The U.S. military shoots down three unidentified flying objects in a week, and we examine what the hell they might be. Plus, we review the Super Bowl, cultural highlights, and lowlights, and The Washington Post stands up for those most affected by Valentine s Day. This is The Bench Bureau Show, hosted by Ben Shapiro ( ) and produced by Alex Blumberg ( ), with help from Matthew Boll ( ), and Rachel Goodman ( ). Our theme song is Come Alone by Suneaters, courtesy of Lotuspool Records. Our ad music is by Haley Shaw, and our ad design is by Mark Phillips. This episode was edited by Annie-Rose Strasser and edited by Rachel Ward. It was mixed by Matthew Boll and Rachel Ward, with additional editing and mixing by Jack Taylor. The show was mixed, produced, and mixed by Patrick Muldowney. Special thanks to Rachel Ward and Matt Boll, and to our sponsor, Caff Monster Energy Drink, Inc., for making great tasting margaritas with twice the caffeine and fueling the energy and hydration needed to make the best margarita shots you'll ever get in your life. You can get 10% off your first pack by clicking here. Can't go wrong with that? Get a pack of Monster Energy drink, it's $5, $10, $20, $25, $50, $55, and $75, and get VIP VIP membership, they'll get you an ad-free VIP membership when you watch the show in VIP access, and you'll get 7 days of VIP access starting starting starting in 7 days for VIP access only they can get VIP access to the VIP service starting only they get a discount, and they'll also get a 2-place offer, and 7-place they'll receive $19, WORLD PRODUCING WORLD PROMOTION AND 7-AVRODE AND MINGOTING WORLD WILL ALSO PRICING THE MINGO MANDORDS AND MALIBAND AND A FANDORING VIP PACKAGE AND A MISSION AND VIP PRIVOTING AND A CITY GET A MONDORING PRIVORY PRIVOR AND A VIP MISSION TO CONFIRMED TO SUPPORT THE MEED AND A FRIED PRIVODY AND A PRIVIDCAST AND FINALLY GET A FABCAST AND M PATREON AND A CHIP AND A SUPPORTER WILL ALSO SUPPORT THE MONEY PACKAGE?
00:00:00.000The American military shoots down three unidentified flying objects in a week, and we examine what the hell they might be.
00:00:05.000We review the Super Bowls, cultural highlights and lowlights, and The Washington Post stands up for those most affected by Valentine's Day, the asexual.
00:00:14.000We'll get to all the Super Bowl stuff in just a little bit here.
00:00:22.000Essentially, over the weekend, the aliens tried to invade, saw the Super Bowl halftime show, went, what the F, and immediately got the hell out of there on their spaceships as fast as humanly possible.
00:00:32.000But the big story over the course of the weekend is that apparently we are now just going happy hunting on a bunch of unidentified flying objects.
00:00:40.000There were three unidentified flying objects shot down within the course of days.
00:00:45.000The first was shot down Over Alaska, apparently.
00:00:49.000According to CNN.com, President Biden told CNN the shootdown of a high-altitude object hovering over Alaska on Friday was a success, shortly after American national security officials disclosed that the commander-in-chief gave the U.S.
00:01:02.000The announcement, marking the second time American fighter jets have taken down an object flying over U.S.
00:01:06.000airspace in a little less than a week, comes after the administration was subjected to a slew of questions about the timing of Joe Biden's decision to shoot down that suspected Chinese spy balloon that was floating all over the continental United States.
00:01:17.000This time, the president basically said, and they shot it down.
00:01:21.000That's a direct quote from the president.
00:01:24.000After the object was first detected on Thursday, F-35s were scrambled to investigate, according to a U.S.
00:01:29.000The object, according to National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby, was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.
00:01:39.000Apparently, along with efforts by F-35s on Thursday to monitor the thing, fighter aircraft were then engaged with the object on Friday morning, and that yielded limited information.
00:01:48.000They found out the thing was not man, and then they immediately shot it down.
00:01:52.000Joe Biden, of course, declared this an absolute success.
00:02:28.000official noted there was not a serious concern about collateral damage to people or property on the ground when the decision to shoot it down was made.
00:02:34.000As you recall, when it came to the first Chinese spy balloon, which went over the entire United States, the supposed concern was if we shoot it down, it might hit a school.
00:02:54.000Northern Command and NORAD wanted to shoot down the object during the daytime because the brief hours of sunlight in the far north made it easier to spot for a fast-moving jet trying to find and follow a slow-moving object.
00:03:04.000The object apparently did not have any surveillance equipment, which would make it both smaller and less sophisticated than the Chinese balloon that was shot down last weekend.
00:03:10.000Military officials say this was not, in fact, us shooting down our own materiel.
00:03:17.000Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, he says, we probably took it down because of, you know, the spy balloon last week.
00:03:21.000Well, saying the quiet part out loud here, which is Joe Biden got embarrassed over the Chinese spy balloons.
00:03:25.000Now we're just shooting down anything in sight, apparently.
00:03:28.000Do you know anything about what was shot down today or why two things were shot down in such a short span?
00:03:34.000My best guess is that for the first time, because of the emergence of this balloon, a lot of eyes are trained.
00:03:42.000The first one, the Chinese The first one.
00:03:44.000So I think this is probably a case of now we're looking really hard.
00:03:49.000And you may remember when we did the big hearings around what people call UFOs, what we're supposed to call unidentified aerial phenomenon.
00:03:57.000It turns out there's an immense amount of junk floating around up there.
00:04:01.000There's private companies that put things up to try to provide Internet service.
00:04:05.000So my best speculative guess right now is that it was probably something like that.
00:04:09.000And they just said, given what we just all went through for a week, better to just take this thing down.
00:04:14.000Okay, and the head of the spokesperson for the Pentagon, Sean Kirby, he says this particular object was not manned, which it would have been a shock if it had been manned, because presumably we'd be at war with somebody if we were shooting down manned space objects or manned aerospace objects.
00:04:30.000Given how little was known about this object at the time that our forces shot it down, is it safe to say that when the president ordered He did not know whether it was a manned or unmanned object.
00:04:47.000We were able to get some fighter aircraft up and around it before the order to shoot it down and the pilot's assessment was that this was not manned.
00:05:03.000Okay, so that was object number one that was shot down over the weekend.
00:05:07.000Object number two that was shot down over the weekend was a cylindrical object that was shot down over Canada.
00:05:12.000So apparently there are a lot of these objects and we're just shooting down a lot of them right now.
00:05:16.000According to the New York Times, an American fighter jet acting on the orders of President Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada.
00:05:21.000This is the first time Justin Trudeau has ever gotten to take credit for anything military related.
00:05:25.000He gets to pretend that he's a big, strong fellow, Justin Trudeau.
00:05:30.000Handsome Bernie Sanders up there in Canada.
00:05:32.000Apparently, Canadian-American officials said that they ordered the takedown of another object over Canada.
00:05:37.000Trudeau said, I ordered the takedown of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace.
00:05:41.000He actually put out a tweet to this effect, championing his own strong defense for shooting down another unidentified object.
00:05:48.000Quote, I ordered the takedown of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace.
00:05:53.000NORAD command shot down the object over the Yukon.
00:06:04.000As with the object that Biden ordered shot down near Alaska on Friday, officials said they really didn't know what they had blasted out of the sky over Yukon, which is, of course, great strategy.
00:06:12.000See, the thing about the Chinese spy balloon is we knew exactly what it was, and we still didn't shoot it down.
00:06:16.000Here, we're like, we don't know what it is, but, you know, it's kind of embarrassing to be Joe Biden that all these objects are floating around up there, so we better shoot all of them down.
00:06:22.000The White House said in a statement on Saturday that Biden and Trudeau had, quote, discussed the importance of recovering the object in order to determine more details on its purpose or origin.
00:06:30.000Late Saturday, the Federal Aviation Administration briefly closed also an area near Montana to air traffic.
00:06:36.000So, apparently, it suddenly got very crowded in the skies, and this is leading to some speculation.
00:07:10.000It reroutes your internet connection through their secure servers, so your ISP can't even track your online activity.
00:07:15.000Now, you might be thinking to yourself, wait, if the ISP can track my online activity, and now it's being routed through ExpressVPN, can't ExpressVPN do the same thing?
00:07:22.000Well, not really, because ExpressVPN is the only VPN that uses trusted server technology that makes it literally impossible for their VPN servers to store data.
00:07:30.000They even have one of the biggest assurance firms in the country, PricewaterhouseCooper, Audit their technology so you know you can trust it.
00:07:52.000The United States military also shot down this cylindrical object over Canada.
00:07:56.000Corine Jean-Pierre was tried out to explain what exactly had happened, why was Justin Trudeau involved in the decision-making, and she is legitimately the worst press secretary in American history.
00:09:08.000Coast Guard is searching for the object that was shot down over Michigan.
00:09:10.000It appeared to land in Canadian waters, or Canadian waters, as the White House press secretary might say.
00:09:16.000Pentagon officials said that none of these appeared to pose a military threat, but that officials could not rule out additional takedowns of unidentified objects in American airspace.
00:09:24.000And of course, there was apparently an object that nobody could then find, which shut down Montana airspace over the weekend as well.
00:09:34.000The Northern American Aerospace Defense Command put out a statement saying NORAD detected a radar anomaly and sent fighter aircraft to investigate.
00:09:40.000The aircraft did not identify any objects to correlate to the radar hits.
00:09:43.000NORAD will continue to monitor the situation.
00:09:45.000The one that was shot down over Lake Huron apparently was octagonal in shape.
00:09:51.000Jim Himes, again, he's the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee for the Democrats.
00:09:54.000He says that the last two objects probably are not Chinese, actually, which raises questions as to exactly what they are.
00:10:01.000If we find out these two objects are also of Chinese government origin, what does that say about our relationship right now?
00:10:09.000Well, first of all, I'd be surprised by that.
00:10:12.000I'm going to be careful because I don't know what the second and third objects were.
00:10:16.000I mean, I think it's fair to say that the Chinese are probably pretty embarrassed that they let a surveillance platform, the first one, go over the United States.
00:10:29.000That's not a comfortable thing for the Chinese.
00:10:31.000And of course, we cancelled the trip of the Secretary of State.
00:10:33.000So, my guess is that the other two objects are not Chinese, that China is doing everything they can right now to keep as low a profile as possible.
00:10:44.000So, he says that maybe they're not Chinese, maybe they are Chinese.
00:10:47.000Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, he says, well, they probably are Chinese.
00:10:51.000I mean, probably these are Chinese spy balloons again.
00:10:54.000Question over the Chinese spy planes and other aerial objects.
00:11:34.000Okay, meanwhile, the New York Times has an entire report on exactly what the hell is going on here, asking whether this is indeed the imminent alien invasion.
00:11:42.000Quote, if the truth is out there, it certainly is not apparent yet.
00:11:45.000Pentagon and intelligence officials are trying to make sense of three unidentified flying objects over Alaska, Canada, and Michigan that U.S.
00:11:50.000fighter jets shot down with missiles on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
00:11:53.000The latest turn in the aerial show taking place in the skies above North America comes after a helter-skelter weekend involving what at times seemed like an invasion of unidentified flying objects.
00:12:02.000And of course, this raised the question of whether the aliens were in fact here.
00:12:06.000General Glenn Van Hurk mentioned his head of NORAD before.
00:12:17.000Because you still haven't been able to tell us what these things are that we are shooting out of the sky, that raises the question, have you ruled out aliens or extraterrestrials?
00:12:59.000Maybe the aliens are here after all, or maybe they're just adjusting over at NORAD, all of their defense mechanisms, because it turns out that after Joe Biden gets embarrassed, then all of a sudden you're going to up the ante and you're going to shoot everything out of the sky.
00:13:11.000So it doesn't appear that Joe Biden is a weakling because Joe Biden, as it turns out, is in fact a weakling.
00:13:15.000According to the New York Times, after the transit of the spy balloon this month, NORAD adjusted its radar system to make it more sensitive.
00:13:21.000As a result, the number of objects it detected increased sharply.
00:13:23.000In other words, Norad is picking up more incursions because it's now looking for them, spurred on by the heightened awareness caused by the furor over the spy balloon, which floated over the continental United States for a week before an F-22 shot it down on February 4th.
00:13:35.000Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Security and Atmospheric Affairs Melissa Dalton said, quote, We have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase in objects we've detected over the past week.
00:13:46.000By the way, this means it's kind of miraculous that we haven't had a plane hit one of these things, no?
00:13:51.000I mean, if we literally were not looking for them, and now we just kind of fine-tuned the radar a little bit, what have we been doing for the past several years?
00:13:58.000Why exactly were we not looking for these things for years on end?
00:14:03.000And if they're not dangerous at all, why are we looking for them right now?
00:14:07.000There are a few different explanations that have been offered here.
00:14:59.000So again, we've had many reports in the recent past of UFOs.
00:15:00.000to companies that really hate your guts.
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00:15:11.000So again, we've had many reports in the recent past of UFOs.
00:15:15.000Apparently, according to NPR, this is just a couple of weeks ago, the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office has received 366 reports of unidentified aerial phenomenon, UAP, which is basically UFOs, since it was formed last summer.
00:15:28.000That total reflected 247 new UFO reports and another 119 that occurred before March 2021, but had not been included in earlier preliminary report.
00:16:05.000But the reality is, what is the most likely thing that is going on here?
00:16:08.000The most likely thing that is going on here is that we are now, because the president is sensitive to being labeled a coward, shooting down everything.
00:16:18.000What's hilarious is the Chinese, who are now attempting to pretend that the alien invasion is imminent also, so that they can shoot down American spy equipment.
00:16:25.000The Global Times, which is a Chinese-controlled outlet, tweeted out over the weekend, quote, local maritime authorities in East China's Shandong province announced on Sunday they had spotted an unidentified flying object in waters near the coastal city of Ruzhou in the province and were preparing to shoot it down, reminding fishermen to be safe via messages. Yeah, that's probably it.
00:16:56.000And it is very convenient for members of both governments to blame UFOs or to leave it vague out there so that it doesn't raise tensions.
00:17:03.000It's also possible that some of the stuff that's being shot down is more sophisticated Chinese equipment than the American officials actually wish to acknowledge.
00:17:10.000It's possible that the Chinese have gotten further developmentally and American officials want to be made public.
00:17:16.000Or maybe these Chinese vehicles are really unsophisticated and the Americans know that and they don't want to let the Chinese know that they know that.
00:17:23.000So instead they're trying to cover up for it.
00:17:25.000However, unlike my colleague Matt Walsh who is very invested in the this is the alien invasion theory, I'm very not invested in this is the alien invasion theory.
00:17:32.000Mainly because I feel like if the aliens came here they wouldn't be floating octagonal balloons that we could shoot down over Lake Huron with like a single flight of an F-22.
00:17:40.000That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
00:17:47.000It seems to me that the equipment that you use to surveil America or the rest of the world ought to be better than like the crap the Chinese are putting up there in a giant balloon.
00:18:05.000Considering that we produce things like the Super Bowl and people who riot when their team doesn't win the Super Bowl.
00:18:10.000So last night, In the Super Bowl, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles.
00:18:15.000There's a very controversial call, and at the very end of the game, there's a passing interference call on the cornerback for the Philadelphia Eagles.
00:18:23.000It didn't seem like a lot of interference.
00:18:25.000The ball was really overthrown by Patrick Mahomes.
00:18:27.000It allowed the Chiefs a reset on downs, and that allowed them essentially to run out the clock.
00:18:32.000Now, the reality is that the Chiefs were in a pretty commanding position anyway.
00:18:35.000Even if they'd had to kick the field goal, there still was only about a minute 30 left on the clock, a minute 40 left on the clock.
00:18:41.000Jalen Hurts would have had to take his team all the way down the field in that particular amount of time.
00:18:46.000If you're angry at the refs and you're an Eagles fan, maybe you should be more angry at your team, which blew a 10-point lead after the first half.
00:18:51.000It's a double-digit lead that you blew in the Super Bowl because your defense didn't perform.
00:18:55.000But Eagles fans were going to riot either way.
00:18:57.000This is the beautiful thing about Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, is that you know they're going to riot literally no matter what.
00:19:02.000If they had won, there would have been riots.
00:19:05.000According to the New York Post, dejected Eagles fans took to the streets of Philadelphia en masse, shouting F the Chiefs, lighting fireworks, and clashing with police after the team's devastating Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night.
00:19:19.000They're really angry that the police are racist, which is why the Chiefs won.
00:19:22.000Broad Street looked like a sea of green as heartbroken Philly fans climbed lights and chanted obscenities after the Eagles' stunning 38-35 defeat, according to NJ.com and videos posted to social media.
00:19:32.000Police issued warnings to rowdy fans, some of whom were seen igniting fireworks on the ground, climbing greased poles, and jumping onto bus shelters, according to Fox News.
00:19:41.000So, you know, that's just like a nice Sunday night in Philadelphia, honestly.
00:19:46.000Earlier in the day, wild fans overturned a car on a crowded street near Temple University before the game even started.
00:19:52.000Welcome to Philadelphia, where they throw batteries at Santa Claus at the Philly Stadium.
00:19:58.000People remain mostly peaceful on Broad Street.
00:19:59.000The crowd emptied the streets between 11 p.m.
00:20:02.000The diehards had started partying when the Eagles held a lead, but then, of course, they lost, and so that was a good excuse for people to climb poles and start to lose their minds.
00:20:11.000This is what a bored culture looks like.
00:20:14.000And a culture, by the way, I'm gonna say a culture without kids.
00:20:16.000Like, you got kids, Super Bowl ends, you gotta make sure your kids are in bed, you gotta get ready for work the next day.
00:20:22.000Who has time to go out and riot after your team loses a game?
00:20:58.000There might be medications that are at that CVS that you need.
00:21:00.000You need them in your house in case, God forbid, you got Philadelphia Eagles fans riding outside your house, overturning cars because they don't like a call on a cornerback.
00:21:07.000We've talked about supply chain issues in the past more seriously.
00:21:09.000We've talked about serious emergencies on this show as well.
00:21:14.000Whenever that sort of stuff crops up, you got to think to yourself, do I have the resources I need?
00:21:51.000Meanwhile, the Super Bowl always a sort of cultural bellwether.
00:21:55.000So one of the reasons people like watching the Super Bowl who are not even particularly into football is because it is maybe the only unifying moment in American life left at this point.
00:22:03.000The State of the Union is not particularly unifying.
00:22:05.000Even on July 4th, you'll see a lot of people who are out there shouting about how America is historically founded in racism and it's quite terrible.
00:22:11.000And so the Super Bowl, because it is both a combination of a grand unified event for Tens of millions of Americans and also a cultural event in the sense that we are all watching as corporations try to make money off us.
00:22:24.000It shows you where the corporations think your head is at.
00:22:28.000Where do the corporations think the direction of the culture is going?
00:22:30.000And the answer is progressively to the left.
00:22:34.000The Super Bowl has decided that they are going to woke up a little bit, at least a little bit.
00:22:37.000It's not as bad as it was a few years ago when Colin Kaepernick was kneeling for cash.
00:22:42.000He was a second string quarterback who was radically unsuccessful and then decided that he was a victim of American society.
00:22:48.000By the way, you will remember that when Colin Kaepernick did his protest for millions of dollars in advertising money, you remember when he did that, that Rihanna was invited to sing at the Super Bowl that year, and then she proclaimed she would not sing at the Super Bowl because of Colin Kaepernick.
00:23:00.000Well, she did sing at the Super Bowl this year, if you can call what she did last night singing.
00:23:04.000Typically, singing requires you to have more than about a six-note range, but apparently not in modern pop music.
00:23:09.000In any case, I'm going to go through some of the cultural items from the Super Bowl.
00:23:13.000So, the Super Bowl, even before it kicked off, Got kind of woke.
00:23:17.000There was a performance of the so-called Black National Anthem by Cheryl Lee Ralph.
00:23:21.000Now, this, once again, is a case of the face tattoo syndrome.
00:23:27.000What I mean by this is that the so-called Black National Anthem lift every voice and sing.
00:23:34.000They started doing this, again, in the aftermath of Colin Kaepernick's protest as an attempt to sop The left on racial issues.
00:23:42.000And they're still doing this before the Super Bowl now.
00:23:44.000And it's called the Black National Anthem for a reason for a lot of people.
00:23:48.000But people in the media are like, why are you calling it the Black National Anthem?
00:24:07.000The question is, is there a Latino-American National Anthem, or a Jewish-American National Anthem, or a Polish-American National Anthem that has to be sung before the Super Bowl as well?
00:24:17.000Or is it only the Black National Anthem that gets sung before the Super Bowl?
00:24:20.000I'm just wondering, again, the Super Bowl is supposed to be a grand, unifying cultural event.
00:24:25.000Why you have a woke sectarian lead up to the event?
00:24:30.000So here is a Shirley Ralph singing the so-called black national anthem.
00:24:34.000Please sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us.
00:24:49.000Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
00:26:15.000The point is that the military, in conjunction with the NFL, decided that it was very important, symbolically speaking, to have only women fly over the stadium.
00:26:23.000Which, again, is a way of trying to virtue signal to the left-wing social crowd, yeah, you guys might not like the military very much, but there are females who are flying those planes, and that's the really, really important thing.
00:26:33.000And it always brings to mind that famous meme of a bomb dropping from an American plane with an American flag on it.
00:26:38.000It's like, this is Republican presidents and then a bomb dropping from an American plane with the trans flag on it.
00:29:21.000How many female players are there in the NFL?
00:29:23.000I understand we made a big, big deal out of there was a college football kicker who was a female and she squib kicked and everyone's like, oh my God, she's amazing and squib kicking.
00:29:32.000You mean like a bad punt or a bad kickoff?
00:29:36.000Okay, so, but this is what we're going to do now.
00:29:52.000My favorite sort of unintentionally left-wing moment was the Google Pixel eraser ad, where they just started erasing people from history, a la Stalin.
00:29:59.000Stalin would have loved the magic eraser from Google Pixel.
00:30:47.000But I have to say that the focus on electric cars, this seems to be a little bit out of proportion to the number of people in America who can afford to buy an electric car at this point.
00:30:54.000Here is Will Ferrell, who ceased being funny, I don't know, what, 20 years ago?
00:31:08.000There was a full commercial with John Travolta singing a song from Greece, and he was accompanied by Zach Braff and Donald Faison from Scrubs, which was kind of a niche show, even when it was on the air, and everybody is like 50.
00:32:28.000Okay, weak stuff there from both Netflix and the EV companies.
00:32:32.000I do love that now they have to virtue signal about virtue signaling.
00:32:36.000It's an infinite vortex of virtue signaling.
00:32:40.000We're not just going to virtue signal by, for example, showing electric cars.
00:32:43.000We're going to virtue signal about doing it in our TV shows, and then we'll triple virtue signal by making a commercial about virtue signaling about the virtue signaling.
00:32:52.000Okay, in just one second, we'll get to the weird halftime show, and it was weird, starring Rihanna.
00:33:00.000Just a reminder, Rihanna said a few years ago that she was not going to perform in the halftime show because she was so mad about Colin Kaepernick.
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00:35:01.000Well, there's only one part of the actual Super Bowl show that many women watch, and that, of course, is the halftime show, which is really kind of the only explanation for why Rihanna was there, as I'll remind you.
00:35:11.000She was supposed to not be on the Super Bowl since about 2018, when Colin Kaepernick fell out of favor in the NFL because he is a toolbag.
00:35:17.000She said she was not going to perform at the halftime show.
00:35:19.000Well, now she's back to performing at the halftime show.
00:35:25.000So it was weird because As staged, it was as though they basically had the set designer for The Last Jedi create all of the costuming and sets.
00:35:33.000It was very strange. She was wearing like the Emperor's Royal Guard red uniform and everybody behind her was wearing the white Stormtrooper uniform.
00:35:40.000They also appeared to be wearing, I guess, the COVID outfits from China.
00:35:44.000Like the COVID cleanup outfits from China.
00:35:47.000I saw some people online comparing this to sperm in search of an egg because there were like thousands and thousands of people clad in white and one Rihanna in red at the very center.
00:35:57.000It was very, very strange optics for sure.
00:36:01.000I will admit that Rihanna is not, in fact, my favorite singer.
00:36:04.000One of the reasons for that is that as much as I don't like pop music and haven't liked pop music pretty much my entire career, you can at least acknowledge that many of the former top pop singers could sing.
00:36:14.000Christina Aguilera used to have some pipes on her.
00:36:16.000Rihanna, her range is about the range of a cat being run over by a steamroller.
00:37:36.000Now, I have to say, the NFL, and she and her agent, they all knew she was pregnant before she did the show.
00:37:42.000I'm going to suggest that the reason they did not announce that until after the show is specifically because they knew that she was not going to be good.
00:37:47.000So, if they had said before the show, by the way, Rihanna's pregnant, people would have been like, um, is it safe to put a pregnant lady on risers that are going, like, up 200 feet in the air with no guardrails?
00:37:59.000And if they do it after the show, then that makes a good excuse for her not being very good last night with her COVID crew, her COVID cleanup crew, last night.
00:38:09.000Here she was, once again, grabbing her crotch.
00:38:11.000There was a lot of crotch grabbage last night.
00:38:12.000It's still better than it has been at the Super Bowl for quite a while, because the Super Bowl has been kind of a center of Vegas-style degradation for a long time.
00:38:18.000She's the most clothed that any of these female pop stars have been for quite a while.
00:38:23.000I hear she was doing some crotch grabbing, of course.
00:38:25.000♪ Boy, boy, is you begin to take it, take it, baby, baby ♪ ♪ Take it, take it, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby ♪ She's grabbing her butt.
00:38:31.000And And now she has a tail or something.
00:38:36.000There's the COVID crew dancing with her.
00:38:45.000And some more crotch grabbage and putting it across her mouth and nose.
00:38:48.000It's just delightful stuff for the children, of course.
00:38:51.000Now, I know everybody on the left, anytime you mention the children, they're like, well, then don't have your kids watch.
00:38:55.000I didn't have my kids watch the halftime show, but I'm not going to pretend that there weren't millions of kids who didn't watch the halftime show.
00:39:04.000This was less offensive than most of the shows.
00:39:06.000And just on a pure aesthetic level, it's a bad show.
00:39:09.000On a pure aesthetic level, it was 20 minutes of the same thing over and over, and all of her songs, I hate to say it, they sound the same, they have no range, and she can't sing.
00:39:17.000Saying the unpopular thing, but that's what we do here on the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:39:21.000We have unpopular cultural opinions that are significantly more controversial, apparently, than, like, my opinions about politics, which is kind of amazing to me.
00:39:27.000But if I say two things, one, it's nice that she's pregnant, and two, she did a crap show last night, then everybody loses it.
00:39:41.000And if you mentioned that it was a bad show and it was very unentertaining and incredibly boring, this is probably because you're some sort of bigot.
00:39:49.000I mean, pretty sure it's just because it was kind of a boring show.
00:39:57.000The Super Bowl wasn't like super duper woke.
00:39:59.000It wasn't as woke as it was in past years.
00:40:01.000It didn't even have the same level of controversy as it did last year when it was a bunch of rappers who actually had criminal histories on the stage.
00:40:07.000But it just shows you the kind of cultural morass in which we find ourselves.
00:40:11.000Nothing of real quality happening out there.
00:40:14.000Meanwhile, speaking of targeting the children, Disney continues today.
00:40:17.000So Disney actually had a really nice commercial last night for old Disney.
00:40:21.000Disney had a commercial last night in which they showed all of their legacy properties and make you super nostalgic.
00:40:26.000I haven't been able to take my kids to a Disney World for...
00:40:29.000You know, a year, basically, since Disney openly announced that they were trying to trans the kids.
00:40:35.000I've been saying I'm not bringing my kids to Disney World, which is, on a personal level, annoying and painful for me because I really like Disney World a lot.
00:40:43.000We were annual past members in my family, but I'm not willing to patronize the same people who then subsidize a bunch of wokesters to indoctrinate my kids.
00:41:00.000If you watch Peter Pan on Disney Plus right now, they have a warning label at the front of Peter Pan telling you you probably shouldn't watch this.
00:41:04.000But then they're willing to advertise this.
00:41:17.000The stuff they're not actually marketing over on the Disney Plus commercial during the Super Bowl, the stuff they're not marketing is all of the woke crap that they are very invested in making.
00:41:28.000So, during the Super Bowl, for example, they weren't showing you the Lightyear movie lesbian storyline.
00:41:34.000They weren't showing you clips from the Proud family.
00:41:36.000They weren't showing you any of the stuff that they feel that it is their job to do as the cultural vanguard.
00:41:40.000The Proud family has become sort of a thing on the Twitters now because people are noticing how woke the Proud family is, and it really is.
00:41:46.000I mean, it's so woke that there is a point where Robin DiAngelo's white fragility actually shows up on the show.
00:42:20.000So now the white guy is being forced to read White Fragility on a children's television show on Disney+.
00:42:26.000Or perhaps you'd prefer the section of the Proud Family where a white girl is ripped up and down by her black female friends for dating a black guy.
00:42:34.000Apparently this makes her very bad because apparently the black guy in the show prefers to date white girls and they're like, all the black girls are like, that's awful, you can't date him.
00:42:40.000Now if the black guy preferred to date black girls, apparently that'd be totally cool and fine.
00:43:16.000Just a quick reminder here to Latoya Ravenous, one of the chief producers on Proud Family, is the same lady who said that she was pushing her not-at-all-secret gay agenda into children's programming.
00:43:25.000This, of course, is not the only children's programming or programming directed at teens that is attempting to hijack the brains of your kids, because this is our entertainment culture.
00:43:33.000Paramount Plus is now producing a prequel to Grease.
00:43:36.000Now, Grease is a little bit more mature than For the Kitties, but a lot of teenagers like the original musical Grease, remember with John Travolta, and that musical was supposed to take place in the 50s.
00:43:47.000So now they're doing a Grease prequel that is getting a woke makeover.
00:43:53.000It is apparently titled Grease, Rise of the Pink Ladies, and it's about lesbians and transgenderism in 1954.
00:44:03.000Yeah, not super historically accurate, but it definitely has the values of the producers.
00:45:06.000So, meanwhile, in less kind of frivolous news, I would say this is frivolous, but it really isn't considering how many millions of people imbibe from the culture each and every day and how this moves the culture to the left.
00:45:18.000But in more materially political news, the debt ceiling fight continues apace.
00:45:25.000Chuck Schumer is out there claiming that it's Republicans' fault that we're having a debt ceiling fight.
00:46:10.000They're suggesting that Republicans are going to ask for a vast restructuring of Social Security and Medicare in order to raise the debt ceiling.
00:46:16.000That, of course, is not going to happen.
00:46:17.000McCarthy apparently got together some of the quote unquote five families of the House GOP, according to CNN.
00:46:22.000Those represent the various ideological wings of the conference, and they met for the first time to discuss the range of possibilities and kick around ideas about raising the debt limit.
00:46:30.000McCarthy did not attend that particular session, but he did enlist a close confidant, Louisiana Representative Garrett Graves, to lead that discussion.
00:46:37.000Top committee chairman and other members of leadership also participated as well.
00:46:41.000The goal is to develop a consensus about a proposal that can pass the House with GOP votes alone and strengthen their conference's negotiating position as Washington stares into a debt default this summer.
00:46:50.000It'll be fascinating to see if McCarthy can put this thing together, but he is attempting to do the right thing by avoiding a fight over things that are completely useless, like Social Security and Medicare with the Democratic Senate.
00:47:01.000Meanwhile, investors are looking at Joe Biden's supposed booming economy and they are fleeing funds that track stocks.
00:47:08.000According to the Wall Street Journal, investors have pulled a net $31 billion from U.S.
00:47:12.000equity mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the past six weeks alone.
00:47:15.000According to Refinitiv-Lipper data through Wednesday, that marks the longest streak of weekly net outflows since last summer and the most money pulled in aggregate from domestic equity funds to start a year since 2016.
00:47:25.000So people are pouring their money into international equity funds, meaning they're not investing in the United States quite as much, and they're pulling a lot of their money away from U.S.
00:47:35.000Flows toward funds outside of domestic equities indicate a level of apprehension from investors who are not buying that 2023 rebound in U.S.
00:47:43.000That, of course, is not a major shock.
00:47:46.000Meanwhile, some of our leading financial lights continue to insist that the United States should lead the way in spending trillions of dollars on things like climate change.
00:47:53.000Wonder why people aren't investing quite the same way they were in Few years ago, the answer is people are very much afraid that the government is going to step in and prohibit them from investing in the things that are the most profitable.
00:48:03.000Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock, he actually gave a number yesterday that blows everything out of the water.
00:48:08.000He says that if you want to get to net zero globally in terms of carbon emissions, we have to spend $50 trillion.
00:50:07.000Where that whole music is just lasting forever.
00:50:08.000So I thought that was actually kind of a nice commercial.
00:50:11.000Another thing that I like, I like it when people who are crazy demonstrate that they're full-scale crazy so we can stop pretending that they're not crazy.
00:50:16.000So Sam Smith, over the weekend, he appeared at the Brit Awards, dressed apparently as a person with terrible gout, who wears tight black pants.
00:50:30.000Or as a spade, like on a playing card, is the idea, I guess, here.
00:50:36.000According to Phil Star Life, Sam Smith continues to trend for their bold fashion choices, both of them, continuing their streak with an avant-garde look at the 2023 Brit Awards.
00:50:45.000The singer wore a custom outfit by a Kerala-born menswear designer, Perri, at the awards ceremony on Sunday, featuring an all-black latex bodysuit shaped similar to a spade.
00:51:22.000Also, as Emily Zanotti, a friend, tweeted out, the sound around Sam Smith as Sam Smith made his way, like, tried to walk in this, which was like... Balloons just rubbing together as he moved.
00:52:18.000Okay, time for some things that I hate.
00:52:19.000So, Valentine's Day is coming up this week, and the Washington Post is focused laser-like on the people most affected by Valentine's Day.
00:52:34.000These would be people who are asexual and aromantic.
00:52:37.000We should just call these lonely people.
00:52:40.000But now, apparently, we have to have a big focus on this.
00:52:43.000This is one of my biggest annoyances in life, seriously, is that there are rules and ceremonies and they apply to the vast majority of the population and are pressed because they are transgressive in the extreme. All they care about is breaking rules and norms. They find the person who is like outside the box like, but isn't this person victimized by Valentine's Day?
00:53:02.000So you have a standard in society that people should generally not be hugely obese.
00:53:23.000As a member of a minority group in the United States, namely I'm an Orthodox Jew, I don't feel like every Christmas there has to be a story in the New York Times about what do Orthodox Jews do on Christmas?
00:53:38.000Why do we have to have full stories about it?
00:53:39.000But apparently it is very important to think of the plight of people like Odella Pax, 37.
00:53:45.000who has always been skeptical of Valentine's Day.
00:53:48.000She's not opposed to romantic gestures, she said, but the holiday feels capitalistic and corporate-driven, as companies entice couples to spend big on presents and chocolate.
00:53:56.000If I have a partner, why do I only have to give them presents on one day?
00:53:58.000Why do I only give them flowers on one day?
00:54:00.000Why is that day in particular special, said the Penn Salkin at New Jersey resident.
00:54:05.000Pax's skepticism is widely shared, but hers comes with a twist.
00:54:09.000She identifies as both asexual and idem romantic.
00:54:13.000We just used to call these lonely people, now they're an actual minority protected class, asexual and idem romantic, which means she does not have any desire for sex and she doesn't make any distinction between romantic and platonic feelings.
00:54:26.000So what to do with a holiday that assumes romantic and sexual attraction are the norm?
00:54:29.000This year, she's been doing what she usually does on February 14th, making time for self-love and self-care.
00:54:34.000It sounds like this person has a lot of time for self-love and self-care, because all they do is think about themselves all day long.
00:54:40.000For her, that means soaking in a hot bath before curling up in bed with her three stuffed animals, Findahl, Marsha, and Sylvia, the last two named after trailblazing trans activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.
00:54:55.000We are creating a society of happy people by focusing on the marginalized groups who refuse to or do not wish to take part in nice things like, you know, traditional romance.
00:55:06.000We can make the world a better place so that everyone who wants to curl up with Findol, Marsha, and Sylvia, named for trailblazing trans activists as stuffed animals, can do so on Valentine's Day.
00:55:37.000University in Philadelphia, a professional useless person, believes the population is undercounted and its influence underestimated because of a lack of awareness.
00:55:45.000Clancy Withers, 19, realized that they were asexual and...
00:55:48.000You notice the high correlation between the transing and the gender non-binary and the asexual and aromantic?
00:55:56.000Almost as though social contagion is a thing.
00:55:58.000Clancy Withers, 19, realized they were asexual and aromantic in high school when they noticed how differently they experienced attraction compared to their peers.
00:56:05.000When asexual and aromantic people like someone, you're attracted to them as a person and you are attracted to the way they are with you and the way they are with other people.
00:56:13.000This year, their Valentine is their friend Tax, who has helped them manage their Tourette syndrome.
00:56:18.000But we're supposed to pretend, again, that this is just a marginalized identity group.
00:56:21.000This isn't a person with a problem that probably we should focus on solving.
00:56:24.000It's all of society that must change to be more tolerant.
00:56:27.000Okay, meanwhile, one more thing that I hate.
00:56:30.000So, I love this headline from the New York Times.
00:56:32.000A Yale professor suggested mass suicide for old people in Japan.
00:56:38.000I mean, I think it was suggested in the first sentence that he wants all the old people to die.
00:56:42.000That would be the thing that he meant.
00:56:43.000His pronouncements could hardly sound more drastic.
00:56:45.000In interviews and public appearances, Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale, has taken on the question of how to deal with the burdens of Japan's rapidly aging society.
00:56:54.000I feel like the only solution is pretty clear, he said during one online news program in late 2021.
00:56:58.000In the end, isn't it mass suicide and mass seppuku of the elderly?
00:57:02.000Seppuku is an act of ritual disembowelment that was code among dishonored samurai in the 19th century.
00:57:07.000First of all, I mean, if you're gonna, like, kill all the old people, seppuku's a pretty bad way to go.
00:57:10.000It, like, involved, like, taking a knife and plunging it in your stomach and going up and, like, all your intestines going, eh, eh, eh.
00:57:15.000Last year, when asked by a school-aged boy to elaborate on his math seppuku theories, Dr. Neruda graphically described to a group of assembled students a scene from Midsommar, a 2019 horror film in which a Swedish cult sends one of its oldest members to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff.
00:57:29.000Whether that's a good thing or not, that's a more difficult question to answer, Dr. Narita said.
00:57:32.000If you think that's good, maybe you can work hard toward creating a society like that.
00:57:36.000At other times, he has broached the topic of euthanasia.
00:57:40.000Dr. Narita said his statements have been taken out of context, and he was mainly addressing a growing effort to push the most senior people out of leadership positions in business and politics, but he has pushed the hottest button in Japan.
00:57:52.000So, he appears frequently on Japanese online shows, and he wears signature eyeglasses with one round and one square lens.
00:57:58.000He is among a few Japanese provocateurs who have found an eager audience by gleefully breaching social taboos.
00:58:05.000So he is suggesting that all of the old people basically kill themselves because Japan has a massive social welfare state and all the old people are drawing on it too greatly.
00:58:13.000If, by the way, you think that this is a rarity, you should recall that Canada right now is pushing euthanasia and like really pushing euthanasia on anyone they can get to take it.
00:58:24.000This is going to be a widespread phenomenon throughout Western democracies within our lifetimes is going to be pushing elderly people to essentially commit suicide in order to make room for the youngs.
00:58:37.000It's going to be, it's going to be continually broached over and over and over again.
00:58:42.000I mean, Ezekiel Emanuel, who was literally the guy who designed Obamacare, wrote a piece for the Atlantic, quote, why I hope to die at 75.
00:58:50.00075 is about three to five years below the average life expectancy in the United States.
00:58:53.000So this is going to be a topic broached more and more often by the euthanasia enthusiasts on the left as the social welfare state continues to increase in cost and as the demographic triangle continues to turn upside down.
00:59:06.000Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.