Juno News - The Andrew Lawton Show： Hollywood Hypocrites, CBC Fake News, Cancelling Vince Vaughn

00:00:00.000 Coming up, Hollywood hypocrites with Dr. Gad Saad, fake news from CBC, and big moves in the 0.93

00:00:05.600 conservative leadership race. Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of The Andrew Lawton Show on

00:00:11.600 True North, episode two, and what a glorious episode we will try to make it for you. If you're

00:00:17.940 tuning in for the second time, thank you for your continued loyalty over two episodes, and if you're

00:00:23.160 tuning in for the first time, what took you so long? In all honesty though, thanks very much. We had a

00:00:27.840 great response to the first episode, so we decided we'd do it again, and hopefully again and again as

00:00:33.380 time goes on. We've got a great show planned for today. We're going to talk to Professor Gad Saad

00:00:39.560 coming up in a little bit. Also, one novel way to settle legal action, and I want to get into a little

00:00:46.920 bit more about some of the movement in the conservative leadership race, but we'll get to all of that as time

00:00:52.640 goes on. First things first, I know I took it a little bit hard with FedEx not delivering the

00:00:58.680 package that you see now on the wall behind me, the famous acoustic panels, which aren't even all

00:01:03.440 that exceptional, but I liked them and I wanted them, and FedEx, I don't want to say I tore into

00:01:09.180 them. I ranted gently about FedEx in the first episode, and more than anything else I talked about,

00:01:15.780 I was getting emails from people that had their own stories about FedEx, so it's news you can use,

00:01:20.580 as they say, but I did finally get the panels, get them put up on the wall, everything like that's

00:01:25.140 looked after, so we can now go on, and there's like one little piece that I'm waiting for that you'll

00:01:30.180 see on the show in a couple of weeks. I won't tell you what it is, but just one little thing that I

00:01:34.900 thought would be good to have, but that one's my fault. That one I don't blame FedEx or anyone else

00:01:39.460 for. I want to start off on this topic that is a very interesting one to me, and it's the way that

00:01:46.880 the Hollywood wokeness cult has really tried to take over people's lives, and the string of stories

00:01:54.240 we've seen about this in the last little while, and I'm going to talk about this with Gadsad in a few

00:01:59.280 moments, but there's been three stories over the last two and a half weeks or so that have really

00:02:04.860 pushed this forward. I mean, you had the Golden Globes and Ricky Gervais going with this absolutely

00:02:12.240 astonishingly good monologue that took aim at Hollywood hypocrites, and then you had Michelle

00:02:19.460 Williams get up, you know, half an hour later and dedicate her award to protecting abortion rights, 1.00

00:02:25.740 despite the fact that Ricky Gervais has become pretty popular, more so than he was before, for

00:02:31.660 saying, hey, don't talk about politics, no one cares what you think, and then you have this week a few

00:02:37.580 stories where Stephen King, the author, who is not Hollywood per se, but still he's in that

00:02:43.260 entertainment world, tweeted something. Well, he tweeted two things, and the first one is the good

00:02:50.700 one. The second one is the backtrack. The first tweets that he put out, as a writer, I'm allowed

00:02:56.160 to nominate in just three categories, best picture, best adapted screenplay, and best original screenplay.

00:03:01.980 For me, the diversity issue, as it applies to individual actors and directors anyway, did not

00:03:07.920 come up. That said, I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that

00:03:15.740 to do otherwise would be wrong. Now, he writes this, and he's entirely accurate, by the way, that

00:03:22.180 considering any factors other than quality means you are sacrificing quality. There's no way about it.

00:03:28.340 But he gets pounced on by the left-wing Twitter mob for this. The first response was someone who

00:03:34.860 says, to imply quality and diversity are mutually exclusive tells us quite loudly you are, or loudly

00:03:41.160 threatened you are, by the potential of a level artistic playing field in which diverse stories

00:03:46.200 are exponentially more compelling, yada, yada, yada. You've got someone else that says, when films are

00:03:52.220 created by people of color, they get constantly overlooked by institutions comprised of white men.

00:03:57.900 There's someone else who says that the assumption that quality would suffer because of diversity is,

00:04:04.320 nah, and then there's an emoji. I don't know how to articulate. But you've got all of these people

00:04:08.040 saying that he's saying that stuff made by non-white males can't have good quality, where he's saying

00:04:14.640 the opposite of that, which is that we shouldn't take anything other than quality into consideration,

00:04:19.540 which would mean, if a white person makes a movie, a black person, a cis, trans, hetero,

00:04:24.480 homosexual, bi, whatever. It doesn't matter. You should focus on the question, is this good? 0.68

00:04:30.620 And that's a reasonable proposition. He gets pounced on though. Then he goes back a little bit

00:04:37.340 with it. So the one was posted in the morning at like 7 20 a.m. And then two and a half hours later,

00:04:44.060 he decides to come out with another one. The most important thing we can do as artists and creative

00:04:50.080 people is make sure everyone has the same fair shot, regardless of sex, color, or orientation.

00:04:56.700 Right now, such people are badly underrepresented and not only in the arts. You can't win awards

00:05:04.320 if you're shut out of the game. Again, there's nothing particularly objectionable about saying

00:05:10.440 that. I agree wholeheartedly in equal opportunity. But he's saying this because he's trying to backtrack

00:05:16.760 from a comment that he made thinking, oh, yeah, this makes sense. And this is sensible and

00:05:20.900 not realizing that the Twitter mob is not a sensible enterprise. They don't care about whether

00:05:27.340 something is logical or rational. And he knows that he's going to get pounced on and no one wants to

00:05:33.000 live through that. No one wants to be canceled. After all, just look at Vince Vaughn, who the same day

00:05:39.060 there are stories about I wasn't the same day. Yeah, I think it was the same day stories about him

00:05:44.400 daring to do the unthinkable, which was shake the hand of the president of the United States

00:05:49.880 at a sports game. It was the college football playoff national championship game in New Orleans.

00:05:56.700 And for 30 seconds, for 30 seconds, Vince Vaughn, who I've always liked, by the way,

00:06:02.040 talks to Donald and Melania Trump at the end of which shakes his hand and walks away. And that 30

00:06:07.380 seconds is enough to get people saying, oh, you know, we can't watch Vince Vaughn's movies anymore.

00:06:11.760 And the reason this is so absurd, many reasons, but the primary reason this is so absurd

00:06:18.160 is because people are willingly overlooking what they think Vince Vaughn's quality is as an artist,

00:06:26.880 because now he's done the unthinkable, which is normalizing Donald Trump. And then you've also

00:06:32.640 got the Stephen King thing where Stephen King dares to say, ah, you know what? I kind of think that we

00:06:37.440 should focus on quality and not anything other than quality. And they capitulate or they force

00:06:42.900 him to capitulate because their concern is the same one they've done for Vince Vaughn, that we can't

00:06:48.340 look at the quality of the artist anymore. We have to be intersectional about all of this. We have to

00:06:53.200 find a way to take down everyone unless they toe the line on every single thing that we say.

00:07:00.400 And it's just so tiresome, which is why Ricky Gervais, who, by the way, I don't love Ricky

00:07:06.540 Gervais. I think he's talented. I don't love him. I'm not a fan of his, but it's why his monologue at

00:07:11.640 the Golden Globes, I think was so powerful because he went in there and just took a flamethrower and

00:07:17.860 took out the entire sacred cow of this Hollywood moral grandstanding, which is exactly what the

00:07:26.620 industry seems to have pivoted towards in the last little while. And it's not a new concept

00:07:32.180 for celebrities to try to talk about the issues that matter to them, the causes that matter to

00:07:38.500 them. This isn't new and it's not a free speech issue. They have the right to, no one's saying

00:07:42.920 they don't have the right to. The issue that I raise is the entitlement factor. Why do you think

00:07:48.980 your opinion matters more than someone else's? Why does your opinion matter more than some banking

00:07:56.240 CEO who speaks up and says, you know, I think we need to do whatever the case may be? Because

00:08:01.260 if, because these people decry the 1%, well, they are the 1%. And that's why it gets so infuriating

00:08:09.860 to listen to them go on and on and on. I mean, Leonardo DiCaprio, who famously will take a private

00:08:18.240 jet to a climate summit. You had Joaquin Phoenix, another one. I'm actually going to play the Joaquin

00:08:23.800 Phoenix clip because I think this is important for you to hear exactly what we're dealing with here.

00:08:28.820 I struggle so much with what I can do at times. There are things that I can't avoid. I flew a

00:08:33.240 plane out here today or last night rather. But one thing that I can do is change my eating habits.

00:08:39.820 And so I just want to urge all of you to join me in that and you as well, Jane. And thank you so much

00:08:46.140 for this opportunity. Yeah. So Joaquin Phoenix, who decides to do his part by ordering the vegetarian meal

00:08:52.400 on his flights to talk about climate. That's how he fights climate change. And it's, it's laughable,

00:08:58.500 but also there are people who take these things seriously. Even if most people in our circles,

00:09:06.260 people on the right anyway, roll the rise at it. These folks do have influence and you can't just

00:09:12.640 totally roll your rise because you have to understand why we are where we are. And I want to

00:09:18.000 talk about that a little bit with Gad Sad. And the reason for that is because a lot of this you can

00:09:23.020 trace back to academia. You can trace back to the academy. You can trace back to the trends that you

00:09:29.340 saw in the 80s and continuing in the 90s in universities, which have now permeated through

00:09:35.180 all these areas of society. And also hopefully we'll talk about a way to perhaps find a bit of a solution

00:09:42.060 to this. Joining me on the line now is the Gad Father himself, host of The Sad Truth, Professor 0.97

00:09:48.560 Gad Sad. Good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today. Oh, my pleasure. Nice to see you again,

00:09:53.360 Andrew. So let's talk about this Hollywood wokeness, which started with the Golden Globes,

00:09:59.460 but has actually, I think, carried a fair bit. I mean, a few stories that I mentioned, Vince Vaughn now

00:10:05.600 getting cancelled in real time for daring to shake Trump's hand. You have Stephen King making a comment

00:10:12.020 that I thought was very sage and then kind of backtracking. Why is the Hollywood wokeness

00:10:18.200 discussion coming to a head right now? Well, because they suffer from all the idea pathogens 0.97

00:10:24.440 that I discuss in my forthcoming book, one of which is a commitment to the DI religion. DI,

00:10:30.640 the acronym is diversity, inclusion, and equity. And so they, of course, conflate equality of

00:10:37.220 opportunities with equality of outcomes. I mean, I'm speaking now about the Stephen King case,

00:10:41.340 where he was perfectly correct in saying, look, you should not be using diversity metrics and

00:10:46.900 judging art. Of course, he then backtracked. But more importantly, his original message did not go

00:10:52.940 far enough. You shouldn't be using diversity metrics, not only in art, in anything that involves

00:10:58.020 excellence, right? What makes us a great society is that we abide by an ethos of a meritocracy,

00:11:03.440 right? Academia is now completely infested with this kind of diversity stuff. You no longer give 1.00

00:11:09.260 professors titles or chaired professorships or academic awards based on their achievements by,

00:11:16.560 but by whether they abide or adhere to certain, you know, diversity metrics. It's grotesque.

00:11:22.020 Yeah. And you actually raise a valid point there about how this has really permeated through all

00:11:29.480 sectors. I think a lot of these Hollywood people would love to take over corporate boards and

00:11:35.140 academia and their kids' school boards with diversity and inclusion and equity, but would be

00:11:42.040 very resistant if anyone were to come into their movies and say, oh, no, you need to have these

00:11:46.260 quotas and everything. So typically, it seems like their formula is diversity in every sector but

00:11:51.820 their own. Well, that's the classic, you know, pathological hypocrisy that many of these ideologues 0.85

00:11:57.980 suffer from, right? I'm going to talk down to you about the importance of you being green,

00:12:03.800 and I'll do so while driving my private jet, right? So it's grotesque. And oftentimes people say,

00:12:10.040 why do I get so worked up about these issues? Because I despise hypocrisy. I despise intellectual

00:12:16.800 dishonesty. And so I go after all of these schmucks. Yeah, Joaquin Phoenix a couple of weeks ago, 1.00

00:12:23.700 or it might have been a week ago, was speaking at some climate march. And he acknowledged in the

00:12:28.140 speech, you know, there are some things I can't avoid, like I had to fly here. But you know what,

00:12:32.800 I live without meat every now and then. So I'm, you know, I'm on the front lines of this. And you're

00:12:38.240 right. I mean, the hypocrisy is always the worst part about this. And this is why I thought Ricky

00:12:43.320 Gervais' monologue at the Golden Globes landed so well, because he was really lighting a fire

00:12:49.040 that I think needed to be lit from within and hasn't really been in recent years.

00:12:54.280 I agree. I mean, some of your viewers might be interested in a recent article that I wrote

00:12:59.060 in Psychology Today, where I discussed why I thought Ricky Gervais' performance, if you'd like,

00:13:06.280 or speeches were so psychologically satisfying. Because to most of us, we don't take well to

00:13:13.400 having these astonishingly privileged people who otherwise, as Ricky Gervais exactly said,

00:13:19.560 know very little about the issues that they're pontificating about, are constantly talking down

00:13:25.300 to us, right? So because you play a hero doctor in a movie doesn't mean that you know anything about

00:13:32.340 the epidemiology of diseases, you pretend to know something, right? But because they're constantly,

00:13:38.920 their egos are stroked, as though they are genuine heroes, they start taking themselves seriously,

00:13:44.680 know what you know, and know what you don't know.

00:13:47.680 Yeah, you actually made a very interesting point in that article. And you had said that the human brain

00:13:53.180 didn't really evolve with the idea of cinema. And that when someone meets someone who played a

00:13:58.980 superhero, their brain, in some ways, processes them as the superhero, instead of a guy who pretended

00:14:05.420 to be that character.

00:14:06.980 Exactly right. And I mean, I'll push that example a bit further. The reason why we become so emotionally

00:14:12.980 attached to, say, a sitcom character that we let into our bedroom or our living room every week,

00:14:19.880 is precisely for the same evolutionary reason, right? Our brains did not evolve knowing that we would

00:14:24.880 be interacting with these fictional characters in sitcoms. So they somehow become part of our

00:14:30.380 inner circle. They become sort of, they're our friends, even though it's make-believe world,

00:14:35.820 but my emotional system will respond to these sitcom characters as though they're part of my family,

00:14:41.160 and I become vested in them. Same principle.

00:14:43.820 So let me ask you then where it goes from here, because this idea of real-time cancellation of

00:14:51.880 these people is a problem they have to contend with. Stephen King comes out of the gate, makes a

00:14:57.200 fair comment, and then starts to backtrack with that other tweet of saying, no, no, no, I believe

00:15:01.840 that all of these different groups are underrepresented. And I mean, the remedy to that is exactly what

00:15:07.060 he claimed, you know, three minutes earlier was the problem, is that, okay, if they're

00:15:11.820 underrepresented, then you have to start putting in all of these quotas that are artificial in nature.

00:15:17.340 And then Vince Vaughn as well. You've got people that are saying to him, not just, you know, I'm

00:15:22.740 not a fan of Trump, and I wonder, you know, why you would shake his hand, which I think is weird

00:15:27.120 enough, but people saying, oh, it's a shame. I've always loved him, but now I can't watch him anymore.

00:15:32.140 Why? You like him. You like his work. Just because he shook someone's hand, you now say, oh,

00:15:37.760 he's toxic. We can't do this. I mean, the way that we're going to resolve this is by the silent

00:15:44.180 majority, most of whom detest the stuff, actually having the testicular fortitude, if I may say,

00:15:51.280 to actually speak out against this, right? It won't take much for people to rise up against this

00:15:57.900 nonsense, but it really is a domino effect. The problem is, as I discuss in my forthcoming book,

00:16:03.440 case, right? Everybody diffuses the responsibility. You know, let Gadsad put his neck out,

00:16:11.120 and hopefully he's got the courage to lead the fight for the rest of us. No, Gadsad is one small

00:16:16.940 voice in a big jungle of BS. So if everybody were to assume the responsibility of fighting against

00:16:26.160 these pathogenic ideas, then we could quickly reverse the trend. If not, I fear that the worst is

00:16:31.780 yet to come. Yeah, you're right about that. Everyone wants someone else to lay the groundwork

00:16:37.700 and roll out the carpet and the red carpet, since we're talking about Hollywood. So now that when

00:16:42.760 someone goes up and does the shtick that Ricky Gervais did, it's not nearly as courageous or bold,

00:16:47.860 because now he's basically carved out this little hole that anyone else can walk in. It's like

00:16:53.020 walking in someone else's footsteps in the snow, because you didn't want to get your ankles cold.

00:16:58.060 And I fear that, well, in some respects, it's fine if more people are doing it. But you're right,

00:17:03.440 everyone's waiting for someone else to take the lead on this. And the other side is sparing no

00:17:09.000 effort in trying to push back the other way. Exactly. And one of the things that I often get

00:17:14.240 is people writing to me saying, yeah, but you know, you have a large platform, you know, you're a

00:17:18.320 professor, so people listen to you. And my answer to them is, look, this is an ideological battle.

00:17:24.580 It's a battle for the soul of our society. So it's trench ideological warfare. Even if you're

00:17:30.600 interacting with one of your friends on Facebook, where only a few people are going to hear you

00:17:35.220 speak out, challenge them politely when they say something that you think is contrary to your

00:17:41.600 values. In other words, it doesn't have to be that you have a gigantic platform a la Ricky Gervais

00:17:47.040 before you should be, you should feel compelled to speak. It's door to door ideological warfare. So

00:17:54.640 however small your voice is, it is big enough to affect some change. So participate in the battle of

00:18:01.260 ideas. You know full well that a lot of what we see now in the mainstream culture really started

00:18:08.780 in academia. And I think a lot of people outside of the academy didn't really take it seriously

00:18:13.560 because, oh, it's just this thing that's happening in the universities, a lot of the political

00:18:17.800 correctness trends that we see. And now we look at this situation where the academy has pushed even

00:18:23.620 further. We've all seen the reports of, you know, the number of professors that identify as Marxist,

00:18:28.740 the number of now students that identify as Marxist and are resistant to capitalism, resistant to free

00:18:34.820 speech and all of this stuff. Do you think the solution has to come from within the academy too?

00:18:40.220 I mean, I do, because as you said, the ecosystem from which these idea pathogens originally came

00:18:46.900 from, patient zero, so to speak, is really academia. So unfortunately, what I think ends up happening

00:18:53.880 is that most academics are busy with their daily lives, right? I don't, yes, I know that over there

00:18:59.600 somewhere in the humanities or the social sciences, they're saying some crazy things about postmodernism,

00:19:04.700 that there's no objective truth, but I'm busy in my lab. I don't have time to worry about these

00:19:10.160 things. So it goes back to what we discussed earlier, diffusion of responsibility. Someone

00:19:15.220 says, let Gad Saad, let someone else worry about this problem. I'm busy. And therefore, my selfish

00:19:22.280 careerist pursuits take over the greater responsibility of protecting truth. So once academics decide that

00:19:31.740 this is a sufficiently important problem for them to address, as a few academics have done, but too few,

00:19:38.680 then I think we could reverse the trend very, very quickly. Because again, as someone who has a pretty

00:19:43.820 large platform, I could tell you that most of the messages that I receive are precisely ones that

00:19:49.240 despise this stuff, but people are afraid to speak out. So I receive endless messages from students,

00:19:54.740 from faculty members, from university staff who say, I support that, but please, please don't mention my name.

00:20:03.400 Once they lose that last part, please, please don't mention my name, then we will solve the problem.

00:20:07.860 One of the things that I see from a lot of people on the right in these issues is the desire to

00:20:16.040 really implement parallel ecosystems. You know, if you have an issue with public schools,

00:20:21.380 go to private schools. If you have an issue with the big tech companies, start your own tech

00:20:25.640 platforms that are conservative friendly. If you have an issue with universities, focus on these

00:20:30.420 private ones. You don't like Hollywood, make conservative movies that kind of operate in this

00:20:35.420 own sphere. And I understand that temptation, but I also feel there's a problem in that,

00:20:41.060 in that it means you're giving up on some of the broader cultural fights that are taking place.

00:20:46.200 Actually, you're giving up on all of them because you're saying, all right, we can't win on their

00:20:49.580 turf. Let's go play with ourselves at the kids' table. I completely agree. Look, it is absolutely true

00:20:55.560 that people can set up their own, you know, equivalent to YouTube and people have tried to do that.

00:21:02.340 But the reality is that YouTube now has much of the traction, much of the traffic. And so it is easy

00:21:08.680 and facile to say, hey, set up your alternative medium. Yes, of course you can do that. But the

00:21:13.400 reality is, as you exactly said, no, I want to fight you on YouTube and on Facebook and in the

00:21:18.780 university halls. I am a defender of truth. That's what I committed to doing when I became a professor.

00:21:24.800 And therefore, no, I don't need to allow you to espouse all of these ridiculous things in the 0.56

00:21:29.520 university. No, I'm going to fight you on them. And I wish more people would take up the battle cry. 0.89

00:21:35.980 So bringing it back to the Hollywood factor, then, Gad, do you think that or how do you think

00:21:41.580 people should respond to this? Because I think that part of the puzzle is when a Ricky Gervais

00:21:47.260 comes out and says something good to reward that, basically, to say, yes, there are people calling for

00:21:52.760 your head, but I can assure you there are more of us that are going to support you, support your right

00:21:56.880 to do this. But beyond that, where do you think we need to go to push back against this

00:22:02.000 die nonsense, as you call it? Well, I mean, in the most, in the clearest, most direct way,

00:22:08.620 you can do it by engaging in consumer choices that lets the producers of these movies know that you

00:22:15.620 don't support this kind of stuff, right? What makes literature, art, cinema so beautiful is that it

00:22:22.840 speaks to certain universal themes, right? I mean, I could listen to an ancient Greek poem and read it

00:22:27.960 today that was written 2,500 years ago, and it moves me because the software that's in the mind

00:22:34.540 of the person who created that poem is exactly the same software that my brain runs on, right?

00:22:39.280 That's what makes art so beautiful. And so you don't need an indigenous, Muslim, quadriplegic, 1.00

00:22:45.820 transgender person to tell a story. If there's a good story that that person has to tell, 0.97

00:22:50.240 by all means, allow it to be told. But I don't need to be moved according to identity markers.

00:22:57.040 I'm moved by our common humanity. And so the way that you could fight back against this stuff

00:23:02.200 is if you see that these movies are no longer about art, no longer about celebrating our humanity,

00:23:08.720 logical BS, don't see that movie. And eventually, the market will take care of this idiocy. 0.99

00:23:14.700 Yeah, it certainly will. And I'd say not soon enough. But at the same time, there are a lot 0.99

00:23:20.320 of people that just begrudgingly go along with this, because as you mentioned earlier, they don't

00:23:25.380 know that they have a power. I mean, a lot of the times, if you look at people that have resisted,

00:23:31.900 the platform comes from standing up for it, the platform comes from taking that first step.

00:23:37.700 It's not that they waited until they had it and then said, okay, now I can talk about all of these

00:23:42.720 things. Look, this is going to sound a bit cliche. But you know, when I open my laptop,

00:23:47.900 the first time that I'm going to strike the first letter of my next book, the journey seems very far,

00:23:54.760 right? I open a word, a word document, and there's not a single letter written. And then one letter

00:24:00.680 after one letter, one syllable after one syllable, one sentence after another, one paragraph after

00:24:05.440 another, I wake up a year, a year and a half later, and I have a book ready. So it takes that first step,

00:24:10.860 everybody has to do that first step. It seems gargantuan. It seems as though it's an intractable

00:24:16.340 problem, but it isn't. The Berlin Wall did fall, right? And it fell very quickly. And so these

00:24:22.260 idiotic ideas that are truly lobotomizing us, certainly in academia, could be defeated, 1.00

00:24:29.960 but people have to take that first step. 0.99

00:24:31.980 Professor Gad Saad, joining me on the line, host of The Sad Truth, and all around prolific tweeter

00:24:39.400 and commentator on all things crazy in the culture in which we live. Gad, thanks so much for coming

00:24:44.800 on. Good to talk to you again.

00:24:46.000 Likewise. My pleasure. Cheers.

00:24:47.620 We are back. This is the Andrew Lawton Show on True North. Thanks for sticking with me through that.

00:24:52.680 That was a fun interview to start the first week of the show, for sure. Let's talk a little bit

00:24:58.140 about CBC, which I genuinely try to avoid doing, but in this case, I think it's very relevant.

00:25:05.180 CBC has admitted to having a bit of egg on its face in response to a story they published that

00:25:13.920 just wasn't entirely accurate. And the story was about Stephen Harper and comments that Stephen Harper

00:25:22.500 had supposedly made about Iran. And if you saw the headline, it was that they were saying Stephen Harper

00:25:31.080 was calling for regime change in Iran. That was what Stephen Harper was pushing for. And regime change

00:25:37.620 has a lot of baggage to it. It's a pretty loaded term because it's the type of term that people associate

00:25:43.960 with the Iraq War, which is still contentious and people are, I think, more and more souring on it as time

00:25:49.020 goes on. So they accused Stephen Harper of, while he was doing a speech in India, pushing for regime

00:25:54.300 change, which sounds like he is out there just basically trying to nation build as a one man

00:25:59.480 operation. Now, in actuality, that wasn't what he was talking about. What he was speaking about was

00:26:07.020 how we cannot expect to see any substantive change or stability in Iran without a change more broadly.

00:26:16.020 And this is something that is very problematic, to use the word that the left loves these days,

00:26:22.580 because it is really trying to put Stephen Harper into that neocon bubble that they know people are

00:26:29.520 going to respond to without even reading the story. And that is precisely the problem with all of this.

00:26:35.960 And if you look, for example, at the original headline, Harper says regime change needed in Iran to bring

00:26:42.240 peace to region. Now, Stephen Harper posted on Twitter, his own comments without any commentary,

00:26:48.740 he didn't even mention a word in the tweet, he just posted the full context. And what he said,

00:26:55.940 no one could really take issue with, I don't think any of us believe that Iran would have deliberately

00:27:02.400 shut down an aircraft. But the very fact that Iran believing such a thing could happen would be

00:27:09.260 allowing normal civilian traffic, I think, tells you something about the nature of that regime and

00:27:15.000 its priorities. And I, you know, I do believe we need to see a change in Iran, if we are going to see 1.00

00:27:20.660 peace in the Middle East, I see an increasing number of states in the region, Israel that I'm close to,

00:27:28.500 certainly the Sunni Arab monarchies, others who are increasingly trying to work together and see a

00:27:34.940 common future and common interests. And you have this one actor that, quite frankly, is, you know,

00:27:41.580 based on religious fanaticism and regional imperialism. And as I say, as a friend of the

00:27:47.560 Jewish people, frankly, an anti-Semitic state. And I think if somehow if there's is any way through

00:27:53.460 the protests in Iran or the consequences of this that Iran could go on a better trajectory, I think

00:27:58.860 that would be very core to resolving the problems of the Middle East, certainly not resolve them all 1.00

00:28:03.700 overnight. But I think without a change in the nature of the government of Tehran, the Middle

00:28:08.880 East will continue to be in turmoil. So you hear in that he's talking about the fact that, yeah, you

00:28:13.200 need change in the region for more stability. You've got to ask questions of Iran in all of this. And

00:28:18.600 CBC had actually walked it back. They said the headline and lead paragraph of this story have been edited

00:28:25.540 from a previous version that stated Stephen Harper said regime change was needed in Iran. A previous

00:28:31.740 tweet with that headline has been deleted. In fact, Harper said, I do believe we need to see a change

00:28:37.520 in Iran if we are going to see peace in the Middle East. I think without change, the nature of the 0.96

00:28:43.100 government will continue to be in turmoil. And they admit in tweet three of three, he did not use regime

00:28:48.920 change specifically. I liked Ian Brody, who is a former chief of staff to Stephen Harper. He says they

00:28:55.580 they say edited when they should say corrected. They're not really admitting wrongdoing. They're

00:29:00.780 just saying, yes, we've just made a little change in this. Like, you know, if the comma was in the

00:29:05.360 wrong place is basically what they're doing. But hey, baby steps in all of this. It's so important

00:29:11.720 because we see the media bias problem in Canada. A lot of the time it isn't as overt as the media saying

00:29:18.440 conservatives bad, liberals good. Although, I mean, CBC is suing the Conservative Party of Canada. So

00:29:24.660 take from that what you will. But it's a lot. It's often more insidious than that. You see it in little

00:29:29.920 ways that they're framing stories. Like, for example, this story with Stephen Harper commenting

00:29:36.960 on Iran. Because Stephen Harper has always been very good about staying in his lane as a former

00:29:44.580 prime minister. He's always been very solid in not trying to be an armchair critic of the current guy.

00:29:51.720 He said, yep, I had my time. Now I've moved away. And there have been very few occasions when he has

00:29:57.000 spoken out to condemn something that's happening. And typically, it's with stuff to do with foreign

00:30:02.680 policy. The Omar Khadr $10.5 million payout was a big example where he said this is just

00:30:08.940 unconscionable. And it means that when he does speak out, there's a lot more weight and heft to it.

00:30:14.260 But in this particular case, he said nothing controversial. And CBC decides they're going to

00:30:20.740 extrapolate from it and rebrand it in something they know is going to get ragged on by people.

00:30:28.020 And people let them get away with this a lot of the time. I mean, what's that old quote that a lie

00:30:33.180 has traveled all the way around the world while the truth is still putting its pants on or something to

00:30:37.900 that effect? And it's certainly with the media. So you look at their apology tweet or whatever you

00:30:43.480 want to call it. The tweet has 39 retweets and 50 likes. The original one had significantly more.

00:30:54.880 The original one had gone fairly viral. Now it was starting to get a bit ratioed. People were responding

00:31:00.540 to say he didn't actually say this. But nevertheless, it was the original that had a lot more traveling

00:31:09.060 than the correction did. More people see that than will see them saying, oh, maybe we begged off. And

00:31:15.360 it's the same with newspapers. The corrections are, you know, buried, you know, underneath an ad and

00:31:19.880 like page 12 or something. Well, the original headline that might have warranted the correction

00:31:24.640 everyone saw. And the problem with all of this is that you've got a government now in Justin Trudeau,

00:31:32.020 who is hellbent on appeasing and bankrolling CBC. You've got CBC that is trying to really put its

00:31:40.000 tentacles into more areas in Canadian media. They want to start becoming this, I don't even know the

00:31:46.480 name of it, but this funder of local media enterprises or perhaps just take over in individual markets.

00:31:52.660 And a Canada that is so reliant on state media is a Canada that does not have an accurate,

00:32:01.680 honest voice on these things. And that's the painfully fundamental reality here is that if

00:32:08.920 state media becomes the only game in town, which is what CBC would like, you can't trust it because

00:32:14.620 they are effectively forced to comment on the people that signed their checks. And my goodness,

00:32:21.880 this is now going to be $1.3 billion. The mandate letter that Trudeau gave the heritage minister

00:32:28.900 calls for even more CBC funding and on it goes. I mean, give it a decade and we're probably going

00:32:34.280 to be giving them $2 billion a year, if not more. And they're going to be saying that they still need

00:32:40.740 to expand into all of these different areas. And no one, no one seems prepared to rethink CBC.

00:32:49.700 No one in the conservative movement, no one in the conservative party, let me clarify,

00:32:55.880 no one in the conservative party seems prepared to do something about this. In the 2017 conservative

00:33:01.780 leadership race, Andrew Scheer had made a comment, a tacit comment about, you know, maybe CBC doesn't

00:33:08.740 need to be in the news division because that's an area where everyone else is, you know, competing

00:33:13.880 adequately. And this was taken by iPolitics who ran a big story about him, but there wasn't really a

00:33:20.440 policy there. He wasn't really announcing anything. He was, I think, responding to a question and said,

00:33:25.160 maybe, maybe this is worth doing. I would love to see a conservative leadership candidate as we head

00:33:30.620 into the leadership race, say, defund CBC or sell off CBC or something like that, just to get that

00:33:37.920 discussion going, just to get the discussion going. Because right now, no one is prepared to deal with

00:33:44.160 this thing, which is not only a fiscal balloon that's hanging up in the sky, just there money

00:33:50.100 that's wasted, that's not going to anything else, but has significant implications for trust in media

00:33:56.900 as well. And that is, I think, going to be a big problem moving forward. And I would love to see some

00:34:03.640 leadership in someone prepared to take that on. I try not to have things be so heavy all the time.

00:34:10.300 So I've got a fun story for you from the Associated Press, where I go a little bit outside of Canada

00:34:15.900 for this one, but bear with me because I think it's kind of fun. A Kansas man has asked an Iowa judge

00:34:22.200 to let him engage in a sword fight with his ex-wife, embracing trial by combat. So he's very unhappy

00:34:31.240 with this protracted litigation. And if you've ever seen the justice system's pace, you'd understand

00:34:36.240 why. So he wants trial by combat, where he and his ex-wife will be able to, quote, rend their souls

00:34:43.320 from their bodies, unquote. I mean, who among us hasn't wanted that at some point in the day?

00:34:48.420 And ultimately, he needs a 12-week extension for the reason that we all need extensions in court,

00:34:55.140 so he can procure Japanese samurai swords for the trial. So trial by combat. His rationale is

00:35:02.520 actually pretty sound. He says U.S. law doesn't specifically prohibit it. And because it doesn't

00:35:08.180 specifically prohibit it, therefore it should be fine. Now, presumably trial by combat would require

00:35:14.280 someone else to agree to it. I don't know if that is something the ex-wife is game for. He was very

00:35:21.280 generous, though. Very magnanimous, actually. He said that if she wants, she can appoint someone else

00:35:25.860 to serve as her champion in the battle. He suggested his ex-wife's lawyer, which in that case,

00:35:33.980 I think people might be rooting for the guy, rooting for the husband, not for the lawyer. But

00:35:38.940 you never know. Trial by combat. Coming soon to a Kansas courtroom near you. This one's also a fun

00:35:46.960 one. Students outraged as U of T professor makes students follow him on social media for grades.

00:35:55.120 Now, this I find just bizarre for many, many reasons. A professor that will set aside 5%

00:36:01.460 of the student's grades for, one, buying his book, two, getting him to sign the book, three, four, five,

00:36:11.160 following him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. So if you just do LinkedIn and Twitter and not Facebook

00:36:16.000 and you get the book, but don't get it signed, you get 3% on your grade, otherwise you get nothing.

00:36:21.600 And this was something that a student actually complained about on Reddit. And the professor says

00:36:27.800 that students are able to learn from him and the things that he posts. He said, I would say there's

00:36:35.600 not much for me to profit from as far as the books. But then he said that students have benefited from

00:36:43.220 being connected and making use of his networks. He said that, you know, most people are okay with

00:36:50.720 this. His students all think it's fine and dandy. And here we go. Like, I didn't know this was an

00:36:56.680 option to boost my Twitter following. I could just take like a guest lecturer position at, you know,

00:37:01.160 the University of Western Ontario and say, all right, 25% of your grades follow me on Twitter,

00:37:05.460 listening to the podcast, subscribing on iTunes, which by the way, subscribe on iTunes,

00:37:09.560 you get no credit for it. But I'm happy with you, which I guess is some form of credit. I don't

00:37:16.240 know. We'll trial by combat if you don't want to subscribe. But this is now something that he has

00:37:22.720 said he'll continue. He said it is part of the course because he is a social media guy. So this

00:37:29.080 is what happens in millennial academia. I should have asked Gad Saad about that one too. We've got to

00:37:35.880 take a quick break. We'll close things out on The Andrew Lawton Show when we come back. Stay tuned.

00:37:40.780 Welcome back, everyone, to The Andrew Lawton Show. I said from the outset of the program,

00:37:46.200 it wasn't going to be all conservative leadership all the time. But you also can't exactly gloss over

00:37:52.800 the biggest Canadian political news stories as they develop. And it is a bit of a horse race right now.

00:37:58.480 And a few updates this week. More movement than I anticipated. Well, not anticipated,

00:38:03.280 but then I knew about during the first episode. The big three are that Ronna Ambrose is out of the

00:38:11.520 race. According to initially a report in La Presse that was then picked up by the English language

00:38:15.740 press, Peter McKay is in. At least he's going to be in. We'll talk about his announcement in a moment.

00:38:22.200 And the big one is that Stephen Harper seems to be dedicating his time to blocking Jean Charest,

00:38:28.740 who hasn't officially announced. But it sounds like his organizing very largely and significantly

00:38:35.160 behind the scenes. So these are three big movements. It's not like, oh, that guy who is the staffer

00:38:39.780 to Kim Campbell is running. It's not running anymore. These are bigger movements here.

00:38:45.280 I want to talk about all three, but specifically Ronna Ambrose to start, because this is, I think,

00:38:50.680 the one that everyone assumed would happen from the outset. And I didn't see her running. So I wasn't

00:38:58.960 going to bet everything I owned on it, but I didn't see her running for a couple of reasons. And one of

00:39:04.520 them is that I think a lot of Ronna Ambrose's appeal has been that forbidden fruit syndrome. People wanted 1.00

00:39:10.760 her because they couldn't have her. This is why she was chosen by the caucus to be the interim leader 0.93

00:39:15.880 after Stephen Harper left because she was non-threatening in the sense that she wasn't

00:39:20.120 going to be running for the permanent leadership. And she was very candid about that. So by her

00:39:25.140 taking on that role very capably, I might add, I think she was a tremendously successful leader of

00:39:31.540 the opposition. She was very good at being a steady hand and keeping the party on its course. 0.85

00:39:37.340 She did that because she was unifying and inoffensive to the party. So the idea of her jumping into a race

00:39:44.300 where she has to start scrapping to get airtime, to get votes, to get money, to get all of these 1.00

00:39:50.040 things, which is how you have to run a leadership, was never the strength that she brought to the

00:39:55.620 table. So I don't necessarily think that she was the shoe-in that people thought. I mean, I think

00:40:02.080 she's very similar to Lisa Raitt, who in 2017, and I like Lisa a lot, did not do well in the

00:40:08.300 leadership. But at the same time, she was also very popular and liked as a deputy leader. Some people

00:40:13.380 are liked in certain roles, and in others, it's not necessarily a guarantee. And I had a conversation

00:40:20.760 with someone a while back, maybe three or four weeks ago, who had said that basically their belief,

00:40:27.600 and I think they were kind of indicating that Rana understood this, was that everyone likes her when

00:40:33.240 she's not in. The second she gets in the race, she's, oh, this former Harvard cabinet minister, and all 0.62

00:40:37.420 of these different things. So that's a big problem because the media loves to do this. They love to say,

00:40:42.700 well, why can't all conservatives be like X? And then once X gets into the race, they become the

00:40:48.400 new Hitler. In Ontario, this happened to Christine Elliott. Everyone said, oh my goodness, why couldn't 0.76

00:40:53.180 Christine Elliott be the leader? But they still hate her. Once she runs and she's in government, 0.98

00:40:57.740 everyone hates her. I mean, if Michael Chong were to be the leader of the conservatives, and I hope that

00:41:03.720 doesn't happen, the media would turn on him and think he's the latest and most furthest right thing

00:41:08.960 that has ever happened since sliced bread. No, sliced bread. Actually, sliced bread had some very

00:41:15.080 offensive tweets back in the day. So sliced bread has been cancelled now. He's far right.

00:41:19.760 But my goodness. So I think Rana Ambrose is very valuable. I would love to see her return to politics

00:41:25.960 at some time. She's out, and I think she's enjoying her post-political life a fair bit and is staying put

00:41:32.540 there. Peter McKay is interesting because I did not anticipate, when would it have been a year ago

00:41:40.160 that I saw him, that he would ever jump back into politics. Now, Peter McKay is a guy who was the

00:41:45.760 defense minister. He was the attorney general. He was at one point trying to be the leader of the

00:41:52.800 Conservative Party of Canada, or wanted to be. And Peter McKay, I saw him at an event in Toronto

00:42:00.960 about a year ago, maybe a little bit more. And his wife, Nazneen Afshinjam, the human rights activist,

00:42:07.840 was speaking. And Peter McKay was at the back of the room. And he was pushing a stroller. And he had

00:42:14.600 one of those reverse backpacks on that you put a child into. And then he had another backpack on his

00:42:20.860 back for the gear for the children. And the stroller was a double. So he had his three kids there.

00:42:27.040 And he was wearing his glasses and this little, like, crew neck dad sweater. And I saw him. And

00:42:33.120 we're chatting very briefly. And I thought to myself, this is a man who is completely satisfied

00:42:38.240 with life after politics. He had literally turned himself into a human minivan for his kids and all

00:42:44.100 their stuff. And things change. Things change. Because a year and however many months later,

00:42:49.120 he is in the race. Very anticlimactic announcement, though. If you saw it, he tweeted. I'll pull up the

00:42:57.920 exact wording. I think it was four words. So I can't get the four words wrong. Because there are

00:43:03.140 so few of them. I'm in. Stay tuned. And because it's Canada, he, of course, tweeted it in both

00:43:08.060 official languages. So he's in. Stay tuned. We were like, woo. So there's no, like, grand video or

00:43:13.260 website or speech or anything like that. Just a tweet. And he's apparently, according to the media

00:43:17.980 reports, going to be formally announcing next week. Now, Peter McKay is going to become the

00:43:22.920 red Tory poster boy. He was testing the waters, you could tell, before Andrew Scheer even left by

00:43:30.680 firing a couple of pot shots at Andrew Scheer, like miss scoring on an open net. That was the one line

00:43:36.040 he gave in that panel. And you could tell that he was greasing the skids for eventually jumping in

00:43:41.460 and saying, all right, here I am. But I think he overestimates his popularity quite significantly.

00:43:48.220 I think that Peter McKay will sweep Atlantic Canada. The Conservative Party of Canada rules do

00:43:55.260 not really give much weighting overall to Atlantic Canada. Every riding has 100 points. And there are

00:44:02.540 only so many Atlantic ridings. I think there are like 20, 27 or 28 total. And that's that. I mean,

00:44:08.680 he'll probably do well in parts of Ontario. But I don't think that a red Tory is going to be the way

00:44:14.420 the party goes. And if they do, I don't think it will be Peter McKay. What I do find interesting

00:44:19.940 is that there must be some people a little bit nervous about Jean Scheer. And the reason for that

00:44:27.420 is that Stephen Harper resigned from the Conservative Fund. Now, initially, this was a McLean story from

00:44:33.440 Paul Wells. When it came out, it looked as though Stephen Harper was resigning in protest for how

00:44:38.540 the Conservative Fund handled the Andrew Scheer private school tuition top-up thing that came

00:44:45.020 out a few weeks ago. But then the story evolved a little bit. And I'm going to read a section from

00:44:49.720 this here. Two top Conservative sources have told McLean that Harper's main goal in resigning

00:44:56.180 is to free himself up to block Jean Charest's campaign for the party leadership. Charest goes on

00:45:03.940 and talks about how Harper and Charest were close, but they had a falling out back in 2007.

00:45:10.420 And now Stephen Harper is apparently wanting to devote his time to blocking this guy. Now,

00:45:15.560 Stephen Harper, who's always been, and I mentioned this earlier, pretty good at staying out of the fray.

00:45:21.420 Stephen Harper getting involved in this way in a party street fight means he must hate the idea

00:45:27.940 of a Charest leadership. Now, I hate the idea of a Charest leadership based on what I've seen so far.

00:45:34.260 I think it's like remaking Marvel movies because you don't have any new ideas. It's that we already

00:45:39.720 had this guy. And I think I might have said that on the first episode. It's great. I'm already running

00:45:43.700 out of material and it's the second episode. But the thing about Stephen Harper is that if he were to

00:45:50.500 get into the Conservative leadership race right now, and I'm not saying he is, but if he were to do that,

00:45:55.820 he would be a shoo-in because Stephen Harper is still very much the spiritual leader, if you will,

00:46:02.520 of the Conservative Party of Canada. It's his party. Everyone compares everyone to him. The critics

00:46:07.480 compare and the people that like the CPC compare. So if he were to come out and say, this is the person

00:46:13.120 we're backing, I'm pretty sure that person would win because Stephen Harper is the guy the Conservatives

00:46:21.000 hold as the benchmark. And he set a very high standard that's difficult for subsequent leaders

00:46:26.940 to meet. But if he says no, and he says, I'm fighting, people are not going to turn well to

00:46:32.560 that. I think, you know, whether Shoray had a chance in the first place, I'm not convinced he did. But

00:46:38.680 this will certainly give him no love at all from people in the party that are anything right of

00:46:46.580 Michael Chong. I mean, this is a guy whose most relevant political service was as a Liberal. And it

00:46:55.000 was as a Quebec Liberal, yes, which is a bit different from a Federal Liberal. But that's how

00:46:59.140 he's known. That's how he made his mark. And more importantly, he's done. End of scene. You don't get to

00:47:03.940 do an encore when you're not... Who does encores? Bob Dylan or Elton John. Like, you don't get to do an

00:47:10.100 encore when people aren't, you know, standing up and cheering and yelling for it. No one, no one in Canada

00:47:16.040 is standing up and cheering and yelling for Jean Charest to get back into the stage,

00:47:20.380 except for Jean Charest. And that's incredibly important. Now, Stephen Harper, people would

00:47:24.720 take an encore from him. People would take an encore from Stephen Harper. They are not wanting

00:47:29.520 one from Jean Charest. So this is the big movement this week in the conservative leadership race.

00:47:34.960 Like I said, we'll talk to all the candidates. We'll get them all on the show if they'll come.

00:47:38.600 But this is going to be a very interesting race if it becomes, especially if Stephen Harper is not

00:47:45.260 backing his former attorney general and defense minister. And I don't think he will, given... I mean,

00:47:51.380 it sounds like he might not even be backing anyone, but certainly to do the anti-endorsement,

00:47:56.000 which is what he's doing with Jean Charest. That's all we have for today. My thanks to everyone who

00:48:00.960 listened to the program, to Gadsad for coming on. And please do subscribe. You can head on over to

00:48:06.480 andrewlottonshow.com. And all the links are there to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify, Apple Podcasts,

00:48:13.160 YouTube, Omni, Carrier Pigeons, I believe we've just added this week. So all the things you need

00:48:18.600 are right there. We'll talk to you next time, folks. Thank you. God bless and good day.

00:48:22.240 Thank you.

Juno News - January 16, 2020

The Andrew Lawton Show： Hollywood Hypocrites, CBC Fake News, Cancelling Vince Vaughn

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