The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1302 - Democrats Hold A Funeral For DEI

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, DEI is on its deathbed, and now Democrats are holding actual

00:00:04.140 funerals for it. I'll explain. Also, the corrupt DEA prosecuting Trump in Georgia finds herself

00:00:08.780 embroiled in yet another scandal. Liberals panic as Florida proposes changes to its child labor

00:00:13.820 laws. Apparently, the left thinks that kids are old enough for sex changes, but not old enough

00:00:17.240 to work at cash register at Burger King. And a psychology professor writes a lengthy article

00:00:21.520 condemning the moral panic, quote unquote, over pornography. I will take his argument apart,

00:00:26.000 piece by piece. All of that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.

00:00:30.000 Well, if you're like me, there's not a day that goes by that you don't call or text someone

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00:01:45.300 with a company that you can be proud of and you can be proud to spend your money with and support.

00:01:50.420 Again, puretalk.com slash Walsh. Some of the few truly entertaining moments you'll find in politics

00:01:57.100 are the times when activists who are extremely ideological, the total fanatics, suddenly have

00:02:01.860 to confront the reality that they are losing. You'll remember that when Donald Trump, of course,

00:02:05.560 won in 2016. We saw a lot of that sort of thing. Maybe we'll get a rehash. We'll do it again in 2024.

00:02:12.860 HBO captured footage of Ben Rhodes, the Obama advisor, sitting shell-shocked on a bench for several

00:02:17.440 minutes when he realized that Hillary Clinton wasn't going to be president. Of course, there's

00:02:20.720 the infamous, the now iconic woman screaming and howling as Trump was inaugurated. Came an instant

00:02:26.340 classic. These kinds of moments are great because if you are a sane person, it's a win-win. Your

00:02:31.020 enemies aren't just being defeated. They're also providing some unintended humor along the way.

00:02:36.920 Well, yesterday in the state of Utah, we were treated to another one of these moments. The state

00:02:40.960 Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that will dismantle all diversity, equity, and inclusion

00:02:46.180 programs in the government, as well as in the public education system. As the Salt Lake Tribune

00:02:50.740 reports, quote, the wide sweeping proposal requires that diversity, equity, and inclusion,

00:02:54.760 or DEI, offices at the state's eight public colleges and universities specifically be reframed.

00:03:00.600 They can no longer be race or gender-based, but instead must cater to all students as generalized

00:03:05.680 student success and support centers. The bill additionally bans schools and government employers

00:03:09.780 from asking job applicants for a statement about their beliefs on diversity or inclusion,

00:03:13.740 and schools and employers could lose state funding for violating that. And all entities will be

00:03:18.340 required to eliminate any training on discriminatory practices while replacing that with instruction on

00:03:23.080 free speech from all viewpoints. So this is by far the most sweeping anti-DEI bill that's ever been

00:03:28.580 proposed in this country. And just for good measure, the Utah Senate also passed a separate bill

00:03:34.480 banning men from entering women's restrooms. The governor has indicated that he's going to sign both of

00:03:39.260 those bills. So in all likelihood, very soon they'll become law. Now for DEI race hustlers, this is their

00:03:45.660 Ben Rhodes, crazy lady screeching at the inauguration moment. This doesn't just mark the rollback of

00:03:51.780 their ideology in Utah. It's also virtually certain to inspire similar bills all over the country and

00:03:56.860 create a kind of domino effect. Already states like Oklahoma, Florida, Texas have taken their own steps

00:04:02.160 to end DEI. And now the process looks like it's going to accelerate. And here's the fun part.

00:04:06.920 Democrats in Utah, as you might imagine, did not take this news very well. So they did what any

00:04:12.560 mentally unbalanced crazy person would do in this circumstance. They all dressed in black and solemnly

00:04:18.420 held a funeral for DEI because in their words, they are hurting. Now there was no casket as far as I

00:04:24.820 could tell, but they did have a eulogy and a strict dress code for the occasion. Watch.

00:04:29.840 And that's because we are hurting and rejoin our communities and with marginalized communities and

00:04:37.660 vulnerable communities through this process as we just came out of the Senate floor that passed

00:04:43.360 HB 267 and HB 261. And there may move really fast to get to the governor's desk.

00:04:52.360 I do want to thank everyone, thank my colleagues at 20 Senate and House Democrats who stand together

00:04:58.220 as a group and making sure that people know we're here and we will keep on fighting

00:05:03.900 for good public policy and to stop any attacks on our communities.

00:05:09.360 There it is. They all wore black, color coordinated, in mourning.

00:05:13.060 You just imagine the process of arranging something like this. Like, did they all get on a

00:05:16.820 conference call and say, hey, everyone, it looks like that bill that bans racial discrimination is

00:05:20.800 going to pass. So we're going to hold a funeral for DEI. Be sure to wear all black.

00:05:25.540 And then no one thought that that was remotely unusual or weird in any way.

00:05:31.140 Like, all of them apparently thought that by color coordinating, they lend some gravity

00:05:34.660 and seriousness to the situation. But of course, they did the opposite. There's not a single living

00:05:39.400 creature who saw this press conference in Utah and felt anything other than amusement and secondhand

00:05:45.180 embarrassment for everybody involved. Actually, the more you watch this DEI funeral, the more

00:05:50.040 humiliating it gets. Now, you may have noticed that the Democrats didn't simply coordinate their

00:05:53.720 clothing. They also coordinated their positions at the press conference. All the white guys

00:05:57.720 are conspicuously located in the back. You can barely see them. The women are up front.

00:06:03.160 Now, the Utah Democrats didn't specifically call attention to that staging like they did with the

00:06:06.580 clothing, but it's not hard to figure out the message. They're once again highlighting the fact

00:06:12.120 that DEI means that white guys go to the back of the bus. Even the white guys who are on board with

00:06:17.120 DEI are subjected to this humiliation because they're inferior, I guess, solely by the virtue of their skin color.

00:06:23.720 This is a fundamental principle of DEI, and they will continue to embrace it, even as the DEI scam

00:06:29.280 collapses all around them, which is what is happening right now. Now, at the same time,

00:06:33.680 there was one candid, slightly less choreographed moment from the Utah Capitol the other day.

00:06:40.480 The Salt Lake Tribune captured this image of trans activists storming the Capitol, presumably because

00:06:46.300 they're upset about the other bill, the one that keeps men out of women's restrooms.

00:06:49.740 And you can see it's a shot of two very angry, at least in one case, heavyset individual,

00:06:56.080 one of them wearing a mask for some reason. It looks like there are a couple masks there,

00:07:00.820 and holding signs that say, trans joy is power. But if you look closely at their faces,

00:07:07.920 in fact, you don't have to look that close at all, you can't help but notice that trans joy

00:07:12.260 looks a lot like blind homicidal rage. I mean, this picture actually deserves to be a new iconic

00:07:18.740 woman screeching at the inauguration moment right there. Trans joy, and then you just see them

00:07:24.200 full, like just spittle-flecked rage. That's what trans joy is. And this is always the case with

00:07:32.140 trans joy. Now, we hear a lot about it. We hear a lot, they're always telling us about joy. We have so

00:07:37.680 much joy. But nobody has ever seen anything resembling joy from any trans activists. Have

00:07:43.280 you? I've never seen it. So this photo went viral for obvious reasons. For one thing, it's like a

00:07:48.060 Babylon Bee photo, except in real life. But the photo also does a great job of capturing the anger

00:07:52.900 and bitterness of deranged activists who know they're losing. You know, they don't have time for

00:07:58.740 debates or logic or anything like that. All they can do is rage, and they know it. We're seeing a

00:08:04.740 similar phenomenon play out in the journalism industry, or what's left of it anyway. Faced with

00:08:09.000 a very public and overwhelming rejection of everything they stand for, journalists are not

00:08:14.260 pondering their failures. You know, they aren't wondering why everyone hates them. Instead, they're

00:08:19.240 wallowing in self-pity and frustration, just like the trans activists. This week, for example,

00:08:25.180 as we talked about yesterday, the Los Angeles Times laid off more than 20% of its newsroom.

00:08:31.060 And this is the paper that, in just the past couple of years, has run headlines like these.

00:08:36.600 Quote, Larry Elder is the black face of white supremacy. You've been warned. And quote,

00:08:41.840 white drivers are polluting the air breathed by LA's people of color. That's a real headline.

00:08:48.700 And quote, mocking anti-vaxxers' COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes, but may be necessary.

00:08:56.620 And remember, they get mad if we mock them for losing their jobs. These are the people who

00:09:00.440 actually said that it's a moral necessity to mock people who die. And yet, we're supposed to be

00:09:07.360 sad they lost their jobs. So we're not talking about principled journalists who are holding the

00:09:11.940 powerful to account. These are ghoulish, sociopathic activists who want to cause a race war and dance

00:09:20.660 on the graves of their political enemies. And you could say, well, not everybody in the newsroom may

00:09:24.720 have agreed with those headlines. But the fact is that none of them condemned any of that. None

00:09:30.280 of them spoke out or reconsidered the wisdom of working for an organization that would publish

00:09:35.320 garbage like that. And we all know why that is. The staff of the LA Times was openly racist and

00:09:41.000 overtly hostile to anyone they disagreed with. That showed in their journalism, quote unquote,

00:09:46.860 and most of the public found it to be completely repulsive. So the paper started losing something

00:09:50.320 like $40 million a year. And now the newsroom has been gutted as a result. But in the wake of these

00:09:56.400 cuts, there has not been a single LA Times employee, current or former, who has said anything like,

00:10:03.840 hey, you know, maybe we shouldn't have wished for the death of our enemies. Maybe we did a couple

00:10:10.300 things wrong here. Not a single one, as far as I can tell. None of them have said that it was a bad

00:10:15.540 idea to publish an article accusing white people of poisoning people of color in Los Angeles by

00:10:19.880 driving their cars. In fact, the opposite has been happening. LA Times employees have been

00:10:24.060 defending their coverage. One LA Times reporter, Sarah D. Wire, insisted the other day that the

00:10:28.420 article about white drivers polluting the air was great journalism. Quote, ah, yes, how dare we

00:10:32.760 inform people about a USC study that found pollution in Los Angeles disproportionately impacts the communities

00:10:38.480 that highways run through, she wrote, in response to someone criticizing the headline. So she still

00:10:45.380 doesn't get it. Or she's pretending she doesn't. Like, she's not even trying to understand. Even

00:10:50.540 now, after everyone has pointed out to her that white drivers aren't the only ones driving on Los

00:10:55.920 Angeles's highways, Sarah D. Wire at the Los Angeles Times doesn't see the problem with the headline.

00:11:02.440 And keep in mind, this is one of the few people who was not fired this week at the LA Times.

00:11:06.920 So this is like the cream of the crop, I guess, supposedly. That's how committed this organization

00:11:13.300 is to fomenting race hatred by lying to the public. And just to be sure I wasn't missing anything, I spent

00:11:19.060 some time looking through the Twitter feeds of current and former LA Times employees, and I wanted to see

00:11:25.060 if any of them were showing any introspection whatsoever. I wanted to see, for example, if any LA Times

00:11:29.780 reporter expressed regret for predicting that Twitter would implode a year ago, because you have to admit it's

00:11:34.820 pretty ironic that the LA Times imploded and Twitter is still around. But I didn't find anything like

00:11:40.300 that. Instead, the more I looked, the worse it got. As Chris Ruffo noted, the post-layoff statement from

00:11:45.820 the LA Times various diversity caucuses didn't even attempt to defend their work on the basis of quality

00:11:51.340 or merit or profitability. Instead, they all invoked various racial grievances. Quote,

00:11:56.200 the announcement today has devastating implications for black, Latino, AAPI, and other journalists of

00:12:01.180 color. If these layoffs are allowed to go through, the Latino caucus will lose 38% of its members. The

00:12:06.240 black caucus will lose 36% of its members. The AAPI in Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia

00:12:11.160 caucuses will lose 30% of their combined membership. Also, presumably, there's a lot of white people that

00:12:16.680 got fired too, but who cares? They don't matter. So it's racial bean counting all the way down to the

00:12:23.860 very end. And nobody at the LA Times seems to realize how normal people are perceiving all this.

00:12:28.140 Yesterday, the LA Times' Noah Goldberg tweeted out this photo of an empty LA Times newsroom,

00:12:33.780 apparently to garner sympathy. You know, he wanted us to look at this and see how empty it is and be filled

00:12:42.080 with mourning and grief. But, I mean, nobody reacted with sympathy to that photo. Tim Pool had maybe the

00:12:50.220 best response, which was, quote, this is like taking a picture of a kitchen and lamenting there are no roaches

00:12:54.600 running around, which I think kind of sums it up nicely. Then after the post was completely dogpiled

00:12:59.320 by thousands of people, Goldberg tweeted, well, I've gone viral, apparently, among people who think

00:13:03.660 the LA Times is staffed by journalists who advocate for white genocide and are propagandists. They all

00:13:08.220 believe that the layoffs were good. Oh, yeah, you think so? You just noticed that? You just noticed

00:13:14.280 that that is how your publication is perceived rightly by the public? Well, I guess what he just said,

00:13:19.120 you know, that does constitute some accurate reporting from the LA Times, at least. But nobody

00:13:23.940 was allowed to celebrate it. Goldberg very quickly locked the replies to that tweet. This is what

00:13:27.200 journalists have to do. They're hiding from the customers they're supposedly serving, yet somehow

00:13:31.380 they're still in denial about why everyone has so much disdain for them. Even after so many publications

00:13:35.900 have been conducting layoffs this year, including Sports Illustrated, LA Times, Time, Business Insider,

00:13:41.380 Forbes, Condé Nast, the New York Daily News, these hacks are still convinced that they're

00:13:47.860 irreplaceable. The remaining workers are even going on strike in many cases, as if that's magically going

00:13:52.660 to generate the money that these businesses need in order to pay them. But it didn't work for the LA

00:13:57.420 Times, and it's not going to work for the New York Daily News or Forbes either. That's because in the

00:14:01.940 end, reality is non-negotiable. That's true for every industry, whether it's DEI or journalism.

00:14:07.720 You know, reality is still there. We're all living in it, whether we want to or not. You can only

00:14:11.220 sustain a fantasy for so long. And as journalists and DEI bureaucrats are discovering,

00:14:16.780 sooner or later, whether you hold a funeral for it or not, the fantasy has to end.

00:14:24.860 Now let's get to our five headlines.

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00:15:14.780 So I actually want to start here because I find this interesting and there's a lot of outrage over

00:15:20.680 this. Here's a Forbes article. Two bills that could loosen child labor laws are moving through the

00:15:27.780 Florida legislature, making it easier for teens to work longer hours in more dangerous jobs as the

00:15:32.580 state battles a labor shortage, which some critics say is made worse by a crackdown on undocumented

00:15:37.080 immigrant workers. A Florida bill that was passed by a state senate committee Wednesday could allow

00:15:42.880 16 and 17 year olds to work on construction projects in residential areas as long as the

00:15:46.640 projects are lower than six feet, a revision from the original text that sought to allow the teens to

00:15:50.580 work on roofs. A separate bill called employment and curfew of minors is moving through the state

00:15:54.920 house legislator committee and intends to allow 16 to 17 year olds to work up to 40 hours a week.

00:16:00.180 30 is the current law, even when school's in session. The latter bill introduced by Republican

00:16:03.300 State Representative Linda Cheney, would force 16 and 17 year olds to be given the same amount of

00:16:08.000 breaks as adults, a change to the current law, which requires 30 minute breaks every four hours.

00:16:15.600 So everybody would get the same amount of breaks in that case.

00:16:20.080 So that's kind of the law and a lot of problems with the way that this is reported. I mean,

00:16:25.500 we'll kind of get into it, but first of all, force, but force, there's, there's no bill that's

00:16:29.700 forcing any, there's no bill forcing 16 and 17 year olds to go get jobs. Like that's not,

00:16:34.080 that's not, it's not forced labor. Um, but what the bill would do is it would make it a little bit

00:16:39.620 easier for, um, people under the, for, for, you know, for people under the age of 18 for kids to

00:16:46.340 get jobs. Um, and, uh, the, the media is lamenting that in large part. I mean, they get, they give the

00:16:52.460 game away right, right at the top. They're lamenting it primarily because it will take

00:16:58.140 jobs away from illegal immigrants. Our kids getting jobs will take jobs away from me. We

00:17:05.860 can't have that. That's not fair. It's not fair if our, if our own children can have jobs because

00:17:10.520 then that means that, uh, you know, uh, some 35 year old illegal immigrant is not supposed to be

00:17:14.700 in the first place. Won't be able to get one. Um, anyway, so here's a, here's a clip that went viral

00:17:20.580 of one Republican talking about, um, the need for the bill and people were upset about what he says

00:17:26.700 here. I mean, you tell me if this is upsetting. Let's listen. We've been weakening our society,

00:17:32.280 uh, since before my time, uh, I, you know, I started working at like 13 years old, a full-time job. I

00:17:38.300 wrestled, uh, I played every sport you can imagine. So the idea that, that they can't afford to, to have

00:17:43.740 these kids do this is, is an anomaly for me in my mind. If there's an issue with inflation, we should

00:17:49.580 address that with, with the federal government, not, not the state of Florida. So I appreciate

00:17:52.820 you running this bill. Uh, you guys continue doing the great work and, and help change your

00:17:57.700 youth, the youth, uh, out there to have them start working full-time. Thanks. Great. Rep

00:18:02.400 Barrington, you're, uh. Okay. So that's supposed to be some kind of outrageous statement from the

00:18:06.560 Florida state rep. The left is really mad about it. Um, in fact, there, there's been on social media,

00:18:10.980 a general leftist panic recently over child labor, quote unquote, child labor in, um, in, uh, uh,

00:18:19.580 in Florida and elsewhere. And they're very upset that child labor is making a comeback according to

00:18:27.560 them. And I put quotes around child labor because that obviously has a certain, like when, when

00:18:31.480 they use that phrase, it brings to mind, even though it's technically, if a, if a kid has a job,

00:18:36.740 like a job, even if they're working behind a cash register, the job is labor and, uh, and they are

00:18:43.580 kids if they own it at the age of 18. Um, but the, the phrase child labor is supposed to bring to mind

00:18:50.760 like kids working in mines and on factory assembly lines for 18 hours a day. That that's, that's what

00:18:57.620 it, that's what that phrase kind of brings to mind. And that's why they, uh, use it. But anyway,

00:19:03.080 they're, they're saying that child labor is making a comeback. Very upset about it. Um, here's another

00:19:07.880 video in this vein. So somebody posted this clip of a kid working at a Burger King. I don't know who

00:19:14.160 took this video. I mean, the kids just work in there and somebody comes in and takes a video of

00:19:17.160 them. Uh, and, uh, this video got like 5 million views. A lot of people very upset about it, uh,

00:19:23.160 saying, you know, this poor kid is like, he's basically a slave. This is terrible. Um, and,

00:19:28.300 and, uh, we blurred his face because he's a kid, but, but here it is.

00:19:32.400 What are your specials? Uh, we have a two for seven on our chicken sandwiches and a two for

00:19:38.120 five on our Wapu Juniors and our BK Ranch. And also you can get six cookies where you fit.

00:19:44.140 Um, may I just have one cheeseburger to go, please? One cheeseburger? Is that all for you today?

00:19:48.280 That would be all. All right. That would be $2.11. $2.11? $1.99 plus tax, ma'am. I'm sorry.

00:19:58.040 My cheeseburgers at McDonald's were used to be 69 cents when I worked there for my first job.

00:20:04.360 Oh. Hello. Hello. What? If you want any napkins, the word of it.

00:20:14.880 Wow. How horrifying. I mean, how terrible. This kid is better at his job and provides better

00:20:20.620 customer service than like 99% of fast food employees. That's the only bad thing I see here.

00:20:26.480 That's the other, it's that. And also that the woman is hassling. What are you hassling the kid

00:20:29.920 for about the price of the hamburger? What, what is he going to do about it? Um, it's the only thing

00:20:37.440 that's like shocking and appalling about that video is that this kid is, is like his first job. He's

00:20:42.940 probably been working there for, you know, it couldn't have been very long and he's significantly

00:20:47.700 better than almost everybody you encounter who, who's working at a fast food place outside of

00:20:54.560 Chick-fil-A. That's Burger King. Like by Burger King standards, my God, this, this, this kid should

00:21:01.460 be the general manager of that store. That is, that is, cause that would be, that's, that's above

00:21:07.140 average customer service for a Chick-fil-A. But you put that at Burger King, I mean, we've talked about

00:21:12.860 this before, but the, the, the, the customer service at Burger King is, it's aggressively, it's

00:21:17.660 like almost violently angry when you walk in, you walk in and they start throwing, they throw like

00:21:22.660 shoes at you as soon as you walk in the door. They just, they hate you so much for being there.

00:21:26.080 The fact that this kid's got, got a smile on his face and he's interacting, um, by Burger King

00:21:31.020 standards, that is, he's, he's employee of the year, the globally already. Now, um, so just a few

00:21:41.540 things in general about this. Uh, child labor laws were enacted back in the early 20th century

00:21:48.260 when you had, as, as alluded to, you know, you had kids working in coal mines and doing

00:21:54.660 dangerous factory jobs where they were getting fingers and limbs chopped off and that sort of

00:21:58.960 thing. Uh, the idea was to protect kids from that. And we did, it's good that we did. Um, well,

00:22:05.540 here we are a hundred years later and the kinds of jobs that most kids do or would do are very

00:22:10.940 different. Okay. Kids now, if they have a job are standing behind a cash register in a temperature

00:22:16.540 controlled building for a few hours a day with lunch breaks and breaks and everything else,

00:22:21.240 it's not the coal mines. You know, this is not a 12 year old on the factory assembly line for 16

00:22:25.280 hours with no break. So what exactly is the problem? What is the problem? Can someone explain

00:22:31.200 to me? You watch that video and you're, you say, well, it's terrible. Why is it terrible? What is wrong

00:22:36.940 with what's happening there? Um, you know, I had my first real job. I say real job, like my first W2

00:22:43.460 job when I was 14, I actually started working when I was 12. I was mowing lawns for cash, but I got

00:22:50.160 an actual job at 14 at a snowball stand and it was great. I made money. I got free snowballs. Uh, I, I,

00:22:56.320 I learned some basic skills. I got some work experience. Um, I was doing something productive

00:23:01.380 with my time. What's the downside? How is that a problem? Keep something in mind here. Uh, quote,

00:23:09.960 unquote child labor, which is like, like kids are doing labor, which is doing some kind of

00:23:15.160 work of some kind. That's been the rule for human civilization since forever. Before the industrial

00:23:20.640 age, it's other than you get these, these dumb leftists who pretend that this, look at what

00:23:24.800 happens in capitalism. Meanwhile, over in China, which is not a capitalist system, they've got like,

00:23:30.780 they have seven year olds, you know, making iPhones. Um, but this has been the rule for human

00:23:36.520 civilization since forever. Before the industrial industrial age, kids, kids would work the farm

00:23:40.420 with their, you know, with their families. They would do chores around the house, real chores,

00:23:44.460 you know, real work. And, um, and now if they have a job, it's probably working a drive-thru or whatever.

00:23:49.520 So this is not new. The only thing that's new is this notion popular in some corners that kids should

00:23:56.380 not do any kind of work at all until they are into adulthood until they graduate college. You know,

00:24:04.440 now you do have plenty of, of, uh, of, uh, scenarios where you've got like a 23 year old adult

00:24:12.580 who has never done any kind of work ever. So it's not just like, that's not an outlier. That's

00:24:19.840 you got millions of people in their early twenties who come out of college and they've never done any

00:24:25.860 form of work ever. Um, that is what is extraordinarily modern and Western. It's very,

00:24:35.260 very new. And, um, it's obviously totally counterproductive in every conceivable way.

00:24:42.100 Um, what would you rather have kids do? Like this kid at Burger King, would you, would it be,

00:24:47.400 what's a better use of his time? Is it better for him to be at home playing video games for seven

00:24:50.780 hours a day? Is it better? Would you like, is it better if you're sitting on the couch scrolling

00:24:54.140 TikTok? Is that like, if you don't want kids to work any kind of job, what would you prefer for

00:24:59.540 them to be doing instead? Uh, it's pretty clear that whatever they'd be doing instead, it's,

00:25:04.720 it wouldn't be as productive or as good for them, uh, as good for the, the, the child as the experience

00:25:10.480 he can get at a job provided the job is safe and it's not, and it's, you're, you're not,

00:25:16.040 uh, um, you know, you're not treating the kids like slave labor provided that's not happening,

00:25:21.840 which it isn't at Burger King. Uh, then I don't, you know, it's, it's absurd. Something else to

00:25:29.980 consider too is, is like, why have kids always historically done some kind of work? Well,

00:25:36.800 because it's good for them. It helps them gain skill and experience and maturity, but also because

00:25:42.200 their families needed it. So if you lived out on a farm in the year 1752, you needed your children

00:25:49.460 to help. They had to, it was a necessity. It was a survival necessity. Everyone had to contribute,

00:25:55.320 you know? Um, and, uh, and, and, and the point is that part of the advantage of a child working is

00:26:00.500 the child is then contributing in a real and valuable way to the family. So, um, if we come in

00:26:06.960 and say, no, no kids allowed to work makes us feel bad to see the poor little guy behind the cash

00:26:12.020 register. Well, now in many cases, you've just created an additional financial strain on the

00:26:18.000 family. Uh, when a kid is 14, 15 and, uh, has a job, you know, makes some money. And if you, you

00:26:27.860 know, maybe, maybe that new pair of shoes that he wants, he can buy with, with, with the money that

00:26:32.200 he's earned, that sort of thing. Like this, this really matters to families. It's a big, uh, help.

00:26:36.760 And we've just got this idea now that it just, it can't be allowed. You know, you can't have

00:26:42.340 anyone under 18 in, in a family who's contributing in any way financially to the household. It's a

00:26:47.340 totally, it, it's just, it's the kind of thought process people engage in when they're, when they're

00:26:54.300 not thinking, there's actually no thought process at all. It's just like this instinctive

00:26:57.200 modern reaction to something. All right. Um, this is from Free Beacon. Fulton County District

00:27:06.000 Attorney Fannie Willis wants to treat her staff to brand new taxpayer funded cars as she rides out

00:27:12.220 allegations that she misappropriated county funds to enrich her lover. Willis on Wednesday requested

00:27:17.580 $611,000 from the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to purchase up to 16 pursuit and

00:27:23.020 special service vehicles for law enforcement and administrative purposes. The board voted

00:27:28.480 overwhelmingly to table the request after several commissioners noted Willis provided no justification

00:27:32.440 for the proposed purchase order. The board said that it will take up the request after Willis

00:27:36.720 addresses allegations of her affair with Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade. Wade, a married man, Willis

00:27:42.820 appointed in November, 2021 to lead her election meddling case against former President Donald

00:27:46.580 Trump has earned at least $654,000 in legal fees from Willis's office funds that he then

00:27:52.980 used to finance several vacations for the pair. Commissioner Bridget Thorne said during a

00:27:58.560 Wednesday meeting, I don't know why she's requesting vehicles now. I met with the district attorney's

00:28:02.560 office in December. She said that they'd requested $5 million in enhancements last year, but she only

00:28:06.680 needed $4 million because she had already purchased vehicles. Okay. And so there's a lot of people that

00:28:12.780 are, um, confused. They don't, they don't know why, well, why is she, you know, why would she be

00:28:18.480 making these requests? Why, especially now of all things, why would she do this? She's supposed to

00:28:23.980 be prosecuting a case against a former president. She's at the same time in the middle of a scandal

00:28:29.240 involving an affair with a guy who was married and, and, and who she was funneling tax money to

00:28:35.520 and then turned around and use part of that money on lavish vacations with her. And in the middle of

00:28:43.000 all that, uh, she, she's asking for over a half a million dollars for new cars.

00:28:51.560 And then she doesn't even explain why she needs it. Why would she do that? You know, it just seems

00:28:58.220 so, uh, it's like a egregious. You've already got all this heat on you. You're in the middle of this,

00:29:03.600 again, a case against a former president. You're doing something that, uh, up until this past year

00:29:08.700 had never been done before in history. Um, and you've already got a scandal. And now on top of

00:29:16.340 that, you, without any explanation, you're saying, I need about half a money. I need to buy some new

00:29:20.160 cars. Well, why would she do it? Well, it's, it's actually not mysterious. Um, there's nothing

00:29:25.360 mysterious about it. She does it because she assumes she can get away with it. And she's probably

00:29:32.160 right. She does it because she's a Democrat and she's a black woman who therefore belongs to the

00:29:39.800 privileged political class being Democrat and also multiple victim groups, which is a privileged

00:29:46.760 class. And so she assumes probably rightly that in her position, she can do basically anything she

00:29:52.580 wants and it, it, it's not going to matter. Um, she does it out of pure unadulterated hubris.

00:29:58.960 Although maybe we can't even call it hubris because it's grounded in a correct assumption.

00:30:07.080 Uh, and the assumption is that she can do what she wants and she's a, she is a, in her position

00:30:12.540 that given the demographic boxes that she checks, that she is above criticism. And again, she's,

00:30:19.020 she's probably right about that. All right. So you're not going to understand why I'm telling you

00:30:24.360 about this story, but I'll explain it will explain. So bear with me. Uh, this from Fox news,

00:30:31.280 the Atlanta Falcons made a hard turn with their coaching search. The Falcons, despite interviewing

00:30:34.900 Bill Belichick twice, hired Los Angeles Rams defensive coordinator, Raheem Morris to fill

00:30:39.660 their head coaching vacancy. The Falcons made the deal official later Thursday. Arthur blank,

00:30:47.000 the owner said, this is a historic day for the Atlanta Falcons. Uh, we're thrilled to welcome

00:30:50.560 Raheem Morris back to Atlanta, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So you may be wondering why I'm wasting your

00:30:56.640 time with NFL coaching news, aside from the fact that I'm, we are going to the conference

00:31:01.060 championships. The Ravens are my team on Sunday. I'm pretty excited about it. Cannot share my excitement

00:31:06.900 with anybody outside of my own household. Nobody here cares about football. This is, this is a Titans

00:31:13.260 town. None of you people care, you know? So I don't have nobody I can talk to about it with. So,

00:31:20.720 and anyway, don't feel, well, you should feel a little sorry for me about that.

00:31:25.140 That's not the only reason. Um, there's another reason to, and because this coaching news presents

00:31:31.120 some, some fascinating problems for the left's narrative and it kind of shows you how the left's

00:31:34.480 narrative works. And here's why Raheem Morris, who just got the head coach gig in Atlanta.

00:31:39.540 He's been around the league for a while. He's a relatively young guy. He's like 47, 48 years old,

00:31:44.580 but he's been around the league for a long, for a while. And he got his first head coach job like

00:31:48.760 15 years ago. Um, he has a track record and it's not good. He has a losing record as a head coach.

00:31:56.840 Thoroughly, a thoroughly losing record. So it's not even close to 500. It's, it's, he's probably 300 or

00:32:02.880 something. Um, he's never been to a Superbowl. He has, I don't think he has any playoff wins. Um,

00:32:08.140 he has nothing, you know, it's just, he has failed in his, uh, in his head coaching opportunities in

00:32:14.440 the past. Uh, he has been poor to mediocre. Mediocre has been kind of his ceiling when really

00:32:20.000 he's been a poor head coach. And he's also, he's also a black man. Meanwhile, there is another head

00:32:25.900 coach free agent on the market as referenced in the article named Bill Belichick, who you've

00:32:30.440 probably heard of. Uh, he has six Superbowl rings. Um, he has more wins than any other coach

00:32:38.140 in the history of the game, except for one. And he's, he's, he's, you know, he's, he's within

00:32:42.560 striking distance of having the most wins out of any coach who's ever, uh, coached in professional

00:32:47.660 football. He interviewed for this job twice, which is, I don't know if I can quite explain how,

00:32:55.480 uh, what that means. Like he, he took two interviews. This guy's a shoo-in for the hall of

00:33:03.220 fame. And he took two interviews. He, he not only interviewed once, like you would think,

00:33:08.260 right. If I was Bill Belichick, I wouldn't, I wouldn't take any interview with the first place.

00:33:12.760 I would say, I got an interview for the job, Bill Belichick. What do you mean? I got an interview

00:33:15.820 for the job. Like, you know what I can do. I'm not going to interview with you, much less come back a

00:33:20.660 second time. That's like, it's like if Daniel Day-Lewis not only came into audition for your

00:33:27.940 role in your movie, but actually came in for a follow-up audition. And he was auditioning against

00:33:33.240 just like guys who have acted in commercials. And then he doesn't get the gig. Like it's like that.

00:33:41.200 Um, now I'm not saying that Raheem Morris got the job because he's black. Uh, I'm not saying this

00:33:47.800 is a diversity DEI hire situation. I mean, I'm, I'm legitimately not saying that. Okay. I'm not

00:33:53.460 being coy when I say it's like, I don't, I don't think that's what happened. The NFL, uh, now they

00:33:57.580 do have a ridiculous policy, the Rooney rule where you, where you teams have to interview minority

00:34:02.420 candidates for head coaching gigs, even if they already know who they want. They have to go,

00:34:07.360 they have to go through the motions of, um, interviewing minority candidates. But I don't

00:34:12.500 think he got the job because he's black. I think he got it because one of the quirks of the NFL

00:34:15.720 is that, you know, you've got these guys, these kind of, um, uh, mediocre coaches who,

00:34:21.360 who've never accomplished anything, who just sort of hang around for decades and they keep getting

00:34:27.740 jobs. And this is black and white coaches. This happens with, uh, mediocrity in the, in the NFL

00:34:32.400 is colorblind. You've just got, it's, it, no one quite, it's a frustrating and confounding for the

00:34:37.260 fans. No one quite understands me. You've just got these guys like Jeff Fisher coach for the Titans,

00:34:41.580 uh, for many years is one of these guys. You just, he's mediocre. All he ever did

00:34:45.640 was he'd go 500 in the season. He kept getting jobs and no one could figure out why. All I'm

00:34:50.600 saying is that the sports media and the left have claimed and still claim that the NFL is racist

00:34:57.500 against black coaches, uh, which, which is absurd on its face for a million reasons we talked about

00:35:03.440 before. But if you actually believed that it was true, well, this event should, should shake your

00:35:11.560 faith in that theory to its core. Because if the NFL is racist against black coaches,

00:35:19.200 how in God's name could a black coach with a losing record and no rings get a job over a white

00:35:26.840 coaching legend with six rings who interviewed for the job twice? Uh, it's, it's like impossible,

00:35:33.860 right? If you didn't know anything about the NFL and someone told you, uh, the first thing they told

00:35:39.440 you is like, first thing you need to know about this league is they're racist against black coaches.

00:35:43.640 That's the, that's, you need to know that. Okay. You, you would not predict based on that theory

00:35:49.680 that there could ever be a scenario where a losing black coach could get a job over a white coach

00:35:57.100 who's been to the Superbowl and won it six times. Um, because it just doesn't make any sense,

00:36:03.340 but will this event, um, uh, cause the, the, the, and by the way, it's not like Raheem Morris is the

00:36:12.620 first black coach with a losing record to get a job. As I said, it happens many times in this case,

00:36:17.120 it's just, it's even more, uh, noticeable given who he got the job over, but will this cause the

00:36:26.300 race hustlers, the Jamil Hills of the world to reconsider or recalibrate? Will they look at this

00:36:31.820 and say, Hmm, okay, well, you know, that's, that's not quite what we would expect if given

00:36:38.840 that the NFL is racist against head coaches, we thought, uh, black head coaches. Okay. Like I'm

00:36:43.680 not even saying, will they abandon their theory of systemic racism against black coaches in the NFL

00:36:49.380 and in society generally, of course, not going to abandon it, but will they even like take it into

00:36:53.000 account? Uh, will, will it be a data point that they look at and, and, and try to factor into their

00:37:00.640 equation? Well, no, of course, because, uh, this is why I say systemic racism in every aspect of life,

00:37:08.900 including in the NFL is an unfalsifiable theory. There, there is nothing that can happen

00:37:15.560 that will ever cause the people who believe in this theory and who, who have postulated this theory.

00:37:21.560 There is nothing that can ever happen that will ever disprove or discredit or, or even weaken

00:37:29.340 this theory in their minds. Unfalsifiable, which is why it is an illegitimate and false theory

00:37:35.860 in the end. Let's get to the comment section.

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00:38:44.280 that's ZipRecruiter.com slash W-A-L-S-H. ZipRecruiter, smartest way to hire. Okay, a lot of comments on my

00:38:52.120 monologue yesterday about the psychiatric industry and the medicalization of normal human emotions and

00:38:56.640 experiences. Read a few of those. Elon Musk says, interesting. I'm just reading that out loud to

00:39:06.400 brag that Elon Musk thought my monologue was interesting. You know, no other real commentary,

00:39:10.540 but he did leave that comment. Dr. Michelle says, hmm, not sure what you mean by the psychiatric

00:39:16.900 industry, but as a psychiatrist, I will tell you that many patients' parents become irritated when I

00:39:21.280 explain that I don't think they have a disorder or diagnosis and suggest talk therapy for working out

00:39:25.740 a difficult period in their life and or development. I've had parents fire me and threaten to report me

00:39:30.060 for not prescribing medication they decided their children need. For sure, we have problems with the

00:39:34.380 pharmaceutical industry and direct-to-consumer advertising, but there is a cultural problem

00:39:37.800 afoot as well. Well, I have no doubt about that, Dr. Michelle. You know, I don't doubt that. I think

00:39:44.820 you're, of course, 100% right. And for certain, this problem is driven in part by the patients

00:39:54.840 themselves coming in and demanding a diagnosis and drugs. That's why I've also been a critic of

00:40:01.340 direct-to-consumer drug advertisements. I don't think that those should be allowed. In most countries,

00:40:07.000 they're not allowed for exactly this reason, because the pharmaceutical industry is, what they do is

00:40:13.360 they don't just sell the drug, they sell the disease. Because if you actually have a disease and

00:40:19.940 there's a drug for it, then you don't need to see an advertisement for it. It'll be prescribed for

00:40:24.760 you. That's what doctors are supposed to be for. But what happens is that, and this happens especially

00:40:30.480 with mental illnesses, that, you know, people see the commercials and they're convinced by the

00:40:37.120 commercial that they have the disease that's being described. And then they go to the doctor and say,

00:40:40.700 give me that drug. And that shouldn't be happening. And parents in particular, I'm well aware that this

00:40:47.840 happens, where they go in. This is how a lot of ADHD diagnoses happen, is that the parents go in

00:40:56.380 looking for the diagnosis. And the thing is that if you're a parent and you want your child to have

00:41:06.020 an ADHD diagnosis so you can get drugs for them, you can get it. Okay. Like, find me a parent.

00:41:13.320 Find me one. Find me a parent who, for years, has been taking their child to the doctor trying to get

00:41:19.420 a diagnosis of ADHD and hasn't gotten it. Can you find me one parent with a story like that?

00:41:27.300 No. Because if you, I mean, I could do this. That's why it's always ridiculous when people say to me,

00:41:31.920 well, you don't know, you don't know what it's like to have an ADHD child. What are you talking

00:41:35.280 about? Of course, I have six kids. You don't think I could easily bring any, any, any one of my sons to

00:41:42.120 the doctor and describe their symptoms and get a diagnosis for ADHD? Of course I could.

00:41:49.040 Um, but I don't do that because I'm not going to try to shortcut. I'm not looking for a parenting

00:41:54.460 shortcut that involves, um, you know, uh, putting my kids on drugs, uh, so that they're, you know,

00:42:02.980 to, to, to, to sedate them. That's not, I don't do that. That's not parenting.

00:42:08.740 Um, Jordan says that's not true though. Therapy helps people understand how to process emotions.

00:42:15.200 It's not all about meds. Yeah. And it's best form and it's effective form. Therapy is not about

00:42:21.020 meds and it does help people process emotions. Um, I have no doubt that therapy can have that

00:42:25.460 effect. My point though, is that there's little evidence in general society wide that therapy is

00:42:31.000 succeeding very much in that regard. Like therapy has never been more popular than it is now. There's

00:42:36.440 never been more people doing it. It's never been more mainstream, more accepted, more normalized.

00:42:40.000 And also at the same time, I would argue people have never been worse at processing their own

00:42:44.700 emotions. So there's a, there's a, a disconnect here. And, um, also the, the way therapy is conducted

00:42:51.940 most of the time, the affirmative model and so forth makes it so that many patients become even

00:42:57.920 greater slaves to their emotions because of it. And, um, finally, Matt, you're ignoring the fact that

00:43:06.280 most of these mental illnesses can be found in the brain. There is chemical activity in the brain

00:43:10.120 that correlates with the diagnosed mental illness. There's such a thing as a depressed brain.

00:43:15.280 Okay. Well, let me, this is an important point. And it's true that for many of the mental illnesses

00:43:20.800 I'm skeptical of, um, skeptical that they are mental illnesses, not skeptical that the experiences

00:43:25.440 are real and exist, but many of them have, as you say, activity in the brain that can be detected

00:43:31.700 and traced and, and like connected to the mental illness. So in that sense, yeah, you can find

00:43:39.560 depression and ADHD and anxiety and so on in the brain. I don't deny that, but let me make a few

00:43:46.700 points about that. First of all, the correlation between neurological activity and these mental

00:43:51.600 illnesses is not nearly as strong and clear as people are made to think, because if it was,

00:43:59.280 then these supposed mental illnesses would be diagnosed with brain scans, but they're not. So,

00:44:05.820 you know, we're, we're told that if a child has ADHD, that, that, uh, that it'll be present in the

00:44:10.960 brain, you know, where we are assured that, uh, ADHD is a, is a problem of the brain. And, and, you know,

00:44:17.460 you can look at kids with, with, you could take sort of ADHD brains and, and, and compare them and

00:44:22.860 you'll find a lot of similarities. Okay. Well, you'll notice that curiously children are diagnosed

00:44:30.080 with ADHD 100% of the time without anyone looking at the brain. So this is a disease of the brain

00:44:38.200 supposedly. And yet the brain is diagnosed without anyone looking at it or doing any tests or any

00:44:43.020 scans or anything. That's odd, isn't it? Like there's never been a time that I'm aware of where

00:44:52.440 you've got a parent and child sitting in the doctor's office. The doctor comes in and says,

00:44:55.460 well, your child's test results came back, uh, uh, ma'am. And I'm sorry to tell you he tested

00:45:00.920 positive for ADHD. Like it doesn't happen. That's not how this is diagnosed. That's how actual diseases

00:45:06.680 are diagnosed. Um, this is diagnosed through a, through a, a survey, right? Um, so that's kind of

00:45:14.180 strange. And second, with that said, again, I have no doubt that if you take a whole bunch of people

00:45:17.860 diagnosed with ADHD or depression or anxiety, and you did brain scans and you compared them,

00:45:22.300 you'd find similarities in neurological activity and chemicals and so forth. You know, I'm sure you

00:45:27.000 would find that a depressed person's brain is doing something that correlates with his feelings of

00:45:34.780 depression, obviously, but, but just because an emotional, an emotion or thought or experience

00:45:41.340 can be detected in the brain, that doesn't prove that the emotion thought or experience is disordered.

00:45:47.080 That doesn't prove that the emotion thought or experience is a disease. You see, how do I know

00:45:53.600 that? Well, well, because literally any emotion thought or, or, or internal experience is, or at

00:46:02.780 some point with the right technology will be detectable in the brain. Like that's where all

00:46:08.920 these things come from. Does that mean that all emotions, thoughts, and experiences are diseases?

00:46:13.540 Like, I'm sure that, that you could take a whole bunch of people who are happy and you could do

00:46:19.480 brain scans and you can compare the scans and you could say, well, there it is. There's a happy

00:46:23.800 brain. That's what causes the happiness you see in the brain there. Does that mean the happiness is a,

00:46:28.380 is a disease? No. Even if the emotion is negative, even if it's difficult, even if it's painful,

00:46:35.260 the fact that it correlates with activity in the brain does not make it a disease.

00:46:40.800 That's just how brains work. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's how they're supposed to work.

00:46:45.820 And third, you have the chicken or egg problem. If a depressed person's brain is doing a certain

00:46:51.860 thing chemically, are they depressed because the brain is doing those things chemically?

00:46:56.300 Or is it doing those things chemically because they're depressed? From a neurological standpoint,

00:47:02.100 you know, um, again, going back to happiness, I become happy because of endorphins and dopamine

00:47:08.740 in the brain. But is it, is it really because of those things? Did my happiness, did my happiness

00:47:14.680 trigger the endorphins or did the endorphins trigger the happiness? It would seem to me to be,

00:47:19.620 to be, uh, uh, happiness triggering the endorphins rather than the other way around.

00:47:24.160 Like the chemical activity in the brain is in response to my conscious state. So, you know,

00:47:31.000 if I'm at a, uh, my son's little league game, he's not a little league, but like if I was,

00:47:37.840 my son was a little, little league game and he hit a home run, uh, I would be happy. That would make

00:47:43.620 me happy. But would it be that accurate to say that, well, his, his happiness is caused by the

00:47:49.920 dopamine? Well, no, it's not. It's, it's caused by what just happened. And my

00:47:54.020 conscious awareness of it and the fact that I love my son and I'm proud of him and something

00:47:58.360 good happened. And so that makes me happy. So I would say that my conscious awareness of this event

00:48:05.200 and my, you know, how I perceive it is, is what triggers those changes in the brain.

00:48:12.120 Now it gets complicated, right? Like it's at a, some level this becomes, you get to a point where

00:48:17.140 it's, it's impossible to quite decipher one from the other. It's very mysterious. We get into like

00:48:21.940 the problem of consciousness and how does consciousness relate to the brain exactly?

00:48:25.080 And how does it arise from the brain? And you know, all these different things, you know,

00:48:28.400 there's the dualist way of looking at the materialist way. Um, but at the very least that

00:48:36.320 should give you some appreciation for the fact that, that this is a, this is a, when you're

00:48:41.340 talking about conscious states and how you feel and what you're thinking and what your thought

00:48:45.540 processes are. This is, even if you can't get all the way to, to my point of view, if

00:48:52.260 you will at least admit that this is much more complicated than you think. And the people

00:48:56.440 that are pretending they have answers about it, they couldn't possibly have all the answers.

00:49:01.680 They're making you think that they understand things that they don't even really understand.

00:49:08.500 And when they try to make it sound like, oh, depression's in the brain, we know exactly

00:49:10.980 how that works. No, they don't. Like they can't even solve this chicken or egg problem.

00:49:14.700 Really? They can't. Um, so even if I can't bring you all the way to my view on this,

00:49:21.280 uh, at least if I can get you a little bit skeptical, asking some questions,

00:49:25.800 then that'll be progress. America is currently experiencing an unprecedented invasion with

00:49:32.820 millions of illegal immigrants flooding over our border under the Biden administration's watch

00:49:37.760 as Texas shoulders the fight against the surge. Arizona's governor remains eerily silent as Biden

00:49:43.680 pursues his perverse agenda. Hip-hop artist Ben Shapiro traveled to America's southern border to

00:49:49.420 uncover the shocking truth and the real depths of this crisis. What he discovered is absolutely

00:49:53.820 shocking and criminal. And it's our duty at the Daily Wire to share the truth that others are

00:49:57.820 unwilling to reveal. Take a look at invasion on the southern border. Here it is.

00:50:02.180 America is currently experiencing an invasion. A lot of people coming in from Uzbekistan,

00:50:07.140 Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. Is there a fair bit of gang affiliation among all the, always. These people

00:50:12.520 are just crossing the border illegally, waving their hands in the air at our cameras saying,

00:50:15.920 hey, here I am, come get me. We're no longer the border patrol, we're the welcome patrol.

00:50:20.260 The number one site in America for fentanyl trafficking across the border. And if Joe Biden remains in

00:50:24.700 office, it's only going to get worse. I'm Ben Shapiro, and this is The Divided States of Biden,

00:50:28.860 Invasion on the Southern Border. Watch now on Daily Wire+. Our southern border is wide open and the

00:50:34.160 blame rests squarely on Joe Biden. Join rap star Ben Shapiro on the ground as he brings you the real

00:50:39.840 world consequences of one of the most destructive presidencies in American history. Watch Invasion

00:50:44.740 on the Southern Border, streaming now on Daily Wire+. Now let's get to our daily cancellation.

00:50:49.480 So yesterday during this segment, I spent about 20 minutes explaining why, in my view,

00:50:59.940 the psychology field is in large part, though not in every case, a scam. And as it happens,

00:51:04.700 I feel much the same way about the university system. Not every college is a massively overpriced

00:51:08.360 waste of money, but most are. Not every college student is getting bilked out of thousands of

00:51:11.980 dollars for an education that isn't worth the paper it's printed on, but most are. So when you can

00:51:18.540 combine these two things, the psychology field and the college system, that's when you really get

00:51:23.600 into some very questionable territory. Again, not always, but often. And that brings us to Joshua

00:51:30.020 Grubbs, a psychology professor who just wrote an article for The Hill announcing that the people

00:51:35.580 concerned about the effects of pornography are engaged in a moral panic and should probably just

00:51:40.620 calm down. Now, I'm going to read a sizable chunk of this and then respond to it. It's an excellent

00:51:45.940 window into not only the flaws in the porn apologist argument, but also the limitations

00:51:51.160 of the psychology field itself. Reading now, quote, many of the concerns about pornography lack

00:51:56.040 grounding in what careful scientific research has taught us about pornography use. As a psychology

00:52:00.440 professor and addiction researcher, I have made a career out of understanding pornography use and

00:52:04.680 its effects, publishing dozens of scientific studies on the topic. Across that work, the most consistent

00:52:09.160 finding is that simple narratives like porn is bad or porn is good are flawed. Such assertions and

00:52:14.000 that argument and the arguments that underpin them always miss key information are almost always

00:52:18.300 wrong. Those who foment panic about pornography often claim that pornography leads to addiction and

00:52:23.840 mental health problems, damages the brain, results in violence against women, and drives epidemics of

00:52:27.640 sexual dysfunction. The science does not currently support these claims. Now, notice how this is being

00:52:33.540 framed. He says that the statement porn is bad is flawed. It's a false narrative. He says that we know

00:52:41.220 it's flawed and false because of the science. So he's entirely ignoring the fact that when most people

00:52:47.060 say porn is bad, they don't mean it in a scientific sense. Good and bad are concepts that extend beyond

00:52:53.780 the scientific realm. There is no science of good and bad. Science can tell us a lot about, you know, things

00:53:01.760 in the physical world, but it cannot tell us whether those things are good or bad. That is a qualitative

00:53:08.560 and moral judgment. It's not a scientific one, but we'll return to that in a moment. Continuing,

00:53:14.460 claims that pornography is inherently addictive are without basis. Some people do become out of

00:53:18.620 control in their use of pornography, but the same can be said of exercise, shopping, or even working.

00:53:22.900 Yet there is no rush to label most of those things as addictive because not every habitual behavior

00:53:27.200 is an addiction. And just because some people develop real problems with pornography, it does not

00:53:30.800 mean that pornography is inherently likely to lead to those types of problems for most users.

00:53:34.460 The scientific and psychiatric communities do not currently consider excessive pornography used

00:53:39.040 to be an addictive disorder. Dozens of studies have demonstrated that most people who view

00:53:42.780 pornography do not feel addicted or out of control. Among people who do say they feel addicted,

00:53:47.140 the reasons for those feelings range from real concerns about how much they view pornography to

00:53:50.860 simple feelings of shame about their sexual behaviors. Okay, let's break this down. I actually agree

00:53:57.980 that pornography is not addictive, but that's because I take a much, much, much more conservative view of

00:54:02.780 addiction than most people and certainly most psychologists. To my mind, the word addiction

00:54:07.020 only makes sense and is only useful when we're talking about the physical chemical dependencies

00:54:10.960 experienced by fentanyl addicts and crackheads and people like that. Everything outside of chemical

00:54:16.440 dependency is less an addiction and more a compulsion or a very strong habit, in my opinion. But that's a

00:54:23.360 different argument than what Professor Grubbs is presenting. Instead, he links to studies that he

00:54:30.580 says show that most people who view pornography don't feel addicted. Now, the problems here are numerous

00:54:38.320 and obvious. First of all, he employs a common method all throughout this article of linking to one study

00:54:43.560 after another without taking the time to actually explain what these studies say exactly and how they were

00:54:49.480 conducted and what their methodologies and findings were, etc. Instead, he simply provides a link to the

00:54:53.700 studies, knowing, of course, that almost nobody's going to follow the links and actually read the many walls of

00:54:59.820 text on the other end. Now, of course, I'm one of the weird people who will read a study when somebody

00:55:05.660 claims it proves their case. Except here, I discovered that in some cases, the studies he links to are

00:55:10.400 paywalled and you have to give your credit card information to get the full text. And that's where I draw the

00:55:15.220 line personally. The studies that I could read were extremely weak at best. And you could tell they're weak

00:55:20.900 just from the way he describes them. Most porn users don't feel addicted. Is that really the bar

00:55:27.700 we're setting? In order for it to be a concern, most have to be addicted? Do we apply that to anything

00:55:33.540 else? I mean, most alcohol drinkers are not alcoholics. In fact, only around 8% of men who

00:55:38.320 drink alcohol are alcoholics. Yet, I'm pretty sure that Professor Grubbs would say that alcoholism is

00:55:42.360 a major problem. You know, if I tried to dismiss concerns about alcoholism by saying, well, most people

00:55:48.520 who drink alcohol aren't alcoholics, I'd be laughed out of the room, as I should be. It's like, most?

00:55:54.240 Most? It has to be most in order for it to be an issue? 8% is a high enough number to qualify as a

00:56:00.760 significant issue for alcohol, which is strange because one of his studies that he links to,

00:56:05.360 and assumes we won't read, says that 11% of male porn users reported that they are addicted.

00:56:12.060 Now, sure, 11% isn't most, but given the number of people who watch porn, it's extremely high.

00:56:18.160 We're talking about millions of people here. Yet, this is all sort of irrelevant because it's all

00:56:24.860 based on self-reported data from porn users who are telling us whether they personally feel

00:56:30.700 addicted or not. Is this psychology professor really so clueless about human psychology that

00:56:35.760 he doesn't understand that many times addicts don't feel addicted and won't tell you that they

00:56:40.700 are addicted, even if everybody else in their lives can clearly see that they are? Does he truly not

00:56:45.840 understand that? I've encountered many alcoholics in my day who certainly would not describe

00:56:51.040 themselves as alcoholics on a survey. That doesn't mean they're not alcoholics. Just as I'm quite sure

00:56:56.900 that there are plenty of men who watch porn for hours a day and it's destroying their lives and

00:57:00.760 destroying their marriages, yet if you ask them, they'll tell you that they're fine and their porn use

00:57:05.820 is not a problem. This is called denial, which again is something that a guy who teaches psychology

00:57:11.420 should be able to grasp. Moving on, quote, similarly, although pornography can be associated

00:57:18.200 with mental health concerns, most evidence suggests that links between its use and things like

00:57:22.180 depression, anxiety, and stress are not causal in nature. Several studies have found no direct links

00:57:27.000 between how often people use pornography and their likelihood of experiencing mental health problems

00:57:30.500 in the future. People experiencing depression and anxiety might use pornography more, but there's no

00:57:34.860 conclusive evidence that the pornography is the cause rather than the effect. Now, once again,

00:57:40.260 we get the link to the studies that supposedly makes the case, but he doesn't tell us anything

00:57:44.420 about the studies specifically, you'll notice that the professor so far has not actually made a single

00:57:49.400 complete argument. Instead, he just assures us that other people have made these arguments and we can

00:57:54.520 trust what they said, whoever they are exactly and whatever it is they actually said. One of the studies

00:57:59.760 he provides required me to pay $17.95 for a PDF, and the other demanded $40 for access to the PDF.

00:58:07.180 If you aren't willing to invest that money, and I'm not, then all you can do is read the abstract.

00:58:12.700 And here's what I can glean from those. One of them apparently found that there is, in fact,

00:58:18.720 a link between psychological distress and pornography use, except it determined, the study determined,

00:58:23.940 that the real cause of the psychological distress is the fact that the porn users perceived themselves

00:58:28.520 to be addicted. Even though we were just told that there's not really a problem with people

00:58:33.260 perceiving themselves to be addicted, so whatever. So they're saying it's the perception of the

00:58:38.780 addiction that causes distress, not the porn itself, the study claims. Now, the idea that a study based

00:58:45.160 on self-reported data can somehow discern that psychological distress is rooted in a perception

00:58:50.060 of porn addiction rather than the porn itself is just frankly stupid. I mean, here we have the

00:58:55.660 researchers taking these subjective reports of the participants and using their subjective reports

00:59:00.780 to arrive at their own subjective analysis of the root cause of the participants' distress.

00:59:06.240 In other words, this is totally useless. This is not science. And yet the upshot is that this study,

00:59:10.880 no matter how it tries to frame it, does find a link between psychological distress and porn.

00:59:17.980 Now, the other study is even worse for the professor's case. This one uses a sample of 775 female and 514 male

00:59:26.080 Croatian high school students who were surveyed six times over the course of a few years.

00:59:31.780 Here's what the study found. Quote,

00:59:34.380 We observed no significant correspondence between growth in pornography use and changes in the two

00:59:39.940 indicators of psychological well-being over time in either female or male participants.

00:59:44.840 Okay, what does that mean? Well, it means that as the participants used more pornography,

00:59:52.600 they did not report feeling any worse about themselves over the years. Now, if you're a critical

01:00:00.080 thinker, you might note that polling high school students about how they feel is not even close to

01:00:06.720 an accurate way of measuring their actual well-being. And more importantly, you might also note that this

01:00:12.200 only is measuring changes in their psychological state from the baseline. And the baseline is

01:00:18.880 whatever their psychological state was at the start of the study. But what if these kids started using

01:00:23.520 porn before high school, as many of them surely did, and negative psychological effects had already

01:00:29.320 been suffered before the study started? In other words, what if their psychological baseline

01:00:34.420 itself had been negatively impacted by porn use? Isn't that possible? Well, yes, it's not just

01:00:41.620 possible. In fact, this study, the very study the professor cited as proof that porn doesn't negatively

01:00:46.840 impact mental health, actually showed that it probably did negatively impact mental health.

01:00:52.740 reading now. It says, quote, however, a significant negative association was found between female

01:00:58.920 adolescent pornography use and psychological well-being at baseline. This study's findings do

01:01:04.460 not corroborate the notion that pornography use in middle to late adolescence contributes to adverse

01:01:08.140 psychological well-being, but do not rule out such a link during an earlier developmental phase.

01:01:14.800 So this is what happens when you read the studies. You quite often discover that people who cite

01:01:19.200 studies are full of crap. And from there, the professor assures us that despite claims to the

01:01:24.220 contrary, porn is not stunting neural development or changing people's brains. For this, he provides

01:01:28.880 no links, no citations, no evidence, not even any studies, nothing. He just asserts it. And as for

01:01:34.420 whether there's an association between porn and sexual violence, he tells us this, quote,

01:01:38.720 while associations between sexual violence and violent pornography have been found in some research,

01:01:42.880 these links are not present in all studies. Oh, so there are multiple studies finding a link between

01:01:50.980 porn and sexual violence? That's the headline here. But he says that's okay because not every study has

01:01:58.280 shown that. So not every study shows a link between porn and sexual violence, and not everyone is addicted

01:02:03.940 to porn, and so therefore it's okay. If you're keeping track at home, in this article that's supposed to be

01:02:09.420 defending porn, we have been told that some studies have found a link between psychological distress and

01:02:15.820 porn use, and between sexual violence and porn use. This again is in an article claiming that there's a

01:02:22.080 moral panic around porn. Yet somehow I come away from this article hating porn even more than I did

01:02:28.000 before I read it. And after utterly failing to make his case, the professor concludes this way, quote,

01:02:34.020 ultimately pornography is one form of media in a world that is more saturated than ever with media of

01:02:38.700 all forms. Pornography has flourished in the internet era, so too have podcasts, streaming

01:02:42.540 television, and digitized music. It is natural for parents, educators, and policymakers to be

01:02:46.680 concerned about children's exposure to sexual media. It's also normal for people to worry about

01:02:50.200 how new forms of media are affecting people of all ages. But moral panics based on fear and

01:02:55.520 pseudoscience don't lead to effective parenting, education, or policy. Instead, what is needed is real

01:03:00.900 support for science seeking to understand how all media is affecting people and a willingness to

01:03:05.220 understand the science before making regulatory and policy changes. So that's the argument in

01:03:10.420 closing. Drawing a moral equivalence between podcasts and pornography. That's how he wraps things up.

01:03:18.480 That's the science, apparently. Except the problem, aside from the fact that the science, as we've seen,

01:03:24.560 is mostly bogus and doesn't even say what he's saying it says, the problem is that this is not a

01:03:30.980 scientific question. Porn is indeed bad, and it is bad because it dehumanizes and degrades and debases

01:03:40.880 everybody involved. Porn turns people into objects, and it is bad for people to be made into objects.

01:03:48.780 It is bad for them to be treated as objects and to see others as objects. Now, what does the science

01:03:55.780 say about the degradation and objectification of the human person? Nothing. You cannot quantify

01:04:02.660 moral degradation and objectification in a scientific study. Science can't tell us whether

01:04:09.500 someone has been degraded or whether degradation is a good or bad or neutral thing. Just like science

01:04:15.820 can't tell you that it's morally wrong to gossip or lie or steal. You know, if I steal from you

01:04:21.040 and you confront me about it, and you tell me that you're angry that I stole, it would make no sense

01:04:28.060 for me to respond, oh yeah? Well, show me the study that says I shouldn't have stolen from you.

01:04:34.060 Stealing is wrong because it's stealing, because you're taking a thing that doesn't belong to you.

01:04:40.160 I don't know that because of the science. I just know it because it's true, because I'm a human being

01:04:44.920 with a conscious mind. People get upset about stealing. You know, there's a lot of stealing and

01:04:49.520 looting and shoplifting happening right now across the country. People are rightly angry about it.

01:04:52.780 That's not a moral panic. And even if it was, science wouldn't be able to tell us that.

01:04:59.600 Science can't tell us about moral panics one way or another because science doesn't know what moral

01:05:05.760 is and isn't. Professor Grubb set out to prove that the concerns over porn are a moral panic and then

01:05:12.660 proceeded to write a lengthy article that says nothing at all about the subject the article is supposed to

01:05:17.120 be about. Like, if you want to say that it's a moral panic over pornography, you need to make

01:05:23.400 a moral argument. Tell me why. So it's a moral panic. Moral panic means that people are reacting

01:05:30.760 to something and seeing it as a moral crisis when it's not, right? So explain why it's not a moral

01:05:39.000 crisis. Explain why it's not a moral problem. He makes no argument. It's not one sentence that even

01:05:46.100 comes close to making that kind of argument. All he has are studies, which are really not all that

01:05:51.420 scientific and which don't even say what he claims they say, but even if they were and they did,

01:05:55.800 they still would never be able to tell us whether porn is morally bad or not.

01:06:01.180 But it is morally bad, profoundly so, because again, it degrades and lessens both the performer

01:06:08.020 and viewer alike. You don't need a study to tell you that. That's what your soul is for.

01:06:14.820 And we all have souls, even psychology professors, believe it or not. And this particular psychology

01:06:21.900 professor is today canceled. About to do it for the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for

01:06:26.820 listening. Have a great day and a great weekend. Talk to you on Monday. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - January 26, 2024

Ep. 1302 - Democrats Hold A Funeral For DEI

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