The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 147 - We Treat Boyhood Like It's A Mental Disorder

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, have we medicalized boyhood? I think we have and I want to talk about

00:00:05.380 it. Also, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said something really, really stupid. I know that's not news, 1.00

00:00:10.900 but this one is really, really stupid. So we'll talk about that. And also, the online outrage 0.99

00:00:15.040 mob attacked an innocent woman, deprived her of her livelihood for no reason. What does that say

00:00:20.400 about the people who joined these mobs? Nothing flattering, I know that. We'll talk about all

00:00:24.040 this coming up on the Matt Wall Show. You know, I'm on the record saying that we on the right should

00:00:31.760 probably lay off of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a little bit because this obsession with picking

00:00:37.360 apart everything she says is kind of bizarre. And it seems almost like conservatives have a bit of

00:00:41.840 a crush on her because they're just constantly talking about her all the time. But, I mean,

00:00:49.500 this thing where she doesn't know the branches of government, this is just, oh, this is just bad.

00:00:57.100 This is bad. And when I first heard about this, I thought, well, maybe she misspoke or, I mean,

00:01:03.960 people are making too much of this. But then I saw the video and it really is, let me, I'm sure you've

00:01:09.660 seen this already, but here's what she said during a conference call. She said, if we work our butts off

00:01:14.640 to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress, uh, rather all three chambers of

00:01:20.000 government, the presidency, the Senate, and the House. So what makes this so bad is that she said

00:01:26.260 the wrong thing. She caught herself and then she corrected it to something that's even more wrong.

00:01:32.940 So we have to take back all three chambers of Congress. Okay. Well, that, that, that's wrong.

00:01:38.060 There are only two chambers, not three, but there are chambers in Congress and the Democrats want both of

00:01:43.220 them. So you hear that and you think, well, okay, she just misspoke, but then she, she, she plunges

00:01:48.200 forward. She keeps going. And she says, she says, oh no, no, no. The chambers of government. Oh no.

00:01:53.620 And then she lists them, the Senate, the presidency and the House. Oh, Alexandria. Oh, Alexandria. That is

00:02:01.680 not, that, that is just, there is nothing right about that at all. That's just wrong in, in, in several

00:02:08.200 different ways. And the problem is it, it, she made it clear that she read, this is not her

00:02:13.580 misspeaking. She really doesn't know. She really just simply does not know, uh, what the branches

00:02:19.540 of government are. And she doesn't know that they're called branches. She thinks they're called

00:02:22.980 chambers. So how, how, how does that happen? How do you get to the age of what is she? 28, 29.

00:02:29.740 How do you get to the age of 28 and you don't know the branches of government? How have you

00:02:33.360 gone through 12 years of schooling and then, and then college, and you've never encountered

00:02:39.700 this information before? And then you run for Congress and you don't even know what Congress is

00:02:45.040 or what it does. She can't possibly know what it is or what it does. If she doesn't know that it's

00:02:51.120 part of the legislative branch. Oh goodness. What a, what a, what a sad statement. Um,

00:03:01.240 what a sad statement. All right. I want to kind of follow up. Uh, I want to do a part two on the

00:03:06.500 show from yesterday. If you watch that show or you listen to it, you heard about the, um, well,

00:03:12.260 it started with the terrible, tragic, awful case of a nine-year-old child who killed herself,

00:03:18.260 um, weeks after starting a new ADHD drug and the drug had suicidal thoughts as a listed side effect.

00:03:26.120 Now her parents say that she was also bullied in school. They think that the drugs along with the

00:03:31.720 bullying were, were factors in, um, propelling her towards this terrible tragedy. So we, we started

00:03:40.340 with that terrible case and talked about, um, psychiatric drugs and ADHD and, and the fact that

00:03:48.360 7 million kids are on psychiatric drugs. Is that really, is that a good thing? Is that a smart

00:03:53.200 strategy to put, to put so many kids on these drugs? And, um, why you look at the drug companies

00:04:01.860 and the doctors, they seem to exercise basically no caution whatsoever. And that's how we end up with

00:04:07.620 millions of kids on these drugs, despite the side effects, despite the long-term effects.

00:04:12.360 And despite the lack of data, the lack of information that we actually have on, uh, on,

00:04:18.620 on, um, you know, how these, these drugs will affect kids in the longterm.

00:04:23.740 Now here's what happens. Anytime I talk about this kind of subject, about ADHD, about the dangers of

00:04:29.940 psychiatric drugs for children and so on, I am going to be informed by people who disagree with

00:04:35.400 my take that I can't possibly know what I'm talking about because my children don't have the disorder.

00:04:41.240 I've never been through it. I've never experienced it. So I need to shut up because I don't know what

00:04:46.000 it's like. Now I'm not sure why or how people feel comfortable making these kinds of declarations

00:04:52.640 about a stranger. It's one of the weirdest things about the internet, where if you give an opinion,

00:04:58.200 invariably, a bunch of people are going to say, well, you don't know what you're talking about.

00:05:01.660 You've never been through it. You've never experienced that. You need to shut up. You don't

00:05:05.780 know what, how do you know what I've experienced? You know nothing about my kids or about my life

00:05:15.700 or anything. How could you possibly know? How could anyone feel comfortable just saying that?

00:05:22.420 Well, you've never, you clearly have never been through this. Do you really just assume that

00:05:27.080 everyone with experiences similar to your own must therefore have the same opinions as you?

00:05:32.700 Is that really how you think the world works? That nobody who's gone through similar things as you

00:05:38.520 could possibly have arrived at different conclusions? That's, that's really the assumption

00:05:43.640 underlying this is that people think that, um, well, they've been through this and anyone who's

00:05:50.000 been through it clearly must have come to the same conclusions as them. I just, it's such a narrow

00:05:56.960 minded way of looking at the world. It's, it's, it's kind of mind boggling. And anyway, I'm not sure what

00:06:04.680 my personal experiences have to do with anything. So this, uh, well, you can't talk about that topic

00:06:10.600 unless you've been personally affected by it. Argument is one of the most cowardly forms of

00:06:15.320 emotional blackmail. It's just a way of shutting down discussion. It's a way of a person trying to

00:06:20.280 win an argument by claiming this emotional Trump card. Um, the, the assumption that, that, that people

00:06:27.340 who have been personally affected by a certain thing must therefore be more knowledgeable about it and 0.91

00:06:32.920 more credible when discussing it is obviously ridiculous. Just because you have car trouble 0.75

00:06:37.740 doesn't make you, it doesn't make you a mechanic, right? And if it did, we wouldn't need mechanics.

00:06:42.080 So just because you've been through something doesn't mean that your opinions about it,

00:06:48.280 whatever it is, are necessarily more true or more grounded in facts than someone on the outside.

00:06:55.400 The fact that you've been through something does not make you an expert. And the fact that someone

00:07:00.320 else has not been through it doesn't mean that they can't know anything about it. In fact, your

00:07:05.040 personal experiences could hamper your judgment and could make your insights could, could kind of

00:07:10.860 compromise your judgment in a way because, because they, they create an obvious bias. So yes, if your

00:07:17.160 kids are on ADHD medication, then hopefully you've learned a thing or two about the medication because

00:07:22.060 your kids are on it. So you do have that knowledge, but at the same time, you also have a clear

00:07:26.020 incentive to defend the medication no matter what, and to ignore the arguments against it because you

00:07:32.020 want to justify the decision that you've already made. So I just don't think that this strategy,

00:07:36.500 this, uh, this, well, my personal experience trumps your logical arguments thing works. I don't think

00:07:41.160 it works in any case, in any situation. Now I'm not saying that your personal experiences are worthless.

00:07:46.220 I'm not saying that. I think that they're valuable to the conversation. I think they can add color,

00:07:50.700 they can add perspective and so on, but they don't supersede facts and they don't supersede logic and

00:07:57.340 they don't give you an exclusive right to have an opinion about a subject. Okay. That's my point.

00:08:02.700 But as it happens, I do have experience. Oh, I have, I've already shared several times my own personal

00:08:10.820 struggles with getting through public school as a, as a kid with, with this disorder. I was never

00:08:17.060 diagnosed with the, with the disorder officially, because that was not a direction that my parents

00:08:21.840 were going to go. Uh, they were not looking to medicalize my academic problems, but I am familiar

00:08:28.100 with ADHD. I have read the descriptions. I know what the symptoms are. And I see myself in pretty much

00:08:35.260 every symptom described then. And now, um, I have a lot of trouble focusing. I can't keep my mind going

00:08:44.020 on one track for very long. If you listen to this podcast, you probably already noticed that because

00:08:48.040 I'll branch off in a million directions and depart from the point that I was making and then circle

00:08:52.380 back to it. That's just how my, my mind works. I can't sit still. I have trouble going to bed at

00:08:57.560 night because I can't turn my mind off, uh, on and on and on. Uh, I I've been there. I am there. So I do

00:09:04.300 know. And, um, so you can't like hold it against me that I've never gotten official diagnosis. I am

00:09:13.180 opposed to the diagnosis. That's why I, I am not going to go and seek one out because of my own

00:09:18.740 personal opinion about this whole, this whole thing. I've also been through it as a parent.

00:09:25.720 I'm going through it right now. So I have two emotional trump cards. I guess that means I win,

00:09:30.120 right? I guess that means when my, uh, according to the rules, according to the rules of modern

00:09:34.660 debate, I win because I've got two trump cards. Um, my five-year-old son fits the ADHD label by any

00:09:43.380 measure as many five-year-old boys do. And that's the point. But what I can tell you about my five-year-old

00:09:53.140 son is that, is that to, to just call him energetic would be a huge understatement. I mentioned this on the

00:09:59.480 show yesterday, but I want to elaborate here. Uh, my son is, uh, imagine, imagine a squirrel

00:10:06.080 that got into a can of coffee beans and ate all the coffee beans. Okay. That's, that's my,

00:10:13.000 that's my son. He runs through the house at a million miles, miles an hour. He's running around.

00:10:17.620 He's, he's fighting off imaginary pirates and dragons. Um, he pole vaults over banisters and jumps over

00:10:23.800 couches and literally bounces off the walls. He climbs everything. He swings on anything that is

00:10:31.360 remotely swingable. Um, the, the, the kid, he cannot sit still. He cannot stop talking. He won't

00:10:37.960 even stop taught. You can't stop him from talking by leaving the room because he'll continue the

00:10:42.340 conversation. Even if you're not there. Uh, he, he reminds me a lot of Macaulay Culkin in home alone,

00:10:48.460 just kind of walking around the house, narrating himself, narrating what he's doing. That's what

00:10:53.820 he does. Um, and he does have trouble learning in a formal setting is his, um, he, he, he does

00:11:00.420 struggle to learn, uh, academically. Now he's only five years old, but, but, uh, he does have that

00:11:06.020 problem. And we do have a comparison here because he has a twin sister and his twin sister is

00:11:11.020 significantly more advanced when it comes to the ABCs and the one, two threes and spelling and all that

00:11:15.760 kind of stuff. Um, she's, and she is also, and I think this is the reason why she's more advanced 0.99

00:11:21.320 in these areas. She can sit still for, for several minutes at a time. She can sit, she'll color,

00:11:27.100 she'll, she'll, uh, draw pictures. She'll look at a book, she'll brush her doll's hair. Um, so she can

00:11:33.700 do that. Uh, she, she likes to clean for some reason, if you can believe it, she actually likes to 1.00

00:11:38.900 clean and she's better at it than I am. Like she'll fold laundry and she'll make her bed, make it all 1.00

00:11:44.240 nice and nice and pretty and neat. And, uh, and she does it better than it looks better at the end 1.00

00:11:49.420 than it would have looked if I had done it. Um, she, she pays attention pretty well. She remembers

00:11:54.540 things. She remembers where things are. She, you know, her mind is organized in that way. It, this,

00:12:01.900 this is how bad it is when her mom is not around and, uh, and I'm looking for something around the

00:12:08.020 house because I'm totally a stereotypical husband who can't find anything in the house. I'm always asking

00:12:12.600 my wife where it is. But the problem is if, if I'm looking for something and my wife isn't there,

00:12:18.080 um, and of course the first thing I do is I text my wife, but if she doesn't answer,

00:12:23.800 then what am I going to do? So I ask my five-year-old daughter where the thing is. And I

00:12:28.180 do that all the time and she'll, she'll find it for me. Now she's no angel. Believe me, I'm not,

00:12:35.580 she, she can be a challenge in her own way. Uh, unfortunately her brother inherited my ADHD, 0.87

00:12:40.140 her, and she inherited my stubbornness. So we've got both of that going on, but she doesn't have,

00:12:46.200 she's not the same as, as her brother. And that's not unusual because boys are much more likely to

00:12:52.500 have ADHD than girls, which is a fact that people who believe in ADHD as a medical diagnosis,

00:13:01.020 they never really grapple with this fact. Why is it, have you ever thought about why is it more

00:13:06.620 common in boys? Isn't that a weird coincidence that boys just so happen to be more rambunctious

00:13:13.120 and energetic and more likely to run around and all that kind of stuff. And they also are more

00:13:16.980 likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. Isn't that a weird, have you ever stopped to think about that?

00:13:21.820 Does that not, doesn't that shake your faith in ADHD as a medical diagnosis a little bit that it just so

00:13:29.080 happens to be so much more common in the types of people who are predisposed anyway, um, to, to,

00:13:35.680 to be energetic and less focused now. Um, so that's my, you know, my, my son, unlike his sister,

00:13:47.420 can't find anything. He probably couldn't find his own feet. If I asked him to, he loses everything,

00:13:51.980 which is bad because he's also in the habit of, of taking off his shoes. As soon as he enters into

00:13:57.740 a building of any kind, he's going to have his shoes off with it within about two and a half

00:14:02.620 seconds, the shoes are off and they're also lost. So he loses stuff all the time. Um, he doesn't like

00:14:08.440 anything that involves sitting and drawing or writing or counting. Uh, he cleans by picking up

00:14:14.360 all the items that were on the floor, throwing them into a pile on the nearest piece of furniture.

00:14:19.340 And then sometimes he'll even jump into the pile. Like it's a pile of leaves out, out in the yard or

00:14:24.860 something. The point is he could easily earn the label ADHD. If we went, if we sought out that

00:14:32.600 diagnosis, I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that, um, my son could, could get that diagnosis,

00:14:39.820 but we're not going to seek that diagnosis because the boy is not sick. He's not disordered.

00:14:47.560 The boy is just a boy. He's more of a handful than some boys. He's less of a handful than other

00:14:54.700 boys. He has his own personality. And I cannot imagine treating it like the manifestation of a

00:15:01.760 mental disease. Besides like, like almost every kid with an actual ADHD diagnosis, he can learn.

00:15:10.300 He can focus. He just doesn't always learn the things we want him to learn in the ways we want

00:15:18.000 him to learn them. So he can't remember how to spell simple words, but he remembers songs. Um,

00:15:24.940 he, he sings all the time. He's constantly singing. He'll wake up the whole house at 6am singing to

00:15:31.160 himself as loudly as he can. Uh, sometimes he's, he makes up songs on the spot. He freestyles. Uh,

00:15:36.740 sometimes he, it's, it's songs that he heard at church or on the radio. Um, so he, he remembers

00:15:41.860 that he knows his superheroes backwards and forwards. He can name all the superheroes for

00:15:45.460 you. Um, that might not be useful information, but it is, it is, it is information anyway that

00:15:51.000 he's remembered. He, he knows other, he knows about pilgrims and Indians because that's a story

00:15:55.980 that really fascinates him right now. And he's, so he's fixated on that. Uh, he knows about ants and

00:16:00.760 bugs. And, uh, just yesterday, he randomly started telling me all these facts about George

00:16:05.460 Washington. And he was, he was recalling details from our family trip to, uh, Mount Vernon last

00:16:10.700 year. We went a year ago and randomly, he's talking about this trip and, uh, what he remembered

00:16:15.760 about George Washington. He was the first president and so on. So we took the kids to see some old,

00:16:21.480 uh, war ships at the Harbor last week. And he remembers the ships and he's always talking about

00:16:26.540 the ship. He wants to go back and, and, and take a more extensive tour of the ships. Um, so

00:16:32.720 if, if, if, if, if my son was in public school, I have no doubt that they would probably tell

00:16:41.240 us he has a learning disability, but he, he, he, he's, he doesn't, he's, he learns all the

00:16:47.380 time. He loves to learn. He just, he just, he just likes to learn in his own way and about

00:16:53.140 topics that interest him. And he likes to learn in a way that's more hands-on. But the fact

00:16:59.660 that he can, that he is fascinated, but he likes to learn about topics that interest

00:17:03.680 him and he doesn't like learning about topics that don't interest him. Well, what's, is

00:17:08.380 that, is that really, is that really the symptom of a disability? I'm the same way. I think,

00:17:13.600 I think most people are now, yes, you do. You have to be able to, even if he's not interested

00:17:19.940 in math and spelling, he still is going to have to learn the basics there at some point.

00:17:23.780 Um, but the problem is we, we look at these boys and we say, well, they can't learn anything.

00:17:30.560 They can't pay attention. They can't, they can't, they can't focus. Well, in almost every

00:17:35.220 case, that's not true. They can focus on some things, just not the things we might want.

00:17:43.000 And yeah, that can be a challenge. And the fact that he's so rambunctious can also be a

00:17:48.060 challenge. It does wear you down sometimes. Uh, I shared this story on Facebook a couple of days

00:17:53.920 ago, shared again here a couple of nights ago. I was, you know, I've had this on my mind because

00:17:59.280 a couple of nights ago I was, um, you know, it was maybe an hour before the kids were supposed to

00:18:04.460 go to bed and I was feeling especially not in the mood for his antics that, that night. I just was

00:18:10.260 kind of in a bad mood. I was annoyed. I was put off. Uh, I just wanted peace and quiet, but my son

00:18:15.460 is running around and doing his whole thing. And so I told him very sternly to calm down and be

00:18:20.640 quiet. And, um, and then I had to stop and I realized that I was, I was being selfish.

00:18:28.480 You know, there wasn't anything wrong with how he was acting. Uh, I just didn't feel like dealing with

00:18:34.340 it. Right. And I think so often that's why boys are drugged and punished and scolded in our society

00:18:43.080 because we just don't feel like dealing with them. Um, they, they present challenges that we

00:18:50.260 lack the patience to meet, especially in a school setting. And I'm as guilty of this attitude as

00:18:56.120 anyone, even as a, even as a man myself, I was, I was a young boy once I was a boy just like him,

00:19:02.320 but I can very easily lapse into this thing where it's like, I don't even remember what it was like

00:19:07.900 to be a five-year-old boy. Um, and I, I expect him to not act like a five-year-old boy. I want him

00:19:13.560 to act like a, I want him to act like a, like a, like a world weary 32 year old man sometimes just

00:19:19.780 because I don't feel like listening to it. But I caught myself on this particular night

00:19:25.540 and I realized how ridiculous that is. And I realized that I was angry at my son 0.91

00:19:31.080 for the crime of being happy and exuberant. How absurd is that? Why should that annoy me?

00:19:40.420 He's maybe he's, maybe he's got the right idea. Maybe we should all be running around the house.

00:19:45.080 Why not? It's better than sitting on the couch, sulking like I was doing. So, so that's what I did.

00:19:50.460 Uh, I got up and, um, you know, if you can't beat them, join them sometimes as a parent. So I ran

00:19:55.960 around the house with them and we wrestled, we had a pillow fight. We did piggyback rides. Uh,

00:20:00.540 we played his favorite game, which involves him standing on the coffee table and then jumping

00:20:06.720 onto my chest, nearly cracking my ribs and puncturing my lungs in the process. And then we

00:20:12.600 got two other kids. So then his younger brother and his sister, they also wanted to join in. So

00:20:16.560 they were taking turns, just jumping up, pile driving me basically. Um, and I barely survived,

00:20:21.960 but they had fun and they went to bed tired and they actually fell asleep relatively quickly,

00:20:27.620 at least by their standards. Now, obviously we need to teach our boys to be obedient and respectful.

00:20:35.620 Um, and they really do need to calm down and be quiet sometimes, but little boys also need to be

00:20:44.480 little boys. They, they need to be able to run around and be crazy and make noise and be rambunctious.

00:20:54.160 That's an actual physical need that they have. It's, it's not just, it would be nice if they could

00:21:00.080 act that way. They need to act that way. They need that. And I'm afraid that they are rarely given

00:21:07.120 that opportunity these days, especially if you, I mean, the, the, the very idea that we take five,

00:21:16.580 six, seven year old boys and we put them down in a classroom and we say, you need to spend the next

00:21:23.960 seven hours doing busy work. And then when they struggle mightily to, to, to perform that task,

00:21:31.320 we drug them. I mean, just think about that. Just stop and think about what we're doing.

00:21:39.260 Who ever said that a seven year old boy is supposed to be able to do that? Did we ever stop to think

00:21:48.600 that boy, that, that, that a kid like that just isn't supposed to be doing that? Now I know it

00:21:54.260 well, but if he doesn't do that, we need him to do that because he needs to learn this very quickly

00:21:58.120 so he can go to college and he can get a job at a nine to five and it's a cubicle and, you know,

00:22:02.580 have a, you know, so we have his whole life planned out for him. We've got his life planned out for him.

00:22:07.080 We, we know what the schedule needs to be. So you've got to learn this now, then learn that,

00:22:11.280 then learn that, then do that. And we've got it all mapped out. Do we ever stop to think that our

00:22:16.460 map is wrong? Do we ever stop to think that our map is self-serving? That this is what we want

00:22:24.300 our kids to do and how we want them to act? Little boys are always being told, no,

00:22:37.080 stop, calm down, be quiet, sit still. We treat boyhood like, like something that needs to be

00:22:43.380 medicated or, or fixed, like this malignant growth that we have to extract and discard.

00:22:49.820 We have literally made boyhood into a mental illness. And why? Because we need them to fit 0.99

00:22:58.160 into the systems that we have in place. We need them to go with the flow at our pace on our schedule.

00:23:04.120 I think we are ruining our sons. I think we are robbing them of so much of themselves.

00:23:13.080 I think that we are the ones who need to change. If there is no room in our schools,

00:23:18.960 in our homes, in our culture for boys who act like boys, then our schools and our homes and our culture,

00:23:26.540 not our boys are sick. There is a balance. I'm not saying there is. We can't let them always do what

00:23:35.520 they want. We do have to teach them the guidelines and the rules and how to follow them. But I also

00:23:41.220 think that sometimes rather than making them fit in with us and go at our pace, maybe we should try to

00:23:48.780 fit in with them and go at their pace. And, and, and then they'll, they'll burn off a little energy

00:23:54.260 that way. And also, you know, everybody has a little bit of fun. I think we could learn, you know,

00:24:00.720 we could learn from our, from our sons, how to, how to have some fun in life at the very least.

00:24:05.240 I just think it's, um, and that's why I just find it so unconvincing from my own experience,

00:24:16.120 from what I've read, from everything. And then now with my own son, when somebody tells me, look,

00:24:21.560 my eight-year-old boy, you don't understand. He just can't sit still at the desk. He can't, he,

00:24:25.400 he just can't do it. Yeah. I know he can. Maybe he's not supposed to be doing that.

00:24:32.420 Maybe that is a completely unnatural and ridiculous thing to require a young boy to do. 0.56

00:24:42.720 Maybe he would learn better hands-on. Maybe he would learn better going out on field trips and,

00:24:48.620 and, and seeing things and, you know, actually touring. It's like my son. If I tried to sit down

00:24:54.300 and say, son, let me read you some facts about old battleships from, from, uh, you know, from,

00:25:00.640 from a hundred years ago, um, it wouldn't work, but I take him to the Harbor. Look at the ships.

00:25:07.140 We take a tour. We do all that. And he learns that he remembers.

00:25:12.360 If I tried to sit him down and just give him a bunch of facts about George Washington and then

00:25:16.640 tell him to write down those facts and repeat them to me, it's not going to work. I take him to Mount

00:25:21.060 Vernon. We go on a tour. We see the house. We do all that. And he learns and he remembers.

00:25:25.360 Now I know that we can't, we can't always teach our kids that way. So I realized that,

00:25:31.720 but we've gone way in the other direction and we try their entire educational experience almost

00:25:38.260 involves them sitting at a desk, being told information and then having to repeat it.

00:25:43.520 And my point is there are some people who just don't operate that way unless you drug them.

00:25:54.920 But that's the wrong approach because the fact that they don't operate that way isn't wrong. It's

00:25:59.460 not disordered. That's just how they are. And that's okay. All right. Um, let's see where we are.

00:26:09.900 I briefly wanted to mention one other thing. There was a video that went viral on, uh,

00:26:16.500 do I want to do this today? Yeah. I'll, I'll just mention it now. A video went viral on Friday

00:26:20.620 showing a Chipotle employee, um, a woman telling a group of customers, black men

00:26:27.900 that they had to prove that they had money before she started preparing the food for them. Um, 0.78

00:26:33.340 and, uh, and they cried racism and, and the video went on, uh, went up on Twitter and everyone on the

00:26:41.060 internet cried racism and the employee was, was, was fired almost immediately. Um, and then a couple

00:26:49.680 of days later, it turns out that these guys most likely stole food food from that very restaurant

00:26:58.540 earlier in the week. And they had previously posted on Twitter, openly bragging about dining and dashing

00:27:06.420 that is leaving without paying for the food. So these guys, they were literally on the internet

00:27:12.460 bragging about, about stealing food. And so that's why the Chipotle employee wouldn't make them food 0.90

00:27:19.480 because they're thieves. And she recognized them as thieves because they'd stolen from that very store

00:27:24.160 and they've admitted to being thieves. Now. So the video comes out, um, out of context,

00:27:34.760 everyone assumes she's racist, goes viral. She loses her job, her face and her name's out there,

00:27:40.480 uh, for everybody to see. And then a couple of days later we get the update of, Oh, well,

00:27:45.640 these guys are just thieves. And that's why she didn't want to give them food. Now I didn't see the

00:27:51.220 video or hear about it until, until yesterday. Um, but if I had seen it on Friday, I would have said

00:27:57.480 the same thing that I've said in similar situations, which is, it is insane to jump to the conclusion

00:28:04.980 that the girl is racist. I mean, to, to all the people who called her racist, who called a racist 0.99

00:28:12.360 right away, demanded that she be fired based on the video they saw on the internet. I have this

00:28:17.920 question. What did you think? Did you think this person had never served a black person before?

00:28:24.780 Do you think, or, or did you think that she had some kind of policy for all black people where they

00:28:30.800 all had to show their money ahead of time because they're black and that somehow we're just now hearing

00:28:36.060 about it and somehow she was never fired for it before? No, obviously that doesn't make sense.

00:28:42.140 Obviously, um, if you see this interaction and then you think, Oh, she's just doing that because 0.93

00:28:51.800 they're black. Then your first question as a common, as a logical person should be, well, wait a minute. 0.56

00:28:58.100 If she's just doing that because they're black, I mean, she's presumably served hundreds of other 0.74

00:29:02.160 black people. And apparently she's never done this before. So what did she just suddenly become

00:29:07.120 racist overnight? Did she wake up racist? She woke up as a KKK slobbering, drooling, crazy racist all

00:29:14.220 of a sudden? Did she, did she fall and hit her head and become racist? Or does she have a specific 1.00

00:29:21.880 issue with these specific people for a specific reason? Common sense should tell you that there's

00:29:31.220 probably more to the story. So all of the people who saw this video and said, she's racist. Um,

00:29:41.100 I can only come to one of two conclusions about them. Either they are incredibly stupid 1.00

00:29:48.560 that they never made this common sense calculation that any intelligent and rational person would make, 1.00

00:29:55.920 or they are liars. And they knew that there's probably more to the story. They knew that that

00:30:04.240 it's very likely that there's a good reason why these guys were treated this way. Yet they decided

00:30:08.880 to call her racist and put her name out there and put her face out there. Um, take her job away from 1.00

00:30:14.060 her. I mean, honestly, put her life in jeopardy. When you put someone's face and their name out for the

00:30:21.060 entire world to see, and you say, this person is a racist, you have put their life in jeopardy

00:30:26.540 because you don't know somebody recognizes them in public and loses their temper. You know,

00:30:31.020 you don't know what's going to happen. So it's either that all the people that jumped on the

00:30:36.780 outrage bandwagon, there are, there are a bunch of idiots or they knew what they were doing and they 1.00

00:30:42.740 were willing to destroy this innocent woman's life for no reason, just because, and honestly, 1.00

00:30:50.000 I don't know what's worse. I mean, do I want to believe that, that, that the society is really

00:30:56.180 filled with people who are that incredibly stupid or with people who are that evil? It's kind of like 1.00

00:31:01.920 those are the two options. When you see something like this and you jump to conclusions, when there

00:31:08.920 are very clearly other logical explanations that could, um, explain what, what happened, it's, I mean, 1.00

00:31:16.200 it's, it's either you're just a bad person or you're really stupid. I, I, I don't know. Is there a third 1.00

00:31:21.920 option? I don't think there is. And I'm just so tired of this. And I'm so tired of people not,

00:31:29.740 this is someone's life we're talking about. This woman who's been unfairly slandered, 1.00

00:31:37.520 it's her life. This is her livelihood. This is, this is, it's a, this is a human being. What is

00:31:43.100 wrong with you people doing this to it? What did she do to you? And for all, you know, she could be,

00:31:51.460 I don't know anything about her. She could be on your side with all this. Maybe for all we know,

00:31:54.400 she's a, she's a liberal person. She's, she's on your, she's one, she's on your team and you just

00:32:00.220 rip her apart for no reason. You know, we like to think that we have, we have kind of graduated

00:32:08.300 beyond the days of the, um, the days of the Colosseum in Rome when innocent people would be

00:32:15.440 fed to the lions while all the, uh, spectators cheered, but we have not really graduated from

00:32:22.020 that at all. We've just, we've just taken that philosophy and we have put it online and we do the

00:32:28.420 cyber version of it. It's a very sad statement. All right, we'll leave it there. Uh, thanks for

00:32:34.020 watching. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - November 20, 2018

Ep. 147 - We Treat Boyhood Like It's A Mental Disorder

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