips that where normally like 15 minute segments. Eventually the longer forms of the show came out and people started putting up bigger and the more unedited segments. If Ant just embraced just streaming around the time of his firing, even as Joe Rogan really started blowing up. He probably could of had more long term success and also probably not of ended up getting as cornered he did around this time. Though, Anthony ended up spiraling, and this timeframe too was also when the Reddit sub was getting incredibly popular, and the Nana bashing started to take off to full effect. But this was also an incredibly integral segment that demonstrated that Keith the Cop is by far the most incompetent individual to run any type of organization what's so ever. I think that the current state of Cumia now just shows that he is just chasing ghosts from Compound past at this point. This is just generally my observation though, I know I am chiming in late on this specific subject. Though, I am glad that this was discussed in the thread at this point.
