The Matt Walsh Show - December 18, 2018


Ep. 164 - The Left Applauds The Sexual Exploitation Of A Child


Episode Stats


Length

30 minutes

Words per minute

157.80946

Word count

4,773

Sentence count

325

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

12

sentences flagged


Summary

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

A professor wrote an article in the New York Times asking whether humanity should commit mass suicide in order to protect the planet. Also, an 11-year-old boy danced in drag for men at a gay bar. This is the normalization of child sexual abuse. We'll talk about that today on the Matt Walsh Show.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a professor wrote an article in the New York Times asking whether humanity should commit mass suicide in order to protect the planet.
00:00:09.220 We'll talk about that. Also, an 11-year-old boy danced in drag for men at a gay bar.
00:00:14.540 This is the normalization of child sexual abuse, and it is happening right now as we speak.
00:00:19.440 We'll talk about that today on the Matt Walsh Show.
00:00:21.460 Yesterday, you may have heard that President Trump tweeted about the need for good border security, except he spelled it B-O-A-R-D-E-R, like cupboard or snowboard.
00:00:39.060 And that actually got me thinking. It got the creative juices flowing.
00:00:44.940 And before you know it, I had this whole idea for a blockbuster film that was all based on this one typo.
00:00:52.020 And it may seem kind of weird to base a movie on a typo, but they base movies on a lot of dumb things these days.
00:00:56.660 So why not on a on a typo? So here's my idea just very quickly at the top.
00:01:01.600 And if you know any Hollywood producers and you can pass this along, this is my idea.
00:01:04.860 OK, just just just imagine this. The movie is called Border Security, spelled Trump's way, B-O-A-R-D-E-R.
00:01:13.200 And it stars The Rock as an elite snowboarder recruited by the government to guard in mountain military institution against an army of genetically modified Yetis. 0.96
00:01:24.640 OK, of course, Kevin Hart will will be his sidekick in the movie.
00:01:28.820 I don't have all the scenes and dialogue worked out yet, but I need a lot of snow puns in the movie.
00:01:34.560 And then I need a scene at the end of the movie where where The Rock is battling the head Yeti guy and he finally wins the altercation and he's about to throw the Yeti into an oncoming avalanche.
00:01:47.580 And then he says something like there's something like I think you need to cool down and then he throws which I know that that kind of plagiarizes Arnold Schwarzenegger in Batman Forever.
00:01:56.760 But but but that's fine. And if The Rock is not available for this film, then we can change it a little bit.
00:02:01.740 And it could be Liam Neeson as a grizzled ex-snowboarder who has to come out of retirement to rescue his kidnapped daughter from a gang of Eskimo human traffickers. 0.81
00:02:14.600 And I definitely need a scene in that movie like like the Ben-Hur chariot race scene, except with sled dogs.
00:02:21.280 So anyway, that's I'm just that's that's my idea, Hollywood, and I'm throwing it out there for free.
00:02:27.820 I will only need five million dollars. It's free except for the five million dollars that I would need if you decide to make that movie.
00:02:35.720 All right. A lot I want to discuss today. Ben Shapiro has an interesting piece in The Daily Wire about a professor at Clemson, philosophy professor.
00:02:47.420 Todd May is his name. And he wrote an article in The New York Times called Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?
00:02:56.460 So, you know, this is going to be good and it shouldn't be good. It shouldn't be a good article.
00:03:01.120 It shouldn't be interesting because it should be a really short article. Would human extinction be a tragedy?
00:03:06.620 That's the title. And then the body of the article is yes.
00:03:11.040 The end. That's what it should be. Right. Because it's a very obvious answer.
00:03:14.960 And then but that that would be an odd article to put in a newspaper.
00:03:19.940 So he has more to say than that. And as I'm sure you can imagine, he he is not so sure that it would actually be a tragedy.
00:03:29.600 Basically, he concludes that human extinction would be a tragedy from a human perspective, but it would also potentially be a good thing.
00:03:38.740 And he goes on to explain that humans are cruel and barbaric and so on.
00:03:43.980 And we're destroying the planet. We're killing animals.
00:03:47.360 And maybe the world would be better without us. Here's here's the segment.
00:03:50.480 Here's one segment of his article that Ben quotes.
00:03:52.320 It says to make that case, let me start with a claim that I think will be at once depressing and upon reflection, uncontroversial.
00:04:02.200 Human beings are destroying large parts of the inhabitable earth and causing unimaginable suffering to many of the animals that inhabit it. 0.99
00:04:09.380 This is happening through at least three means.
00:04:11.460 First, human contribution to climate change. Second, increasing human populations encroaching on ecosystems that would otherwise be intact.
00:04:19.780 Third, factory farming fosters the creation of millions upon millions of animals for whom it offers nothing but suffering and misery before slaughtering them in often barbaric ways.
00:04:29.160 There is no reason to think that those practices are going to diminish anytime soon.
00:04:32.800 Quite the opposite.
00:04:33.480 Humanity then is the source of devastation of the lives of unconscious, of conscious animals, I should say, on a scale that is difficult to comprehend.
00:04:41.820 If this were all, if this were all to the story, there would be no tragedy.
00:04:45.840 The elimination of the human species would be a good thing. 0.99
00:04:49.560 Full stop.
00:04:51.800 Now, May acknowledges that poetry and art, this guy teaches at a college, by the way.
00:04:57.720 May acknowledges that poetry and art and so on are good, but he says that all the misery we bring to animals and plants outweighs that.
00:05:09.560 And then he gets to his proposal.
00:05:11.900 And I like that he offers a solution because I'm a solution-oriented guy.
00:05:17.680 But actually, I'm not.
00:05:19.320 All I do is complain about society.
00:05:21.120 So I'm a complaint-oriented guy.
00:05:22.680 But he is a solution-oriented guy, and that's good.
00:05:27.720 But his solution is a little problematic.
00:05:31.980 His solution is potentially mass suicide or killing all the babies.
00:05:37.400 That's his solution.
00:05:38.480 He says,
00:05:39.760 One might ask whether, given this view, it would also be a good thing for those of us who are currently here to end our lives in order to prevent further animal suffering.
00:05:49.220 Although I do not have a final answer to this question, I have a final answer to it.
00:05:57.880 I'm not going to commit suicide so that squirrels and cows don't suffer.
00:06:02.560 That's my answer.
00:06:03.580 So I have no problem answering that question.
00:06:05.800 My answer is no.
00:06:07.040 I'm not going to...
00:06:07.480 So if everybody gets together and says,
00:06:09.620 Hey, Matt, we're going to have a mass suicide for the sake of the horses.
00:06:14.020 My answer is going to be, no, thank you.
00:06:16.280 I appreciate the invitation.
00:06:19.280 Very polite of you.
00:06:20.140 But I'm actually going to go watch TV instead.
00:06:22.260 Although I don't have a final answer to this question, we should recognize that the case of future humans is very different from the case of currently existing humans.
00:06:31.200 To demand of currently existing humans that they should end their lives would introduce significant suffering among those who have much to lose by dying.
00:06:38.720 In contrast, preventing future humans from existing does not introduce such suffering since those human beings will not exist and therefore not have lives to sacrifice.
00:06:47.560 The two situations then are not analogous.
00:06:49.520 It may well be, then, that the extinction of humanity would make the world better off and yet would be a tragedy.
00:06:55.060 I don't want to say this for sure since the issue is quite complex, but it certainly seems a live possibility.
00:07:00.560 And that by itself disturbs me, says May.
00:07:05.620 Yes, it disturbs me too.
00:07:07.460 It disturbs me that you teach at a college, though this is exactly what I would expect from a college professor and from the New York Times.
00:07:18.240 And there's a reason why this is from a college professor in the New York Times.
00:07:23.820 And it's crazy, for one thing.
00:07:25.820 You expect crazy things from college professors these days.
00:07:28.500 But it also shows you that this is a pretty mainstream view on the left.
00:07:37.520 A mainstream attitude, I should say.
00:07:39.660 Now, the exact proposal of, well, maybe we should all kill ourselves.
00:07:44.580 If not, we'll kill the babies. 0.60
00:07:47.580 You know, that exact proposal may not be accepted by everybody on the left.
00:07:53.300 But the attitude, the general nihilistic attitude that humans are a blight on the earth, that is definitely mainstream.
00:08:02.680 In fact, I doubt you could find very many people on the left who would substantially disagree with it.
00:08:07.640 I doubt you could find that.
00:08:10.020 But there's a problem here, okay?
00:08:13.080 Well, there's many problems.
00:08:14.600 But I'm just going to deal with the logical problems.
00:08:17.200 The moral problems of mass suicide or killing babies.
00:08:23.720 The moral problems there are so obvious that either you see them or you're way too deluded to be convinced by a guy on Facebook.
00:08:31.520 So I'm just going to leave that to the side.
00:08:33.560 In fact, let's talk about the logical problems with this rather nihilistic approach.
00:08:41.520 Specifically with the approach that says the earth would be better off without humans, okay?
00:08:47.040 Now, number one, if you believe in God, well, now we are getting into the moral aspect, I guess.
00:08:59.920 But if you believe in God, then obviously it makes no sense to say that the planet is better off without humans.
00:09:06.780 Because in that case, the planet was largely made, maybe not only, maybe not solely, but was largely made for humans.
00:09:18.200 Now, so then, of course, it doesn't make any sense that we're better off not being on the planet that was made for us.
00:09:27.060 If you don't believe in God, and I assume that this professor doesn't, if he's entertaining the possibility that we should all kill ourselves, then I assume he doesn't believe in God.
00:09:40.720 But if you don't believe in God, then it makes even less sense to have this kind of attitude.
00:09:46.080 Because there's no basis by which to call a human-less planet good or better.
00:09:54.120 There's no, these are value judgments.
00:09:57.460 These are moral value judgments.
00:10:00.420 And from the godless perspective, moral value is a human construct.
00:10:05.780 So if there are no humans, then there are no moral values.
00:10:09.560 Because nature cannot see itself as good, and there's no indication that animals have any moral sense whatsoever.
00:10:16.600 So in order for the earth to be good, in order for it to be better, there must be human beings on it.
00:10:25.760 And then you're left with a paradox.
00:10:27.040 And in order for the earth to be better off without humans, there have to be humans around to declare that it's better off.
00:10:33.940 Otherwise, it's just nothing.
00:10:35.740 In a morally relativistic world, that means that humans come up with the idea of morality.
00:10:44.660 If there are no humans around, there's no morality.
00:10:46.960 It's just existence.
00:10:49.380 And it makes no sense to call it better, good, worse, anything.
00:10:52.500 You can't use any of those terms whatsoever.
00:10:56.560 The second thing is, I see in this logic the same flaw that I see in vegetarianism.
00:11:01.640 If you're going to say that it's wrong for us to kill animals, for instance, what are you basing that on?
00:11:15.900 Are you saying that we're all equal to animals, thus we have no right to kill them?
00:11:21.080 But if that's the case, then why are you expecting more out of us than you expect out of other animals, if we're equal to them?
00:11:28.920 Animals kill each other all the time.
00:11:30.740 Animals eat other species.
00:11:32.200 They eat the same species.
00:11:33.500 They eat their young.
00:11:34.680 They eat their mates. 0.94
00:11:36.720 They kill each other over territory, etc.
00:11:40.080 So if we're equal to animals, then there's no reason at all to oppose us killing animals.
00:11:46.300 Because we're just acting like we are just being one of them.
00:11:49.880 And the fact that we're so much better at it, the fact that we're more efficient and better at killing animals, that doesn't mean anything.
00:12:01.540 If lions could kill their prey in a more effective and efficient way, they would.
00:12:10.140 They just are too stupid to have figured it out.
00:12:12.340 We figured it out.
00:12:13.200 So again, if we're equal to animals, it makes no sense at all to say that we shouldn't kill and eat animals in that case.
00:12:21.080 Because that's what animals do, right?
00:12:27.260 And in that case, in fact, if we're equal to animals, then it's kind of presumptuous not to kill and eat animals.
00:12:33.660 I think it's almost, if we're equal to them, it's almost rude not to kill and eat them because it's presumptuous.
00:12:40.200 It's like we're pretending to be better than them or something.
00:12:43.520 We're taking this kind of like holier-than-thou approach.
00:12:46.920 And I'm sure if the cows could speak, they would say, dude, you're not better than me.
00:12:51.280 Okay, who do you think you are?
00:12:54.300 And then we would say, yeah, you're right.
00:12:55.980 You know what?
00:12:56.260 I guess we should eat you.
00:12:57.660 That's how that conversation would go.
00:13:00.100 But if you say that we shouldn't kill animals because we are superior to animals,
00:13:06.660 we are rational, we know better,
00:13:10.620 then I could take that same logic and I could say that our superiority gives us the right to use animals to our benefit.
00:13:20.940 So either way, you know, either we're equal or we're superior to them,
00:13:25.260 and whichever one is the case,
00:13:27.300 it just doesn't make logical sense at that point to say that it's wrong to kill and eat them.
00:13:32.560 Now, granted, this article only specifically takes issue with factory farming,
00:13:38.460 and I grant that you could take issue with factory farming while being okay with eating meat otherwise.
00:13:43.420 So I'm just talking about vegetarianism in general here.
00:13:45.880 But I still think that my point applies to this particular argument,
00:13:49.420 because he says that we may be better off killing ourselves partly for the sake of the animals,
00:13:55.180 but if we're equal to the animals, then our domination of the planet is perfectly natural and perfectly normal,
00:14:02.160 and it's perfectly animalistic, which is what you would expect from animals.
00:14:07.120 It's exactly what the dinosaurs did, though, in a different form,
00:14:09.880 but they dominated the planet and in many ways made it inhospitable to other forms of life,
00:14:19.020 as they were the age of the dinosaurs for millions of years,
00:14:22.960 and they were the dominating force.
00:14:25.180 I know they were wiped out by an asteroid,
00:14:30.000 but nobody would say that they should have all killed themselves
00:14:34.760 because they weren't giving other forms of life a chance.
00:14:39.280 So if we are superior to animals, then, again, it makes no sense to call for our extinction.
00:14:47.160 Now, we could go on all day dissecting the problems with this logic.
00:14:54.040 The real point is simply that there are people in America who really do think this way,
00:15:02.400 okay, really do think like this,
00:15:04.520 who really do see humankind as a curse on the planet.
00:15:08.240 And you notice that these people are never willing to go first.
00:15:13.460 They aren't going to remove themselves from the gene pool and get the ball rolling.
00:15:17.940 No, they want others to do it.
00:15:19.280 Just like the people who complain about overpopulation.
00:15:21.860 You'll notice they complain about overpopulation,
00:15:23.720 but they never seem to put themselves in the over category, right?
00:15:28.820 They're just population.
00:15:30.740 Everybody else is overpopulation.
00:15:32.740 Or more commonly, the over are the babies and the unborn babies.
00:15:40.540 They're the ones who are extra.
00:15:42.400 And that's kind of the attitude that this article takes as well.
00:15:46.900 Which brings us to a whole other problem.
00:15:48.720 Okay, if you're going to say that we are in some ways equal to animals
00:16:00.800 and we should value animal life, even plant life,
00:16:05.000 then how do you not apply that logic to unborn babies?
00:16:10.800 Because you can't, there's no question that unborn babies are living.
00:16:18.100 There's no doubt about that.
00:16:19.920 They are living creatures.
00:16:23.600 And if you're going to extol the value of animal life,
00:16:30.020 then you can't make rationality the basis by which a creature is accorded value.
00:16:38.620 If, because in that case, then animals aren't worth anything either.
00:16:46.580 So an unborn baby is a living creature.
00:16:56.820 So then in that case, and why penalize them?
00:16:59.920 You notice his argument, and this is so common on the left,
00:17:02.620 where they say, well, you know, we need abortion because of overpopulation. 0.93
00:17:05.560 Humans are destroying the planet.
00:17:06.700 Why are unborn children penalized for that?
00:17:09.900 They didn't do it.
00:17:11.540 Okay, so you're not blaming the cows and you're not blaming the squirrels or whatever
00:17:15.620 for destroying the planet.
00:17:17.380 You'd say, well, they didn't do it.
00:17:18.460 It's not their fault.
00:17:19.380 Fine.
00:17:19.700 Well, the unborn children didn't do it either. 0.98
00:17:21.200 Why do they have to pay the price?
00:17:24.340 It doesn't make any sense.
00:17:25.580 And if you're talking about, well, we need to make the planet a better place for the sake
00:17:32.420 of animals, yeah, what about making the planet a better place for the sake of our children?
00:17:36.220 What about making a better place for the sake of our unborn? 0.81
00:17:41.380 I mean, you're worried about, you're worried about how the planet is for deer and foxes and chipmunks,
00:17:50.080 but you're not worried about how the planet will be for our children?
00:17:52.900 No, for our children, you say, yeah, well, we'll just kill them.
00:17:55.340 We'll get rid of them.
00:17:56.580 But, you know, we need to really fix things for the sake of aardvarks. 1.00
00:18:01.440 It's just, it is a, it is not only a morally deranged point of view, it is completely and
00:18:09.660 totally illogical.
00:18:13.260 All right.
00:18:13.880 An article on the Daily Wire yesterday by Amanda Prestigiacomo, who, by the way, I saw her at
00:18:21.000 the Christmas party and I asked her how to pronounce her last name because, you know, I use her
00:18:28.520 articles all the time for my show, but I can never quote her because I wasn't sure how to pronounce
00:18:33.720 the last name. I didn't want to pronounce it wrong because she's a coworker. So I got the right
00:18:37.400 pronunciation. So now I can finally give her credit. Anyway, article says, on December 1st,
00:18:44.200 an 11-year-old boy dressed in drag danced on stage in a sexual manner at a gay bar in Brooklyn
00:18:49.960 called $3 Bill. The child, Desmond Napoles, or Napoles, was dressed as a Gwen Stefani lookalike
00:18:58.340 full drag makeup, a blonde wig, a crop top, as he bounced around on stage to no doubts like a girl 0.98
00:19:05.400 and collected dollar bills from male adults viewing the number. This is not made up. Okay. This is,
00:19:12.320 this, this happened. The Daily Wire has reviewed the, the reviewed and confirmed the performance
00:19:16.940 through video and photo posts on social media, but has chosen not to link to the exploitative footage.
00:19:22.080 The performance first flagged by YouTuber, Yosef Ozia, was promoted on Eventbrite by $3 Bill.
00:19:29.560 The promotion says, only in New York, a nightclub that makes you go, whoa, reads the promotion,
00:19:35.700 featuring upcoming legend from television in the runway. Desmond is amazing, performing live.
00:19:41.220 This stage, this dance floor, this house is ours as long as we protect it.
00:19:45.160 So the article goes on from there. Um, the boy has been on the drag circuit. He appeared in a drag
00:19:52.120 and I think it, uh, uh, appeared in some kind of drag music video when he was six years old.
00:19:58.720 His family, as you may have guessed, is totally supportive. They would have to be because
00:20:03.280 as a child, your, your six-year-old doesn't get involved with this kind of stuff unless you're
00:20:07.720 putting them into it. Right. Um, a six-year-old boy should have no clue what, what, what, uh,
00:20:17.080 what a drag queen is. A six-year-old boy should have no idea what it means to dress in drag. So 0.77
00:20:21.940 if your six-year-old boy is into that, it's because you introduced him to it and got him into it. Um,
00:20:28.980 because you are a, a pervert and a deranged nutcase. Um, and they also appear to have
00:20:37.600 monetized their son's sexual exploitation. They have merchandise now, among other things.
00:20:44.180 Now, what, what, what can I say about this that I haven't already said? Um, what we're seeing here
00:20:51.320 is child sexual abuse, plain and simple. Obviously the parents should be in jail. Um, so should the
00:20:57.100 owners of this bar. So should everybody who knowingly attended the drag performance of a child.
00:21:03.120 Um, but mainly the parents, the parents are sexually exploiting their own child.
00:21:07.600 In plain view of everyone. And rather than being arrested, rather than being condemned,
00:21:13.560 they are applauded and celebrated. Now there's, there's just one additional point I want to make
00:21:22.720 about this. And I've talked about this kind of thing many times, but I want you to imagine for a
00:21:28.540 moment. Okay. Imagine that this was, uh, an 11 year old girl being paraded around all dolled up dancing 1.00
00:21:41.760 on stage, uh, with a bunch of men at a bar throwing dollar bills at her. Okay. Just, just imagine that 0.64
00:21:49.200 imagine it is a, it is a girl, um, dressed in the way that drag Queens dress dancing on stage. And there 0.95
00:22:00.300 are a bunch of men hooting and hollering and throwing dollar bills at her.
00:22:05.340 Now, of course, there is no moral difference at all between that situation. And this, there is not
00:22:17.080 even the slightest, smallest difference. It is exactly the same thing. And yet, if there were a
00:22:25.000 video of something like that happening, there would be national outrage. Everybody involved would be
00:22:31.460 arrested on sex abuse charges and deservedly so. And we all know it. Who, who, who in the world
00:22:39.400 would stand up to defend something like that? No, this is only tolerated because it's a boy
00:22:46.320 with gay men. That's the fact. And as much as the LGBT community, uh, likes to complain about 1.00
00:22:55.280 persecution. The truth is that they get special treatment as always, right? Because they can get
00:23:03.060 away with pretty much anything because everyone is so deathly afraid of being called homophobic.
00:23:12.100 You know, that's the, uh, that's, that is the, that is the one label. That's the one thing
00:23:17.540 that nobody wants to be stuck with. Nobody wants to be a homophobe.
00:23:21.240 Um, and so we're just gonna, if, if, if we look at it, we say, oh, it's the gay community doing it. 0.97
00:23:26.520 That means that we can't, we can't complain. We can't criticize it.
00:23:32.840 Well, as we just need to get over that. I mean, I, I'm over it. I've been over it. Um,
00:23:41.160 but all the rest, we just need to get over that. You know, you need to get over your fear. If you're,
00:23:45.660 if you're, if you're deathly afraid of being called homophobic, you got to get over that fear
00:23:49.080 because that fear is being just like you got to get over the, the, the fear of being called bigoted
00:23:55.000 or racist or sexist, which isn't to say that it's okay to actually be any of those things.
00:24:01.320 The point is that you can be called any of those things. Um, even if you are not those things,
00:24:08.580 obviously that those labels are used to shut down legitimate debate and legitimate discussion
00:24:15.660 and legitimate criticism. Um,
00:24:19.080 and so you should be morally opposed to actually being sexist or bigoted or racist or anything like
00:24:25.840 that, but you cannot be afraid of the label. You can't be afraid of people exploitatively,
00:24:31.340 coercively trying to manipulate you by throwing that label at you.
00:24:37.140 And when it comes to labels being used to manipulate, coerce, um, exploit and everything else,
00:24:43.000 homophobic is the number one, possibly second to transphobic.
00:24:51.040 People are so afraid of that label for some reason that they just,
00:24:55.240 many people will let even something like this go without, without criticism.
00:24:59.640 What we see is this is not a slippery slope anymore. Okay.
00:25:07.400 We don't need to worry that all the stuff that's going on, um, is, is going to lead to the
00:25:13.700 normalization of pedophilia. Um, we don't need to worry about that. It might happen because it is
00:25:20.400 happening. We need to worry about the fact that it is happening right now, that we are watching it
00:25:24.860 happening there. This is an 11 year old boy dancing for guys at a gay bar, having dollar bills thrown 0.92
00:25:32.220 at him. That is the normalization of pedophilia. Look, it's happening right now. We're here. It's
00:25:39.060 not a slippery slope anymore. We're not looking further down the slope and saying, Oh, we might
00:25:42.660 end up there. We are here right now. It is happening right now.
00:25:45.620 Pray for the country. That's all I can say. And pray for this, um, uh, you know, more than that,
00:25:58.560 pray for this poor young boy who just has been exploited, um, for as long as he's been alive,
00:26:07.160 practically. And, um, he's, he needs a lot of prayer and a lot of help, and he's going to need a lot of
00:26:14.240 counseling. Once he finally breaks free from the, um, grip of his monstrous, despicable parents,
00:26:21.580 he's going to need a lot of counseling. All right. Um, finally today, as we get ready for Christmas,
00:26:30.160 I wanted to settle once and for all a discussion so that it doesn't need to continue. Um, I'm going
00:26:37.780 to give you the definitive Christmas movie rankings. Okay. These are the top five best Christmas movies
00:26:45.840 in order from good to great. And I emphasize that my list is objective. It is scientific and as such,
00:26:54.860 it is absolute. And when I am dictator, everybody will be required by law to affirm the truth of this
00:27:01.720 list. And all infractions will be punished by death. All right. Um, number five, it's a wonderful
00:27:09.960 life. Fifth best Christmas movie classic. Uh, number four, Christmas story. Number three, home alone.
00:27:19.640 Number two, Charlie Brown's Christmas. And number one, John Carpenter's the thing. Now that's the movie
00:27:28.920 about the research team in Antarctica being hunted down and killed by shape-shifting alien. Now that
00:27:34.680 the movie technically doesn't take place on Christmas, doesn't have anything to do with
00:27:38.800 Christmas at all, really, but there's lots of snow and there are also guys with guys with beards. And
00:27:43.240 as far as I'm concerned, that makes it a Christmas movie. Um, and just to settle that debate, here are
00:27:49.300 the criteria to determine if something is a Christmas movie. Okay. Um, it need only meet one of these
00:27:54.680 criteria. Number one, it has to take place on Christmas or it can take place in the snow so that
00:28:02.560 the thing, uh, the Revenant, Fargo, the shining Christmas movies. Um, number three, there's a guy
00:28:09.600 with a bushy white beard. So Lord of the Rings, obviously. And number four, if it makes you feel
00:28:14.680 merry, like the princess bride, then it is a Christmas movie. That's all it takes to be a Christmas movie.
00:28:21.700 Or if we want to get really technical and theological, um, which maybe we should be when
00:28:27.320 it comes to what we call Christmas films, then really actually there are almost no Christmas
00:28:32.080 films at all. Because in actually, in order to really be a Christmas movie, right, it would need
00:28:37.320 to either be a movie about Christ and about the Christmas story, or at the very least, Christ would
00:28:44.760 need to feature prominently in it. And even a movie like It's a Wonderful Life, which is a wonderful
00:28:49.900 movie and I love it, but Christ is, is barely mentioned in that movie. So are there any actual
00:28:56.740 Christmas movies? There are a lot of holiday films. There are a lot of very good holiday films,
00:29:01.220 but, um, as far as actual Christmas movies, I mean, you're left with that cartoon a few years ago
00:29:07.420 about the, the donkey that carried the Holy family to Bethlehem. Um, so that's a Christmas movie.
00:29:13.040 I think they made a movie a few years ago about the nativity story, but, um, there really aren't
00:29:20.060 that many, there aren't that many actual Christmas movies. So maybe instead of my idea at the top of
00:29:27.600 the show about the border security movie, maybe if Hollywood could make some actual Christmas
00:29:31.700 movies for a change, and then we could circle around and still do the border security, uh, movie,
00:29:36.860 which by the criteria I laid out would actually be a Christmas movie because of all the snow.
00:29:43.020 All right. Uh, we'll leave it there. Thanks for watching everybody. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.
00:29:53.280 Hi, I'm Andrew Klavan, host of the Andrew Klavan show. You know, they use the word conspiracy theory
00:29:59.460 to insult ideas that actually make quite a lot of sense. We'll be talking about that. We'll also be
00:30:06.140 interviewing veteran cop, Adam Plantinga on what cops know that you should know too.
00:30:12.300 That's on the Andrew Klavan show with Andrew Klavan.