On this week's episode of Ash Wednesday, we talk about the Salon Pedophile, a piece written by Seth Rifkin about a group of men who were obsessed with pedophiles in the early days of the internet, and how they started a movement against them.
00:00:07.000Of course, it is Mug Club Quarantine Month, where we are doing two shows.
00:00:11.000Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we're doing Good Morning Mug Club, and we're offering everything for free in front of the paywall, so what you're about to watch is Ash Wednesday, a little more casual, where you guys send in your questions, your topics.
00:00:20.000We talk about them, not necessarily political.
00:01:49.000I was arguing with someone about abortion in the comments to one of your tweets, and I was just a fan, and you messaged me and said, hello, senor.
00:03:01.000He was working at a college and then it turned out he was just sending stuff out to people who he thought could get the message out, which was smart, just to try and cause chaos.
00:04:12.000Yeah, there was a really strong movement.
00:04:15.000Yeah, I ended up digging, he was on these message boards, and gotta hand it to him, he used his real name several times on the message boards, and it was some debate forum where you would, you know, talk about really edgy things like pedophilia or whatever.
00:04:27.000Wait, why would you have to hand it to him?
00:04:30.000If you're gonna be a pedophile... Sounds like Bernie on China.
00:04:53.000On these debate boards, he actually said that if society ever became more accepting and more sex positive, he would engage in sex play with a child.
00:05:00.000He said, I'll never apologize for that.
00:05:02.000So his whole basis for saying that, you know, I would never act on it, actually he had sort of committed to exactly that.
00:05:31.000And then he wrote like three more articles.
00:05:33.000We did this whole article and what I wrote was, hey, there's a certain point where I'm no longer, I guess I'm no longer prioritizing empathy.
00:06:47.000Now you've drawn the lines, and I was actually willing to draw it before pedophilia.
00:06:54.000Well, and this was right on the heels of everybody on the conservative side being called, you know, stupid or like, oh, that's a conspiracy theory, thinking that normalizing pedophilia was kind of that next step.
00:07:03.000You know, some people, you know, wrongly brought it up in certain cases.
00:07:06.000But in other cases, we're like, well, what is next?
00:07:08.000Like, if you guys continue down this line of crazy, like what's going to happen?
00:07:11.000And by you guys, I mean particularly folks in the media.
00:07:13.000We see what we see now coming from Hollywood.
00:07:15.000We see people like Roman Polanski, potentially Harvey Weinstein, people like Kevin Spacey.
00:07:19.000You see Corey Haim, Corey Feldman, these people all coming out talking about how it's one of the biggest open secrets in Hollywood, and these are the people who are sort of at the forefront of spearheading change.
00:07:29.000And of course, Salon is very Hollywood-friendly.
00:07:31.000They get all kinds of puff pieces and celebrities who speak to them there, which is Amazing to me.
00:14:11.000This is Kawika from way out over in Hawaii.
00:14:18.000I'd just like to send my aloha to all you guys and thank you all for what you do.
00:14:26.000My question for you gentlemen and Too Cute Maddie if she's there is out here in Hawaii I work at one of the largest homeless service providers and as a part of my job I deal with a lot of a lot of strife you know a lot of people at their lowest point and it weighs down on you Spiritually, mentally, physically.
00:14:53.000And I know you folks similarly have to deal with a lot of stress and strife and negativity coming your way for what you all do.
00:15:04.000And I was just hoping you all could share with us some things that you might do to re-energize yourself, to recharge your mana, as we say out here in Hawaii, your power, your inner strength, yeah?
00:15:20.000Both spiritually and mentally, especially.
00:15:23.000It's just so bizarre to see a clearly, like, Polynesian Samoan with a Steelers.
00:16:38.000It's like saying, you know, do you consider yourself American because you're from America?
00:16:41.000You specifically say you're American because you're from the United States.
00:16:45.000Not just if you're Canadian, you wouldn't say, well, I'm from North America, so I consider myself... I think it's kind of like what happened with Jews.
00:16:50.000There's a religion and there's also an ethnicity.
00:16:54.000And so I think with America, when we say Polynesians, we're talking about a race of people.
00:16:58.000Yeah, I mean, I don't know if Polynesian's a race or not, but, I mean, Samoan, I mean, I think the Samoan people themselves identify themselves as either a race slash culture with a long history, as opposed to being like, just more broadly, if you go 30,000 feet up and say, oh, everyone in Polynesia, but there's all these little different groups or islands or cultures within that area.
00:17:17.000Are there any Polynesians who don't look terrifying, like they could kill me?
00:17:22.000No, all of them, whether they look it or not, could kill you.
00:18:06.000I don't care about the rest of the world until one of them competes on our team.
00:18:12.000You know, for me, I don't know about you guys, I recharge and I appreciate, by the way, thank you for doing all the work that you do with the homeless shelter.
00:18:16.000What we deal with is different, you know, people hate us.
00:18:20.000What you deal with as far as a strife is seeing the pain and suffering of others.
00:18:22.000I mean, we see that too, but we're pretty fortunate in that we have a lot of supporters, so we can kind of focus on that.
00:18:30.000Or in my case, I don't get to read any of the comments because I've been banned from them here in the office.
00:19:25.000Yeah, I don't, you know, I wish I could say that I read books a lot, but I don't read books as much anymore, because when I read, it's usually news articles, or someone sends me a book that I should read to prepare for this show.
00:19:37.000So if I do read books, it's more so kind of informative, like a book, right now I'm reading through this book on the history of cigars, or a book on sort of the history of coffee and its relation to capitalism is pretty interesting.
00:20:07.000So, like right now I've been watching old fight videos, old boxing matches without the commentary.
00:20:14.000Because I'm like, man, everyone thinks this about this fight, so let me watch it without commentary and just through fresh eyes.
00:20:20.000And I watch something and I go, man, there are some fights that people were robbed, but you turn on the commentary and you realize, Oh, and Muhammad Ali is getting the best of this!
00:20:27.000He's literally bleeding out his face and telling his corner to cut off the gloves because he's done.
00:20:39.000I realize that when Hopper passed, it was one of those things that was so hard to deal with where watching a film is more powerful for me than a drug.
00:20:48.000Like a good immersive film gets my mind off of whatever it is that's sort of bothering me.
00:22:33.000I'll go to my uncle's cidery and just help him pick apples, help him mash apples, make the cider, have a cigar, be outside, but I don't really do that so much here because I don't have... It requires a day for me to do that.
00:22:53.000Yeah, sometimes that'll happen where it'll take me a little while to...
00:22:56.000And I realize that's what happens after we do live streams at night.
00:22:58.000I don't fall asleep until like two or three because I've got to be on, and it's hard to bring that down from going on.
00:23:04.000We've got a level of the energy that goes in, the tenseness that you have to have during your body, in your body, in your mind, to be on all the time or talking to people or running things or whatever it may be, that when you get to vacation, you're like, okay, is this the time to relax?
00:23:45.000But then there's a different level, and I think one of the things that the question asks about is, you know, he's facing in his daily life a lot of just downhearted situations where you're really bummed for people, for life, and for society.
00:23:58.000And some of the things, you know, a lot of folks will turn to God, they'll turn to their religious communities or their church families.
00:24:04.000I think a little bit of that, though, is when you hang out with your own family, right?
00:24:07.000Like, even if you're just there in those moments when you're reading together, those other things, but finding some other way to remember that life is not just that small bad situation that you're seeing day in and day out.
00:24:18.000And you hear this from other people who work in hospitals, especially in ones that are state-funded.
00:24:23.000They just see bad situation after bad situation, and they start to think that this is all the world has to offer.
00:24:29.000And so, getting outside of that, and that could either be watching a documentary about something you've never seen before about, you know, science, or travel, or the world, and remembering- Mini-horses.
00:24:50.000And I will say this, you know, sometimes people say like, oh, God is love, and they use it in this sort of just abstract way.
00:24:56.000But I will say, as far as recharging, I don't know about you, but I never feel closer to God than in my prayer time where I'm just being grateful.
00:25:04.000That's always where I feel like I really connect.
00:25:06.000I feel like it's God going like, hey, look, look at this.
00:25:09.000When I actually just go through gratitudes to the point where I know, you know, you should do more than just praying and being grateful.
00:25:14.000But sometimes I'll just sit for 20 minutes or 30 minutes like, thank you.
00:25:18.000I'll just be like, thank you so much for not even necessarily specific things.
00:25:21.000Sometimes I'll go through specifics and I'll do something like, man, thank you.
00:25:24.000Thank you, because I realize what I could have.
00:26:31.000And so occasionally you just needed, like you needed a break from that.
00:26:33.000Like, you can't just make your whole life about that because, like you said, you lose perspective on the beauty of the world, you lose perspective on how many good people there are out there because you see bad all the time, or how many people are doing well because you see people that are doing poorly.
00:26:45.000So I think getting outside of that and having a church group that you can go to or be a part of, a faith, is super important because you're gonna find that there very easily most of the time.
00:26:55.000I will say that for people out there, and then I want to go to Reg and see what he does to recharge and then we have to go, but for people out there who aren't necessarily involved in a community or let's say you're housebound right now because you're quarantined, everyone can sit.
00:27:05.000People talk about transcendental meditation or doing yoga.
00:27:08.000None of it, none of it will clear your head and change your outlook as much as just sitting and just, I know we say, use the term doing gratitudes, just sitting and thinking about what you're grateful for.
00:27:19.000Yeah, and for me like I'm super boring outside of work because we work such a high-intensity job where I really I yearn for the kind of normalcy that a lot of people have like for me nothing makes me happier than going home having a beer I play some tug-of-war with Betty listen to my wife and how her day went and then she makes a wonderful meal often or sometimes we order in and I'll just watch like the latest episode of curb and that is to me and That's as good as it gets.
00:28:05.000So one quick point before we get to Reg, which is, notice that the person who asked the question is in Hawaii, and how many people who would say, man, if only I could go on a vacation to Hawaii, or I could only do this, there's a little bit of it that comes from the heart, and you gotta find, you know, it comes from the inside, right?
00:28:19.000The circumstances are there, but a little bit comes from how you interpret it.
00:29:20.000So, but when you see, she talks to these women, you know, that are going into, like, abort their children, and a lot of times, you know, when we talk about pro-life things, we think, oh, it's about making this rational argument about personhood, but most of the women will say to her, yeah, I know it's killing my kid, but this is my only option, and she's trying to provide other options.
00:29:37.000She works with health care centers and things like that.
00:29:39.000But to see those women just go in there, the majority not success stories, you know, not
00:29:45.000the story of someone being saved or a life being saved.
00:29:48.000I think what helps her recharge is, you know, going back and thinking on the few times that
00:30:02.000And one of the sort of cliched stories that my wife actually draws strength from is the classic one with the beach where there are starfish washed up.
00:30:11.000And there's a little kid throwing them back into the ocean trying to save them before they're fried in the sunlight.
00:30:17.000But I mean, the way it goes is some old guy comes up and says, hey, you know, you can't save all these.
00:30:21.000And the kid said, but at least I saved some.
00:30:23.000And I think at the end of the day, that's what you have to be okay with if you are working in, you know, trying to help people that, just to focus on the ones that you were able to help.
00:30:48.000I will tell you this, like, it almost brought a tear to my eye.
00:30:50.000My wife and I were watching the rushes and we saw Garrett like... And I was like, oh my gosh, he's just, he's just a little jumping bean of hate.
00:32:15.000It was a moving moment knowing that there was somebody in there at such a late pregnancy thinking about doing that thing, and then luckily we had those two girls and they were able to talk her down.
00:32:25.000Yeah, but they weren't, you know, they didn't go in and say, leave.
00:32:27.000Don't think they just talked to her and sort of educated her.
00:32:31.000But that was a tough one because we said, well, maybe we can't, it was a kind of a flip of that reg where we said, maybe we can't save this baby, but we can, you know, we know that millions of people will see this and we can save thousands of other babies.
00:32:40.000And we were fortunate enough where, um, you know, it's tougher because that's a personal connection.
00:32:44.000You want to save that baby even more because you've met her, you've heard her story.
00:32:49.000And instead, um, you know, God was, uh, God was, uh, smiling down on us and none of them, uh, well, I don't know how many people didn't have abortions, but we know that lady didn't.