The media has set out to destroy a college athlete for no reason whatsoever. Also, a teacher has been fired for telling the truth, and an alien invasion is imminent. We'll talk about all that coming up on the Matt Walsh Show.
00:00:36.620I won't call it an ugly Christmas sweater, though, because it's actually a beautiful sweater.
00:00:43.060And that's what I don't like about the whole ugly sweater trend is that I don't think the sweaters are ugly.
00:00:48.400I think that they're wonderful sweaters, and I would wear them all the time if it was socially acceptable.
00:00:54.120All right, so Kyler Murray, University of Oklahoma quarterback, won the Heisman Trophy over the weekend, which is a huge accomplishment for the young man.
00:01:05.480I'd imagine one of the best moments of his life, as it would be for anyone to win the Heisman Trophy.
00:01:12.700And I guess that's why the media felt that they had to ruin it.
00:01:16.300They saw that somebody was having a good moment, that they were getting attention for a good reason, and they said, wait a second.
00:01:29.340So USA Today, among other outlets, but I believe it started with USA Today, and their reporter, Scott Gleeson, decided to run an article hours after Murray's big achievement,
00:01:43.380reporting on the homophobic tweets that he sent when he was 14 years old.
00:01:56.040They said that the tweets involved him using homophobic language with his friends, so I assume that he jokingly referred to one of his friends as an F word, a slur for gays.
00:02:14.980Even if he had said it last week, I still wouldn't care, but he said it when he was 14.
00:02:21.940Offensive language from a 14-year-old boy does not matter.
00:02:26.360There is literally nothing that could make it matter.
00:02:29.680If it's your 14-year-old boy and you're his mother or something, then yeah, I could see why it would matter to you that you would reprimand him and say, don't use that language.
00:02:39.640But in terms of the news quality or the newsworthiness, it has none.
00:03:58.020When the magical mask kind of gets jostled loose from its chest down at the bottom of the ocean and it floats to the top and then it washes ashore and for some reason Jim Carrey picks it up and puts it on.
00:04:17.580From the way that's phrased, you have something similar in mind.
00:04:20.260As if the tweets were contained in a magical chest at the bottom of the ocean and a whale bumped into it or something and it made it float to the top and then it washed ashore and somebody was walking along the beach and just stumbled across it and said,
00:04:49.300Someone had to go looking for the tweets.
00:04:54.900And how did that someone, whether it was Scott Gleason or whoever else, how did they find the tweets?
00:05:01.180What method did they use to look for them?
00:05:04.220Well, they could have combed through six years' worth of tweets to see if they could find anything, but that's probably not how it was done.
00:05:12.300That would be a little bit inefficient.
00:05:14.080And in fact, the way that they really did it is in some ways maybe worse.
00:05:20.020Because what they would have had to do is they would have had to plug in Kyler Murray's name to the Twitter search bar and then also put in the F-word slur for gays.
00:05:32.960Or they would have had to come up with a few offensive words and just plug it in to see what comes up, to see if Kyler Murray ever, at any point in his life, used those words on Twitter.
00:05:45.060And they would have done this just because he won the Heisman, and for no other reason.
00:05:53.400Someone would have had to say, or multiple people in the media would have said,
00:05:57.780Well, this guy won the Heisman. Let's go see if he ever insulted gays.
00:06:00.860Anyways, that is literally the thought process. That's the way it would have worked.
00:06:05.880Well, he's in the news for a good reason. Let's go see if we can find a reason to destroy him.
00:06:13.180And then what do you know? They found it.
00:06:17.440Now we can destroy him because, because, because why?
00:06:24.980Because he dared make the news for a positive reason? Because he dared accomplish something?
00:06:31.900You know, people often complain that the media never reports good news.
00:06:38.420Well, or they never report the positive news. And it's, if it bleeds, it leads, right?
00:06:45.020They don't, they don't focus on the good stories.
00:06:47.840Well, it's actually worse than that. Because what they do is, it's not just that they only report negative stories.
00:06:54.260It's that they, they will turn every story negative.
00:06:58.660So, they'll take even a positive story and they'll turn it into a negative.
00:07:05.460Instead of doing a story about this exceptional young man and his great achievement,
00:07:10.360they decided to report on the language he used when he was 14.
00:07:13.700It's not as though, it's not as though there weren't other interesting angles they could have gone.
00:07:18.700So, it's not like they're saying, well, yeah, he won the Heisman, but I mean, how much can you really say about that?
00:07:23.680The guy won the Heisman, right? We need more, we need more content.
00:07:26.600But, okay, if you're looking for more content about Kyler Murray, how about the fact that he just won the Heisman as a college quarterback,
00:07:35.940but he's already been drafted by, I think, by the, by the, by Oakland, I think, to play professional baseball.
00:07:46.420So, this is a guy who just, just won the Heisman, but, and he could go play professional football, but he's going to play professional baseball.
00:07:52.880So, that's how good he is at two different sports.
00:07:54.920Of course, that's interesting. I didn't even know that myself until I looked him up today.
00:07:58.040I don't really follow college football that closely.
00:08:00.580And I looked it up, I said, wow, that's interesting.
00:10:22.980But, now, it's kind of the same thing where people like to watch a person get ripped to shreds in a different sense, have their reputation and their lives ripped to shreds.
00:10:37.900Um, we still like to watch that, except that we can pretend that that's not what it's about.
00:10:45.240We can pretend that we, it's, it's not entertainment for us.
00:11:12.940You know, if you're going and you're combing through somebody's tweets to see if they ever used an inappropriate word so you can throw it against them after they've just achieved something,
00:11:23.780then at least admit that you're doing that because you think it's fun to destroy people.
00:11:38.720There's another story I wanted to, to mention here briefly, um, from the Daily Wire.
00:11:42.900It says this week, a Virginia high school teacher was fired because he wouldn't use the preferred pronoun of a female student who claimed she was now a male.
00:11:51.820The unanimous decision from the five members of the West Point School Board to fire Peter Vlaming, a French teacher at West Point High School, which is roughly 265 students, followed a four-hour hearing.
00:12:02.600The board only discussed the case for an hour before rendering their decision.
00:12:05.940Uh, Vlaming had taught at the high school for almost seven years, had taught the student in question in the 2017 school year when the student identified as female.
00:12:14.620Then over the, the summer of 2018, the girl decided that she was a boy.
00:12:20.920So she went, you know, she left school in the 2017 to 2018 school year and she was a girl.
00:12:28.120And then she came back and she said, actually, I'm a boy.
00:12:30.440Um, so this school year, Vlaming addressed the girl by the new name she had chosen.
00:12:39.180So he, he did use the new name, uh, a name's a name, you know, you can choose any name you want for yourself, but he would not address the girl by her preferred, preferred pronoun because it conflicted with his Christian faith.
00:12:53.920Uh, the student went and complained and, um, and processes were carried out.
00:13:04.180Um, the school board wrote a statement and it says in part, we do not and cannot tolerate discrimination in any form or actions that create a hostile environment for any member of our school family.
00:13:17.140Mr. Vlaming was asked repeatedly over several weeks and by multiple administrators to address a student by the pronouns with which this student identifies the issue before us was not one mistaken slip of the tongue tongue.
00:13:28.340Mr. Vlaming consistently refused to comply going forward.
00:13:31.640Um, a willful violation of school board policy.
00:13:34.840While we understand that some do not agree with our decision, we hope that our discussions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:13:39.400So, all right, only just one thing I want to say about this and that is, this is actually not really about Mr. Vlaming's Christian faith.
00:13:55.560It's true that as a Christian, there's no way as a Christian that you can use someone's preferred pronoun if it is not the actual pronoun that's attached to them grammatically.
00:14:04.680Obviously, because a pronoun is not like a name, you don't get to have your own pronoun, um, you don't own the pronoun.
00:14:11.920It's a pronoun is a matter of grammar.
00:14:14.220There are certain grammatically correct ways of referring to a person depending on their biological sex.
00:14:22.060So this is a matter of biology and grammar pronouns that personal pronouns, those, that is a, that is a convergence of biology and grammar.
00:14:33.360And so it's got nothing, your own preferences and desires have nothing at all to do with it.
00:14:46.580All of these things have already been decided.
00:14:48.640And so that's what, that's where your personal pronoun comes from.
00:14:51.740Um, so it's true that if you're a Christian, um, you could not possibly use somebody's preferred pronoun if it's not the real pronoun, because that would be dishonest.
00:15:07.680And as Christians, we are, um, forbidden from telling lies, but, uh, it isn't just Christians who, who would say that law, that lying is wrong.
00:16:26.200And so if you value truth and honesty, which hopefully every Christian does, but also hopefully everyone else in the world would too.
00:16:33.680If you value truth and honesty, then you, you would have to be on Mr. Vlaming's side and you, you couldn't possibly use someone's preferred pronoun if it's not the correct pronoun.
00:16:46.380Because you are then participating in a lie.
00:18:06.320The International Space Station has a live feed where you can go and check it out and see what's going on with the Earth at any given time.
00:18:12.160Well, last week, if you were watching the live feed, you would have seen a blue and white object appear in space and then hover over the Earth.
00:18:23.980And then as soon as it appeared, the feed went down.
00:18:29.920Now, obviously, people are going to start with the conspiracy theories when you see that.
00:18:36.460But as usual with these kinds of stories, because I read that story, and like you, I was super excited.
00:18:41.900So then I went and I watched the footage, and it's always a letdown.
00:18:45.580I mean, every single time you hear about, oh, it was a mysterious object that was seen in space, and then you go and look at it, and you say, well, that looks like just a smudge or something on the lens of the thing.
00:18:55.080Or it looks like light refracting from somewhere or whatever.
00:18:59.140It doesn't really look like an object.
00:19:02.420So I went and looked at the feed, and I don't know what the thing is, but it doesn't even look like an object.
00:20:00.000Now, our galaxy, the Milky Way, has about 100 to 200 billion stars.
00:20:07.660And most stars have planets around them, so there are probably a couple of trillion planets in just our galaxy.
00:20:14.540And if there are, you know, let's say a trillion or so planets in every galaxy, then that means it's like one or two trillion times 100 billion.
00:20:25.240And whatever that number is, two trillion times 100 billion, whatever that number is, that's how many planets probably exist in the universe.
00:20:32.980So even if the odds of an intelligent, you know, of an intelligent civilization, an intelligent alien civilization, even if the odds are, let's say, 100 billion to one, or even a trillion to one, that would still mean that there are billions or at least millions of planets in the universe with intelligent civilizations.
00:20:58.920Which means when you look at the numbers, it's not even like an interesting question.
00:21:05.180Of course, there's intelligent life out there.
00:21:07.200It is pretty much a mathematic certainty that there is intelligent life out there when you think about the vastness of outer space.
00:21:16.760And no matter how you look at it, whether you're looking at this from a supernatural perspective or a natural perspective, because if you don't believe in God, well, then you've got this, you've got 100 billion galaxies, life arises randomly.
00:21:29.660Even if it's extremely rare that life arises, when you look at the numbers that we're dealing with, even a very rare occurrence has almost certainly occurred billions of times.
00:21:43.340But if you believe in God, and you're going to say that there is not intelligent life in the universe, then what you're saying is that God created a universe with 100 billion galaxies and trillions of planets, and then put nothing on those other planets except ours, which seems absurd.
00:22:07.900Why do they exist? Why do all these galaxies exist? Do they exist just to look pretty in the sky?
00:22:13.840That seems like, that's a lot of effort to go through, to create entire galaxies so that we could see pretty things when we look in telescopes.
00:22:22.800It's hard for me to believe that that's the only reason the galaxies exist.
00:22:26.320But, so we know that intelligent life exists in the universe.
00:22:29.240It's, it's, it's, I think we'd call it a certainty.
00:22:34.700But we also know that the closest solar system to our own is about four light years away, which is, I think, about 20 or 25 trillion miles.
00:22:46.000We don't have anywhere close to the technology to go those distances.
00:22:51.540The Andromeda galaxy, which is our next door neighbor in terms of, in galactic terms, that is 3 million light years away.
00:22:59.300If a light, if a light year is 5 trillion miles, then that's 3 million times 5 trillion miles.
00:23:06.940It tells us that there is almost certainly intelligent life in the universe, and we know that because of the size of the universe.
00:23:16.280But it also tells us that we will almost certainly never find it, ever, because of the distances.
00:23:22.720So, it is a humongous universe with tons of stuff in it, but everything is so far apart that we will almost certainly never come in contact with the life.
00:23:34.660It's just, it's out there, but we will never come in contact with it.
00:23:39.440Kind of sad and depressing, but I think that's simply the reality.
00:23:50.020I don't know why I was thinking about this, but before we wrap up, I have to tell you one thing that annoys me.
00:23:57.740And I know it's surprising to hear that I'm annoyed by something, but hear me out.
00:24:04.660Something you see online a lot, and I just saw this yesterday, so that's probably why I'm thinking about it.
00:24:11.520But something you'll see online a lot, especially on Twitter and Facebook, is this thing where people will post pictures of their dogs allegedly doing something cute.
00:24:23.440And then they'll have a caption that says something like, we don't deserve dogs, or what did we ever do to deserve dogs?