The Matt Walsh Show - January 14, 2023


Am I The A-hole？ Sweet Baby Gang Edition


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

204.88194

Word count

2,823

Sentence count

231

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

It's now our time for our M.I. the A-hole moral quandaries, which are always interesting. This week, we have a couple of listener submitted stories about family drama involving a dog and a family party.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 It's now our time for our M.I. the A-Hole moral quandaries, which are always interesting.
00:00:06.360 Now, last week when I announced that we're doing the members block this way,
00:00:09.920 and I said that, you know, there's the Reddit forum of M.I. the A-Hole questions, 0.98
00:00:15.060 which we can still harvest from and use.
00:00:16.880 Then I also invited the audience to submit their own M.I. the A-Hole situations, 1.00
00:00:21.920 and I have to say that I am impressed.
00:00:25.120 It seems that the audience knew the assignments, so we have some good ones here,
00:00:28.140 and these are all audience submitted.
00:00:30.860 And we'll start.
00:00:33.000 This is from Tim.
00:00:33.780 It says, hi, sweet daddy.
00:00:35.080 Today was my wife's dad's side of the family's Christmas gathering.
00:00:38.960 The plan was to eat lunch and exchange gifts.
00:00:40.840 My wife has a stepsister who's a double dinkwad, dual income, no kids with two dogs. 1.00
00:00:46.720 She's a double dinkwad, and brought her dogs to the party. 1.00
00:00:51.000 My first question is, did you tell your sister-in-law that that's what she is, that she's a dinkwad? 1.00
00:00:57.180 Hey, dinkwad, what's up? 0.96
00:00:58.360 That's not an insult.
00:01:00.320 It's like, that's what she is.
00:01:01.360 That's her tribe. 1.00
00:01:03.760 It says, I have two kids, ages three and one.
00:01:05.880 From the moment we walked in the door, the dogs were all over my small children.
00:01:09.220 They were in their faces, sniffing them, licking them, bothering them.
00:01:12.720 In response, my kids just wanted to be held by my wife and I away from the dogs.
00:01:17.080 After some time, we finally asked the stepsister to please put the dogs in the basement until we left.
00:01:20.820 She refused, saying that they were her kids and that we should let her dog sniff and lick our toddler children until they lose interest.
00:01:28.180 My wife's stepmother agreed, adding that it's not that big of a deal and scolding me for being in a bad mood.
00:01:33.080 I said to the stepsister that her dogs are animals, not her children, and do not hold a superior position to my actual real-life human children.
00:01:39.140 My wife burst into tears as everyone started yelling. 0.98
00:01:41.820 It got so bad that we just decided to leave.
00:01:44.300 I've had family drama before, but never over something so remarkably stupid.
00:01:47.620 Now we're trying to figure out what to do.
00:01:48.920 I'm considering telling the stepmom, who we see frequently and took the side of the stepsister, who we rarely see,
00:01:53.760 that she can't see our kids until she apologizes to us and our children for prioritizing the dogs over our own children.
00:02:00.160 The stepmom has a history of trash-talking, making comments, being judgmental towards my wife and I.
00:02:04.580 So the situation is more along the lines of straw breaking the camel's back rather than a first offense.
00:02:10.780 Are you the a-hole?
00:02:12.280 Well, you already know my answer to this.
00:02:14.000 There is no world in which I would tell you that you're the a-hole in this situation.
00:02:19.060 It is entirely on the stepmom, the stepsister, and part of this is setting boundaries,
00:02:24.160 which is something that, you know, there's a certain element of that that is always necessary in any marriage.
00:02:32.000 When, you know, wife and husband become one, you're forming your own new family.
00:02:38.440 It's a new family unit.
00:02:40.300 And so there's very often this process of drawing lines by setting boundaries with what is now the extended family.
00:02:50.840 And it sounds like that's part of what needs to happen here.
00:02:53.360 There's all kinds of boundaries being crossed.
00:02:55.280 I mean, not just bringing the dogs in when they weren't invited, but just the way they responded to it.
00:03:00.360 You have a reasonable request, which is that your kids are upset.
00:03:05.240 They don't want to be, like, harassed by the dogs.
00:03:07.360 Mommy, mommy, look at the doggies. 1.00
00:03:10.920 And the way they respond to that reasonable request on their part is, you know, shows, I think, boundaries being crossed.
00:03:16.880 But overall, it's just, as you pointed out, dogs are not people.
00:03:22.880 The comfort of actual people needs to take priority.
00:03:28.100 In some ways, the fact that this was, you know, her house makes it even worse in some ways.
00:03:31.840 Like, I have, we have a dog.
00:03:34.300 It surprises people to learn.
00:03:35.640 We also have a cat.
00:03:36.660 You know, neither of these, like, I wanted, but we have them.
00:03:39.260 When we have people in our house, like, if they're not comfortable with the animals, then their comfort takes priority.
00:03:46.440 Okay?
00:03:46.840 And I'm very cognizant of that.
00:03:49.200 Like, our cat is a surprisingly friendly cat.
00:03:53.100 And most cats aren't.
00:03:54.100 But this one is, like, a little bit too friendly.
00:03:56.460 And so maybe we'll have someone in the house, and they're sitting down, and the cat will just, like, jump up on their lap without even asking, invading their personal space.
00:04:04.360 And when I see that, I'm, you know, we take the cat.
00:04:07.060 We say, look, if you don't want the cat there, you can kick her off.
00:04:09.320 We'll put her in another room. 0.93
00:04:10.420 Sometimes it's a cat person.
00:04:11.380 They say, oh, no, I love the cat.
00:04:12.260 I want to have pet the cat and all that.
00:04:14.340 Sometimes they're not.
00:04:15.040 And so we take the cat.
00:04:15.980 We bring him out of the room.
00:04:17.640 Put her in a room somewhere. 0.99
00:04:18.600 You need to prioritize the comfort of people.
00:04:21.860 And you can't assume, if you're a dog owner or a pet owner, that everyone is comfortable having an animal all over them.
00:04:30.020 And that should never be a prerequisite.
00:04:32.080 That should never be, like, something that's required of your house guests.
00:04:35.140 You shouldn't require that of them.
00:04:37.000 I've been in these situations myself before.
00:04:38.700 Going into someone's house, and they've got a dog.
00:04:40.600 The dog's kind of, like, jumping all over me.
00:04:42.380 And it's like, are you going to do something?
00:04:43.440 I'm sitting there.
00:04:44.460 Are you guys going to do something about this?
00:04:46.040 I'm in your house.
00:04:47.040 I'm visiting.
00:04:47.560 I didn't know I was entering a zoo.
00:04:48.960 Like, I didn't know this was a petting zoo.
00:04:50.100 I wanted to come talk to you.
00:04:52.060 I wanted to have a human-to-human interaction.
00:04:54.300 You see this dog that is, can you do something about this right now?
00:04:58.460 So, you're not the a-hole.
00:04:59.580 Not at all.
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00:06:03.520 From Justin says,
00:06:04.680 My father had an accident when I was 2 years old.
00:06:06.620 This accident damaged his mental capacity.
00:06:08.500 Everything up to said accident, he could remember with perfect clarity.
00:06:11.340 Everything after was obliterated by short-term memory failure.
00:06:14.560 My mother could not care for he and I both, so my parents were divorced.
00:06:18.960 And she took care of me growing up, and he ended up at a facility that could take care of him.
00:06:22.780 As you can imagine, it was impossible bonding with a father that couldn't remember anything.
00:06:26.500 My father's side of the family was, and probably still is, irritated at me for not binding or visiting him enough.
00:06:31.920 He died some years ago from cancer.
00:06:33.820 I held this depressing, irresponsible viewpoint until I ended up in rehab at the age of 35.
00:06:38.240 Then a brilliant therapist asked me to write a letter to him, my dead father, of what I missed about him.
00:06:43.420 Well, needless to say, that list ended up being all the things he wasn't there for.
00:06:46.740 This shed some light for me on this issue.
00:06:48.920 But I still want to ask if I am the a-hole for everyone else is who knew my father before his accident, or if no one is.
00:06:54.480 Well, if there's an a-hole in this situation, I mean, I only have the information that you've given me.
00:07:03.500 But what you're telling me is that your mom divorced your dad because he had an accident and suffered a brain injury.
00:07:09.760 Divorced him, and then shipped him off to a facility.
00:07:13.040 Really struggling with the till death do us part, and sickness and health part of the vows.
00:07:17.640 So, to me, if you like an a-hole move in all this, that was it.
00:07:23.260 But now, as it stands between you and your dad's family, there is no a-hole.
00:07:29.180 Sometimes there are situations in life that are just terrible, and there is no exact right way to handle it.
00:07:37.160 There's no way to handle it that's going to make it okay or better.
00:07:40.360 It's just terrible.
00:07:41.440 That's all it is.
00:07:42.840 And so you navigate.
00:07:44.420 It's a miserable situation.
00:07:45.700 You navigate the misery as best you can, but you can't feel guilty about it.
00:07:49.880 The other thing, too, is that I never blame children for a lack of a relationship or a lack of a bond with a parent.
00:08:01.120 That's up to the parent to form that bond.
00:08:03.440 Now, in your dad's case, he had this accident.
00:08:06.220 He was in a facility.
00:08:07.480 He didn't have full, apparently, cognitive capacities.
00:08:10.860 So it's not his fault.
00:08:12.240 That relieves him of the guilt there.
00:08:14.040 But that doesn't mean the guilt goes back to you.
00:08:16.840 Usually, if a child grows older, moves out of the house, doesn't really have a bond with the parent and loses touch with the parent, usually I put the blame on the parent because it was up to you to form that bond.
00:08:28.580 You can't put that responsibility on your child.
00:08:30.540 And if you don't do that when your child is a child, there's a very good chance when they become adults that they're not going to be interested in being around you.
00:08:38.060 You had your chance to form that bond, and you didn't do it.
00:08:39.960 It's on you.
00:08:40.740 So it usually goes to the parent.
00:08:41.740 In a case like this, it's really no one's fault.
00:08:45.040 The guilt and the blame goes to no one.
00:08:48.220 It's just what happened.
00:08:49.620 So I wouldn't feel any guilt about that.
00:08:53.700 And then on your father's family side, you know, they see the situation differently.
00:08:58.160 They wish that you had a bond, and they're allowed to feel that way.
00:09:00.440 That's perfectly valid as well.
00:09:01.580 I certainly would not call you...
00:09:31.580 An a-hole.
00:09:33.340 So I'm going to say, no, you're not the a-hole. 0.99
00:09:35.160 No one has a right to your medical information.
00:09:37.800 That's the way that I look at it.
00:09:39.280 Even your family members.
00:09:40.360 No one has a right to that information.
00:09:41.720 That is private information.
00:09:42.940 You don't have a responsibility to give it to someone.
00:09:45.160 And from, you know, the Catholic priest you spoke to, he's from the perspective of it's never okay to lie.
00:09:49.480 He told a lie.
00:09:50.000 That's a sin.
00:09:50.800 And I understand that perspective.
00:09:52.820 I tend to look at it a little bit differently.
00:09:54.980 You know, I tend to look at it as like not everyone has the right to a certain truth.
00:09:59.440 There are truths about you that not everyone has a right to.
00:10:01.580 And if they're demanding a truth that they simply don't have the right to, then I think at the very least, your moral guilt in deceiving them is severely mitigated.
00:10:13.180 At the very least.
00:10:14.520 Maybe that's how I would put it.
00:10:15.740 To kind of, you know, thread the philosophical, moral, theological needle here.
00:10:20.080 That your moral guilt is very much mitigated at a minimum because they're demanding information that they simply don't have a right to.
00:10:26.900 And finally, from Clint.
00:10:28.400 My wife's 40-year-old brother has never grown up.
00:10:30.940 And after years of living on the street and only contacting the family for money, he decided to move back in with his mom because he didn't want to live on the street during the winter.
00:10:38.840 After moving in with his mom, he finally got a job.
00:10:40.800 My wife and I had to take him to and from work for about eight days until he got fired for cursing out another employee.
00:10:48.840 This guy's a real winner.
00:10:50.140 This guy is a winner.
00:10:51.100 The money he earned was spent on booze and his mom told him he wasn't allowed to drink at her house.
00:10:55.600 She asked me to come over to his sister because he wouldn't listen, so he cussed me out also.
00:10:59.760 He just got another job and asked my wife to take him to work, which I told her to tell him no because we are not going out of our way to help him after he cussed me out.
00:11:08.120 Am I the a-hole?
00:11:09.000 Once again, no.
00:11:09.860 So these are, I guess this is four people in a row that I've absolved of their a-hole guilt.
00:11:15.060 So this has been a surprisingly encouraging segment, and I'm going to say, no, you're not the a-hole at all. 0.99
00:11:19.680 It's a thousand percent the brother.
00:11:21.640 When it comes to family, you should be there to help family.
00:11:24.880 You should be willing to go the extra mile for family because they are family.
00:11:29.280 But at a certain point, you're not helping them by helping them.
00:11:32.920 You know, sometimes the best help for them is to not help them.
00:11:36.140 And this sounds like a guy that, as you said, has never grown up.
00:11:39.600 He's this infantilized, perpetually adolescent 40-year-old.
00:11:43.520 And if he has any hope at the age of 40 of having any kind of, like, awakening moment and actually growing up, having a very delayed coming-of-age moment where he has some hope of living a functional, productive life, if there's any hope of that.
00:11:59.440 And there is hope because 40 is like you're getting old, but it's not—you can change even at the age of 40.
00:12:04.760 But that hope, I think, hinges at this point on tough love.
00:12:08.920 And he's going to have to confront the consequences of his own decisions and his own actions.
00:12:12.680 Like, people that are perpetually adolescent that never grow up, one of the reasons, one of the things that puts them in that state is that they were never forced to deal with the consequences of their actions.
00:12:23.840 They live in this fantasy world where consequence is divorced from action.
00:12:29.240 And the very definition of tough love oftentimes is to not be that barrier between the consequences of their actions and the actions.
00:12:36.480 To step out of the way and say, no, you're going to have to—I don't like to see this.
00:12:40.240 I wish it didn't have to be this way, but you are going to have to deal with the consequences of your actions, even if those consequences are quite dire.
00:12:46.960 And that means that, like, you end up on the street because you can't even be functional in a job for, like, a week.
00:12:53.600 That's a consequence of your action.
00:12:55.100 You're going to have to deal with that.
00:12:56.600 In this case, you got another job, and now you want a ride to work again, but you're relying on the person that you just disrespected in this way.
00:13:04.600 Like, no, it's a consequence, but you're not going to go help this guy out.
00:13:08.360 Your wife's not going to go help him after he disrespected her husband. 1.00
00:13:12.760 Consequence.
00:13:13.580 Figure out another way to work.
00:13:15.140 Walk to work.
00:13:16.020 Take an Uber.
00:13:17.040 Like, figure it out.
00:13:18.780 I tell my kids this.
00:13:19.860 This is something I have to tell my kids.
00:13:20.960 Not, like, figure out how to get somewhere because they're still young, so it is up to me to bring them someplace if they need to go.
00:13:26.980 But there are very often things in life, like, you know, things that are frustrating them, and they need to be able to figure out.
00:13:32.260 So I'd say to them, just, you've got to figure out, you've got to be able to figure this one out.
00:13:35.380 I'm going to step back and let you figure it out.
00:13:38.080 And that's what you should do here.
00:13:39.260 So, you are not the a-hole.
00:13:40.180 He is.
00:13:41.480 Everyone is absolved.
00:13:43.240 We may all go in peace.
00:13:44.900 That'll do it for today.
00:13:46.420 God's will.