The Matt Walsh Show - May 22, 2019


Ep. 265 - The Shocking Attack On The Press That The Press Is Ignoring


Episode Stats

Length

45 minutes

Words per Minute

174.67677

Word Count

8,025

Sentence Count

557

Misogynist Sentences

9

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, let's discuss a real attack on the press. How about that?
00:00:05.040 We hear a lot about attacks on the press, but this is a real one. Only this is one that the
00:00:10.080 press itself is ignoring or even defending. Also, Kamala Harris embarrasses herself in
00:00:15.940 awkward fashion. Ben Carson, a world-renowned surgeon, demonstrates that maybe he should have
00:00:21.340 been given a job in government that actually relates to his field. And finally, we'll ask
00:00:25.200 the question, why have we decided that it's smart for young married couples to begin their
00:00:29.820 lives together by bankrupting themselves to buy expensive rings and fancy wedding receptions?
00:00:35.520 We'll try to answer that question today as well on the Matt Wall Show.
00:00:42.140 Okay, we're going to talk about a real attack on the press, on journalism, on free speech,
00:00:48.480 on the First Amendment, but this is one that the press itself has no interest in reporting on.
00:00:54.000 We're going to talk about that in a minute, but first, let me tell you about Lightstream.
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00:02:04.340 credit approval, rate includes 0.5% auto pay discount, terms and conditions apply. Okay, so we hear that the
00:02:12.380 press is under attack, that journalists are courageous martyrs, that the government is
00:02:20.960 stomping on the First Amendment to hinder the work of these brave, you know, warriors for truth.
00:02:28.600 The only problem is that most of the time when you hear this stuff, the people who make this claim
00:02:34.280 have difficulty citing any examples. They'll say this, but then what examples do they give you?
00:02:39.840 Well, they'll say, well, you know, Trump says mean stuff about CNN, or they'll talk about some of the
00:02:46.680 mean gifs, and it is gif, not jif, that Trump retweets about the media. But as for actual legal
00:02:54.360 persecution of the press, they don't seem to have very many examples of that that they can provide,
00:03:01.000 right? Or at least, I should say, there aren't very many examples that they would want to provide
00:03:08.520 in the left-wing media. But here's one. This is one of the ones they don't like. But we've got one.
00:03:16.080 This is a real live example here. Okay, we caught one here. This really is an attack on the press.
00:03:21.620 This is an attack on the First Amendment. It is chilling, terrifying, potentially disastrous for
00:03:29.200 the First Amendment itself. It is an assault on the work of journalists. So here it is right here,
00:03:35.460 guys. If you're looking for an example, you found it. It's right here. Except, even though it's
00:03:42.140 the best example of government persecution of journalists in America, it's also the one
00:03:47.720 example that journalists in America will ignore, or even defend. David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt
00:03:54.860 are two journalists with the Center for Medical Progress. Maybe you recognize their names. You should,
00:03:59.740 if you don't, they're the people who infiltrated Planned Parenthood in an undercover investigation
00:04:05.500 a few years ago. And they revealed widespread criminal conduct at every level of the organization.
00:04:10.080 They revealed, among other things, that Planned Parenthood haggles over and sells the body parts
00:04:16.960 of the babies that they kill. And we'll get to this in a second. But I know that if any liberal that's
00:04:25.100 watching this will say, oh, it's deceptively edited. No, it wasn't. We'll get to that in a second. But
00:04:29.860 that's what it proved. Rather than it leading to the prosecution of the crooks at Planned Parenthood,
00:04:37.900 who are engaged in this macabre form of human trafficking, it has led to the prosecution of the
00:04:45.160 journalists who discovered the crime. And which is, basically, if you look up shooting the messenger
00:04:51.960 in the dictionary, you're going to find this case. That's what's happening here. The state of
00:04:56.040 California, first when Kamala Harris was attorney general and now with Xavier Becerra, both absurdly
00:05:04.880 and openly biased in favor of Planned Parenthood and against these journalists, both recipients of
00:05:11.340 donations from Planned Parenthood, both who have pledged to stand with Planned Parenthood. Nonetheless,
00:05:17.520 the state of California, led by these two partisan minions of the abortion industry,
00:05:24.600 has been trying to punish Daleiden and Merritt for years now for exposing these crimes, for engaging in
00:05:31.060 journalism, the kind of journalism that other journalists aren't going to do, trying to exact
00:05:36.740 vengeance on them, essentially, for embarrassing Planned Parenthood. Now, they claim, the state of
00:05:44.740 California claims that Planned Parenthood's privacy has been invaded, and that that's the great crime
00:05:53.380 here. But of course, privacy is always invaded in undercover journalism. That's part of the point,
00:06:00.320 right? If there's some truth that's being hidden from the public, some truth that the public has a
00:06:06.140 right to know about, and that's what undercover journalism is supposed to do, is to tell the
00:06:11.180 public things that we should know, but we're not being told because it's being kept from us. Such
00:06:16.340 as, by the way, Planned Parenthood, which gets $500 million a year in welfare payments from the
00:06:24.260 government, is selling body parts. That's something we should know. Our money is going to this organization.
00:06:30.900 We have a right to know it. But if it's being kept from you, if lies are being told, if secrets are
00:06:36.180 being kept, then the only way to reveal it is to invade the privacy of this organization, which is
00:06:42.060 what they did, which is what undercover journalists, again, always do. And if this is a criminal case of
00:06:48.540 invasion of privacy, then nobody can ever do undercover journalism again. That's what's at stake
00:06:54.780 here. Not that the media cares. There was a, I believe it was in California, where there was a few
00:07:03.380 years ago, an undercover investigation done at, I think it was like meatpacking plants.
00:07:10.540 And you hear about this kind of stuff all the time, where someone infiltrates one of these
00:07:15.880 organizations to try to find out what's happening so that they can tell the public. That's undercover
00:07:21.440 journalism. If Dave Daleiden and Sandra Merritt can't do that, then nobody can do it. So these two
00:07:29.640 journalists have been charged with 15 felony counts. The case was stayed by the California Supreme
00:07:34.840 Court a few weeks ago, but now it's moving forward. And now California will have the ability
00:07:40.840 to try to lock these people in prison for doing this. So just to review, okay, a partisan attorney
00:07:48.520 general who is a supporter of Planned Parenthood and a recipient of Planned Parenthood money is leading
00:07:55.160 the prosecution against two undercover journalists who expose legal activity within Planned Parenthood,
00:07:59.900 the organization that gives him money. Attack on the press, on journalism, on speech. Yeah,
00:08:09.360 I would say that's what it is. Now, a few points. It will be said, as I referenced earlier, that,
00:08:17.000 and it has been said a million times, that the undercover Planned Parenthood videos were
00:08:21.840 deceptively edited. This has been the slogan of abortion apologists for years now, ever since
00:08:27.040 these videos came out. They say it reflexively, almost like a hiccup. They can't even help
00:08:32.900 themselves. The moment you bring it up, they're deceptively edited, deceptively edited.
00:08:37.840 And if it were true that Daleiden and Merritt basically went in there and, you know, using camera
00:08:43.260 tricks or something, they made up a bunch of stuff and lied about what they discovered and made it seem
00:08:49.220 like Planned Parenthood was selling baby parts when really they weren't, which when someone calls it
00:08:54.420 deceptively edited, that's what they're implying. That, no, they didn't really discover that. They
00:08:58.640 just made it seem like that. Which already, there should be red flags there because, you know, I feel
00:09:05.960 like you could do an undercover investigation of me and record everything that I say secretly
00:09:14.460 um, and then deceptively edit it. And in doing that, you may be able to accuse me and make it seem
00:09:23.000 like I said a lot of things I didn't say. I don't think even with, with, with the most deceptive of
00:09:28.100 editing, you could make it seem like I ever tried to sell a baby's kidney, right? Because I just,
00:09:35.340 I, unless you're hiring voice actors to come in and dub over what I actually said, I, there's no way,
00:09:43.940 just anything that I say, there's no way you could slice it up in any form that would make it sound
00:09:48.160 like I'm trying to sell a dead body. Um, that'd be very, that's a, that's a difficult form of deceptive
00:09:55.620 editing. So that should have been red flag when you hear this, um, claim of deceptive editing. But
00:10:05.820 the point is, if it was deceptively edited, then, then yeah, in that case, um, this would not be an
00:10:11.920 undercover investigation. This would just be a smear campaign. And yeah, sure. Go ahead and
00:10:16.500 prosecute them. Just like Chris Hansen used to do those undercover stings, uh, to catch child
00:10:21.940 molesters. I think he might still do them actually. And, and he invaded their privacy. He lied. He met
00:10:28.820 them under false pretenses. He did all that, but it was considered okay because it was an undercover
00:10:34.720 investigation to expose child predators. And it's sort of understood that unless you are secretive
00:10:41.060 about it and, um, and, and sneaky, you're not going to be able to, no child molester is going to show
00:10:47.760 up if he knows that he's going to be on TV in the middle of an investigation. But if Hansen had
00:10:53.500 edited the tape to make someone look like a child molester who really was there to deliver a pizza
00:10:58.160 or something, then he would have gotten in trouble for that, obviously. So were the Planned Parenthood
00:11:02.980 videos deceptively edited? No, no, they were not. It has been proven that they weren't. I want to
00:11:09.140 emphasize that it has been proven that they were not deceptively edited. The people who say that
00:11:14.980 they were deceptively edited are either ignorant or lying. There is no third option. Um, now they
00:11:22.600 weren't deceptively edited. Were they edited at all? Well, obviously they were. It was hours and hours of
00:11:27.500 video footage and a lot of irrelevant material has to be cut out so that it's digestible. And so that
00:11:33.620 it's something that people will watch. If they just release 13 hours of tape and say, Hey, sort through it
00:11:38.540 and find what you find, uh, then it's going to have no impact because no one's going to watch it.
00:11:44.140 You're just, you're not going to do that. You're going to release the highlight, the point.
00:11:49.660 And as long as you put it in context and you properly represent it, then it is not a deceptive
00:11:56.800 edit. The fifth circuit court of appeals ruled recently. Of course, you didn't hear this in the
00:12:03.440 news. They ruled that the videos were not deceptively edited. Here's what the court said.
00:12:08.940 Uh, reading now the record reflects that OIG office of inspector general had submitted a report
00:12:15.160 from a forensic firm, concluding that the video was authentic and not deceptively edited. And the
00:12:20.380 plaintiffs, Planned Parenthood did not identify any particular omission or addition in the video
00:12:25.040 footage. There is no question that the OIG here made factual findings after viewing the videos and
00:12:31.160 related evidence on the basis of the administrative record. Um, and so it goes on from there.
00:12:37.000 So they did a forensic analysis and they did not find any deceptive editing, but it gets better.
00:12:42.020 Okay. Planned Parenthood itself hired its own investigators, hired fusion GPS. Actually,
00:12:48.960 you may, you may remember them hired them to do an analysis and prove that the, that there were
00:12:54.660 deceptive edits. Again, this is an analysis that was, that was paid for subsidized by Planned
00:13:02.680 Parenthood. And now, um, I'll read, let me, let me read from their report. Once again, this is from
00:13:10.980 Planned Parenthood or at least the people they hired. They're going to try to dress this up as favorably
00:13:15.300 for themselves as they can. Here's what they said. Fusion GPS analysts reviewed all four of the full
00:13:21.160 footage videos released by the center for medical progress, totaling more than 12 hours of tape.
00:13:27.000 This analysis did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation,
00:13:34.840 but we did identify cuts, skips, missing tape and changes in camera angle. A forensic video expert,
00:13:40.280 Grant Frederick's reviewed segments of tape identified as suspicious during this preliminary
00:13:44.920 review. This professional analysis revealed that the full footage videos contain numerous
00:13:49.400 intentional post-production edits. While many of these edits removed likely irrelevant content from
00:13:55.160 the beginning and end of the interviews, all four videos also contained intentional edits that
00:13:59.560 removed content from the middle of the videos. Okay. Did you get that? This analysis did not reveal
00:14:06.280 widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation. This is from like three years ago that Planned Parenthood
00:14:12.280 admitted that there wasn't deceptive edits. And you still hear this from the media that there were
00:14:17.400 deceptive edits. The best they could do is say, well, there weren't deceptive edits, but there were
00:14:23.720 intentional edits. Well, of course there were intentional edits. Yes, there are cuts and skips because
00:14:28.680 obviously you're, you're going to make cuts to any video that you film and then release to mass
00:14:33.320 consumption. Almost every piece of footage you have ever watched on the news on any channel at any point,
00:14:39.400 anywhere has been, uh, has, has, has cuts and skips and missing pieces of it because that's the way it
00:14:46.600 works. The question is whether those cuts and skips are meant to deceive, meant to give a false impression,
00:14:54.600 meant to make it seem like something is happening when it's not really happening.
00:14:58.520 The answer that we get now from two forensic investigations into the footage, one funded by
00:15:06.280 Planned Parenthood is that no, the edits were not deceptive. They're just irrelevant, cutting out
00:15:13.560 irrelevant stuff. So that's it. That's the end. You, you, you cannot claim anymore that these videos were
00:15:21.680 deceptively edited unless you are willing to be a blatant, despicable liar. And I know that a lot
00:15:28.640 of pro-abortion people are willing to be that, but I mean, really look in the mirror and ask yourself,
00:15:33.040 are you, are you happy being that? Because I wouldn't be. No, you, no matter how you feel on
00:15:42.000 the subject, you just have to deal with it. This stuff is on tape. This is, it's when you watch the
00:15:47.920 tape and you hear someone from Planned Parenthood trying to sell a body part, that's what happened.
00:15:54.560 You might not like it. You might wish it didn't happen. I wish it didn't happen too, but it did.
00:16:00.240 Period. Okay. So if the video was not deceptively edited, then what does that mean? It means that
00:16:10.480 when Planned Parenthood officials are caught on tape, haggling over the price of a dead baby's liver,
00:16:15.960 it's real, it happened, and it's illegal. And these journalists exposed actual illegal activity,
00:16:23.000 and now they're being prosecuted for it. Because that, that's, that really is what this all comes
00:16:27.940 down to. If, if the, if, if the videos are real, then this is a legitimate investigation.
00:16:36.440 And they uncovered, um, at a minimum, they uncovered, uh, widespread unethical activity,
00:16:46.520 at a minimum, when really it is federal crimes they uncovered. That's investigative journalism.
00:16:54.920 Uh, even if you don't like the results. And so this is, again, if they, if they are successfully
00:17:07.160 prosecuted for this and they go to jail or they, they face, you know, some kind of legal penalty,
00:17:12.520 um, the, the, the implications for all of journalism are vast and troubling.
00:17:26.680 All right. Um, let's move on. I've got to lighten the, lighten the mood a little bit. I've got two
00:17:32.460 extremely awkward videos to play. Uh, one courtesy of Democrats and one courtesy of Republicans. We're
00:17:39.280 going to be bipartisan. And, uh, so here's the first from Kamala Harris. We have a little fun
00:17:46.640 kicker that we like to do with all of the presidential candidates that come on eBay.
00:17:52.860 It's called candidate mixtape. That was the musical sting for it. And we'd like to talk a lot about
00:17:58.280 music here on this program. So what is your favorite musical genre? Oh, I mean, I'm, I'm hip hop.
00:18:09.280 And reggae and jazz. Um, those are, those are some of my favorites. Okay. Do you have a favorite band
00:18:16.060 or a favorite musician? I'd say one of my favorites is Bob Marley. Good choice. Uh, you can't go wrong
00:18:22.980 with that. That's a crowd pleaser on your mixtape. What would be like your favorite three songs?
00:18:28.900 Oh, okay. Let's see. Um, I, Aretha Franklin, um, uh, anything, Aretha Franklin. Um, I would say Bob Marley.
00:18:42.580 And then, um, I don't know. I love Cardi B. Okay. As she says, um, those are great. Thank you for playing
00:18:54.900 along. Oh man. Lord, help us. Lord, save us. Yeah. That I, I, I can't, I could barely get through that
00:19:04.060 the first time I, it took me like five tries to watch that whole minute long clip because it is
00:19:10.520 the secondhand embarrassment is so extreme that, uh, I, I, I could, I can't, I can't stomach it.
00:19:18.560 Um, I, and I'm going to leave aside the fact that a presidential candidate lends her endorsement to
00:19:23.740 Cardi B, a woman who admits to drugging and robbing men. Uh, so let's, we'll put that to the
00:19:29.320 side, even though really we shouldn't, but I will. Uh, it's obvious that Kamala Harris has never
00:19:35.220 listened to music in her life. And, you know, she lists Aretha Franklin and Bob Marley as two of her
00:19:42.020 favorite songs on her mixtape. And I'm not sure if she knows what a mixtape is. I'm not even sure if
00:19:48.000 she knows what a song is. Uh, my favorite song is, um, Elvis Presley by the Beatles from the album
00:19:56.980 Radiohead. Hi kids. I'm cool too. It's, you know what? Let me just say, if, if you don't like music,
00:20:07.720 just say that you don't listen to music. It's okay. Because I, she's not the first person to fall
00:20:14.080 victim to this. When you've been in a conversation, you're talking about your favorite bands or
00:20:17.840 whatever. And someone turns to someone out, Hey, what do you listen to? And you could tell
00:20:22.240 they're trying to come up with, because you can tell they don't listen to anything, which is fine.
00:20:25.500 You don't have to listen to music. It's not, it's not a requirement. I think it's a little weird to
00:20:29.620 not listen to music. It's for me, it seems like a really human, it's like a human need almost music
00:20:34.220 is. But, um, if you don't listen, you don't listen. It's fine. It's okay. You're not, you're not a bad
00:20:39.120 person. You can just say, Oh, you know, I don't really listen to anything. It's just, it doesn't
00:20:43.000 interest me, but then you've got, but people don't want to say that because they feel like
00:20:47.180 they're going to be judged, which they will be a little bit. If you, if you don't listen to music,
00:20:52.560 I'm going to judge you a small amount, not that, just a little bit of judgment. I'm going to throw
00:20:56.380 at you and it'll fade. Don't worry. Just a, it's just a little, little moment of judgment. No big
00:21:01.500 deal. Um, but that's better than the alternative where you start making up your favorite genre off the
00:21:09.880 top of your head. And now the judgment is heavy. Now it is just, these are just, it's like a, a
00:21:17.660 machine gun of judgment coming at you. Whereas before it was just a little squirt gun. So that
00:21:23.520 was pretty bad. All right. Now let's be bipartisan. Ben Carson is the head of housing and urban
00:21:28.180 development for some reason. The word housing is right there in the name. So you'd think he'd be
00:21:34.360 familiar with super basic real estate terms that even I know. And, um, and I don't know anything
00:21:40.940 about real estate, but you know, he was, he was, uh, he was at a hearing for the house financial
00:21:46.160 services committee. And here's how that went. As you look it up, I'd also like you to get back to
00:21:52.480 me if you don't mind to explain the disparity in REO rates. Do you know what an REO is?
00:21:57.700 An Oreo. No, not an Oreo. An R-E-O. R-E-O. Real estate. What's the O stand for? E-organization.
00:22:09.100 Owned. Real estate owned. That's what happens when a property goes to foreclosure. We call it an R-E-O.
00:22:15.060 And FHA loans have much higher REOs. That is, they go to foreclosure rather than to loss mitigation
00:22:20.980 or to non-foreclosure alternatives like short sales than comparable loans at the GSEs. So I'd like to
00:22:27.640 know why we're having more foreclosures that end in people losing their homes with stains to their
00:22:33.880 credit and disruption to their communities and their neighborhoods at FHA than we are at the GSEs.
00:22:40.320 Now that one, see, that's not even funny so much as just baffling. One of the weirdest decisions that
00:22:47.920 Trump ever made was taking Ben Carson, a world-renowned surgeon. And rather than making him
00:22:54.780 surgeon general or head of health and human services, making him the head of housing of all
00:23:02.760 of the jobs to give him, he obviously has no basis of knowledge at all. Even now, after two years,
00:23:10.700 he doesn't know basic real estate terms. But, you know, that's okay because he's literally a surgeon.
00:23:18.040 There's a whole job in government set aside for somebody like that. Why not give him that job?
00:23:22.340 If you feel like you got to give him a job in the government in the first place.
00:23:26.520 I actually think, see, I take this kind of personally because
00:23:29.100 this whole Ben Carson thing to me is very sad.
00:23:34.300 I mean, this guy is a medical genius, one of the great surgeons in history.
00:23:40.760 And that gets lost in this. When people talk about Ben Carson, he's become this joke,
00:23:45.000 but he's not. He's a genius. What this guy was able to do in the medical field,
00:23:50.960 he's a pioneer in the medical field. He was performing, you know, he was separating
00:23:59.240 conjoined twins, conjoined at the head before anyone was doing that. He's doing medical marvels
00:24:05.900 this man was pulling off for decades. This is also a guy who came from nothing,
00:24:14.400 came from destitute poverty and climbed his way up and became one of the most
00:24:21.840 respected, world-renowned pioneering surgeons in the world, in history.
00:24:27.720 But then he decides to get into politics. And now he'll be remembered as this kind of
00:24:34.040 bumbling political figure, even though he's a man of incredible brilliance and accomplishment.
00:24:40.480 Yet he decided to become a bureaucrat. So you see, this is the lesson here. You become a
00:24:46.500 bureaucrat and this is what happens. If bureaucracy can make even someone like Ben Carson look like
00:24:54.800 that, who is a genius, again, for the third time, and certainly has a much higher IQ than any of the
00:25:04.860 people making fun of him. But if it can do that and make him look like that, then what do you think
00:25:09.240 it could do to the rest of us? I just, that's why when, you know, Ben Carson, he, he, you know,
00:25:19.280 he retired from his, from the medical field, fine, well-deserved retirement. And then he's,
00:25:26.420 you know, he, he appears, he does a few speaking engagements. He appears here and there. And, uh,
00:25:31.040 he, he says a few things critical of Obama, I guess. And he makes a few political statements that
00:25:36.020 conservatives agree with and that's fine. But then everyone seizes onto this guy. And, uh, next thing
00:25:44.040 you know, he's running for president and it's like, no, we don't, we don't just, just because
00:25:49.680 he said a few things we agree with, we don't need to make him a presidential candidate. Uh, he's not,
00:25:56.200 there's not necessarily a lot of crossover between what it takes to be a great president and what it
00:26:02.160 takes to be a great surgeon. Both take a lot of skill, but they're not the same skills at all.
00:26:07.860 So there's no reason for that. Why, why couldn't Ben Carson have just remained a retired surgeon
00:26:15.460 who comes out and speaks and engages in the national conversation, but he's not a political
00:26:20.100 figure. He's not a bureaucrat. He's not running for office, nothing like that. He's just his home man.
00:26:26.460 Why couldn't he have just been that? It's a damn shame. All right, let's discuss something,
00:26:33.440 uh, something else non-political before we go. Well, that was political. So we'll discuss something
00:26:37.300 non-political for once before we get into emails. Let's talk about jewelry, girls. We'll have a
00:26:43.920 little girl talk because there's nobody better to lead that conversation than me. I know when you're
00:26:48.420 thinking about, let's have a girl talk, let's talk jewelry. The first person you think is you want me
00:26:52.720 to be the one to lead that discussion. Um, a few days ago, somebody on Twitter, I'm not going to
00:26:57.440 throw her name and Twitter handle out there because I'm not trying to add to the dog pile. Uh, but I do
00:27:02.300 want to talk about this subject. So I'm just using this as the entrance into the subject.
00:27:07.300 Um, she, uh, so this woman on Twitter said, uh, I would dump a guy if he got me a nasty cheap
00:27:13.360 Pandora ring for my engagement. A guy spends 20% of his yearly salary on a ring. Don't you agree,
00:27:18.780 girls? Now I'm not even, this might even be a parody account. Honestly, I'm not sure. It's
00:27:25.080 hard. It's impossible to tell anymore. What's parody? What isn't? I don't know. It doesn't really
00:27:28.740 matter. The point is, um, I want to talk about this whole thing, this tradition of buying a very
00:27:35.320 expensive piece of jewelry because dirt during before, you know, before you get married during
00:27:41.820 this discussion on social media, some people, and these were real people for sure, um, basically
00:27:47.260 came to this woman's defense and told me that the rule is, this is the rule, the tradition,
00:27:54.220 the custom is that you're supposed to spend two months salary. So four to eight pay periods
00:28:00.240 worth on an engagement ring. That is the tradition. Two months salary. Now let's, let's, let's be clear
00:28:09.600 that the tradition of spending two months salary on a ring is like the tradition of going to a
00:28:15.020 designer clothes store and spending $86 on a t-shirt. It may be something that people do out of
00:28:20.640 vanity. It may be something that a lot of people do. It may be something that people have been doing
00:28:23.840 for a little while now, but it's not some sort of deep, ancient human custom that we have to
00:28:28.560 preserve at all costs. Most humans on earth throughout the history of the earth, um, have
00:28:34.360 not spent that kind of money on t-shirts and they don't spend that kind of money on jewelry. So it's,
00:28:38.700 it's, it is, this is not really a human tradition that dates back very far. These are customs invented
00:28:44.580 by the companies who sell the stuff. Okay. Uh, the keepers, the preservers of the two month salary
00:28:51.800 for a ring custom are jewelry stores. Not surprisingly because they profit from it. The custom was, the custom
00:28:59.680 was invented somewhat recently by jewelry stores. And it is totally crazy. It is just completely crazy. Um,
00:29:10.700 you, you're starting out your life together. You're beginning the journey.
00:29:16.840 Probably you don't have a lot of money. Most young married couples don't, some do. Uh, and you know
00:29:24.020 what, if you're a million, if you're a multimillionaire, then everything I'm saying,
00:29:27.300 put to the side, I mean, do what you want. It's, you know, you've got the money, I guess, but
00:29:31.040 talking to normal people in a normal situation, you're getting married, you don't have a lot of
00:29:35.220 money or start your journey together. This is the way it was for me and my wife. We got married
00:29:39.140 seven years ago. Um, and you're going to start out in a financial hole so that you can spend four to
00:29:46.460 eight paychecks on a fashion accessory. If you're think about the saving that that requires
00:29:53.520 and you're going to take all of that saving that you've been doing leading up to your wedding and
00:30:00.080 you're going to dump it all into a little rock that someone's going to wear on their finger until
00:30:05.360 it gets knocked into the, you know, into, into the trash can accidentally thrown away. Um, so I, I
00:30:15.540 just, I don't get it. I, I think it's, I think it's completely crazy. If I, if I went out and bought
00:30:20.100 my wife a ring and I gave it to her and it was beautiful and she loved it. Um, and then, and then
00:30:25.680 she asked, which she would eventually. And then she asked, well, how much was this? And I said, oh,
00:30:32.440 you know, just two months salary. Uh, don't worry. Just two months salary. I mean, you know, the kids,
00:30:36.660 uh, kids don't need to eat for a couple of weeks. It's, it's, it's fine. She would have me committed
00:30:41.100 to an institution if I did that. Uh, she, she wouldn't, she wouldn't even be angry about it.
00:30:46.240 She would be terrified. She would be scared. She would assume that I'd gone crazy to do something
00:30:51.600 like that. And, and, and I would have to be crazy to ever do something like that. We've got this idea
00:30:56.200 that, uh, in order to enter into some new important phase of life, you have to spend tons
00:31:03.240 and tons of money first. And this is completely artificial. This is one of the reasons why so
00:31:10.080 many young people are putting off adulthood and putting off the entering into these new and exciting
00:31:16.860 phases because they think that you need to have tons of money to do it. When you don't, it is
00:31:23.120 completely artificial. You can get married for free. If you want getting married, doesn't have
00:31:29.780 to cost you anything. You could do it for free. Um, or you could spend a few hundred bucks and have
00:31:34.900 a cookout and, and, you know, you could buy an inexpensive ring on clearance. Uh, you can have
00:31:41.680 a cookout with, with your family and friends, and you can spend a few hundred bucks and be done with it.
00:31:46.780 Um, you could get through the whole thing and you can get through the whole thing for less than a
00:31:51.440 grand easily. Or you could spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars putting
00:31:55.980 yourself into debt, your parents into debt, probably all so that you can what show off to
00:32:00.680 everybody. And so you can have the pageantry and the really nice thing and the really nice
00:32:04.380 table arrangements and everything's really nice. Everyone will talk about how nice it is and they'll
00:32:08.420 put it on Facebook. And then you can put your picture of your ring on Facebook and all of that.
00:32:13.600 Um, or you could do something in between, which is what me and my wife did. Uh, you know, our,
00:32:18.360 our whole wedding experience definitely didn't cost only a thousand bucks. I'll say that it was
00:32:23.080 probably too expensive. It wasn't nearly as expensive as what some people do, but it was
00:32:28.940 probably too expensive. And, and, and that's because there's a, there's a lot of pressure and
00:32:32.400 force, uh, as a, as a young person, as a young couple kind of pulling you in the direction of
00:32:39.120 spending a ton of money on everything. And you're kind of tricked into thinking, well, this is really
00:32:44.140 important to you. Then you're going to spend this month. Oh, so this woman, you want to marry her?
00:32:49.580 She's not worth it. She's not worth spending $12,000 on a ring. Isn't she worth it to you?
00:32:56.300 Or, or it's, it's a special, it's most, it's a most special day of your life. It's a special day.
00:33:01.980 So of course you got to spend $40,000 on a wedding. It's a special day. Well, yes, it is a very special
00:33:08.680 day. Uh, it is, it is going to be one of the most special days of your life alongside when you're,
00:33:13.420 when your kids are born. But, um, since when does that mean you have to spend tens of thousands of
00:33:18.720 dollars? Since when does special mean have to mean expensive? It doesn't, you know, it's the same
00:33:25.700 kind of thing with college. College has, you know, has to be a hundred thousand dollars. Weddings have
00:33:31.020 to cost tens of thousands of dollars. I mean, just to get married and get educated, we're saying that
00:33:35.640 young people have to, you need to either be children of oil tycoons or they need to go into debt.
00:33:42.440 And I think that's crazy. Uh, here's, here's the point. A ring is not going to keep your marriage
00:33:50.280 together at all. A fancy wedding is not going to keep it together. No marriage in history has ever
00:33:59.740 been permanently sustained by the financial commitment that went into it, except maybe Bill
00:34:05.760 and Hillary. So maybe there are a few exceptions, but, um, for most of us, for the vast majority of
00:34:11.500 marriages, the thing that's going to sustain it is no matter how much your wedding costs, no matter
00:34:16.140 how much your ring costs, what sustains the marriage is love, devotion, sacrifice, duty, service,
00:34:22.040 faith. Uh, that that's, what's going to do it. And if you don't have those things, but you've got
00:34:28.240 the nicest ring and you had the fanciest reception, you know, your marriage won't last six months.
00:34:33.540 And then on, on, not only do you have a devastating divorce, but you've also wasted all this money
00:34:38.500 that you can't get back. So don't do it kids. Um, keep, keep it, get married for cheap. That's my
00:34:47.020 recommendation. Do everything involved in the marriage. Do it for cheap, save the money, spend it
00:34:52.800 on something more important, uh, build a nest egg. You won't regret it. I don't think anyone has ever
00:35:01.860 after getting married, look back and said, I wish we spent more money on that wedding. You know,
00:35:05.800 that's my one regret. My one regret in life is that we had, we, we got married for $2,000 forever. I wish
00:35:12.160 we had spent a 45,000. No one ever says that. And I also don't think that there are a lot of women
00:35:19.360 out there. Correct me if I'm wrong ladies, but you get married, you love your husband.
00:35:24.520 He's a devoted, devoted husband becomes a devoted father. Um, if your wedding ring wasn't that
00:35:30.360 expensive or your engagement ring, are you waking up every day distraught that the ring isn't expensive
00:35:35.440 enough? If so, you're a shallow, miserable person. So I'm going to assume that that's not the case.
00:35:40.680 And anyway, down the line, once you've been married and you've saved some money as a man,
00:35:49.440 you know, if you want to treat your wife then and go out and buy her a more expensive ring,
00:35:53.440 now that you've got the money and you can do it, you can afford it. You can always do that. You
00:35:57.360 can buy your wife jewelry anytime. You don't need to do it when you're both broke and not even married
00:36:01.360 yet. All right. Um, let's see. Matt wall show at gmail.com. Matt wall show at gmail.com.
00:36:07.520 This is from Aaron says, hi, Matt. Thanks for doing the show. It's great. On the show,
00:36:12.000 you stated that you don't believe that upping the age to buy tobacco products and vaping should,
00:36:16.440 would be beneficial. Do you feel the same about firearms? I feel there should be one age to do
00:36:20.980 everything. Say 19 buy and carry guns, buy alcohol and tobacco, join the military, drive a car,
00:36:26.600 all other things that adults are entitled to do. 19 would keep all this out of high school's thoughts.
00:36:31.340 I, it is kind of interesting. You think of someone doing all of that all at once in one day. I mean,
00:36:35.880 that would make for a really interesting 19th birthday. Got my gun. I got my cigar. I got my,
00:36:40.680 uh, got my booze. Let's go join the military folks. Um, oh yeah. And I'm driving too.
00:36:48.320 No, I, I, I actually think that, uh, I think it's good to taper some of this stuff so that you're not
00:36:53.500 doing, doing it all at once. I think that if anything, it makes sense to have the drinking age,
00:37:00.860 um, lower than the driving age. So that maybe, uh, you know, you can introduce a teenager
00:37:11.420 to drinking responsibly before they can even drive. So you don't have to worry as much about
00:37:18.080 drunk driving, although they could still do it obviously, but less of a chance. So doesn't that
00:37:23.120 make sense? Doesn't it, doesn't it make sense? Cause again, we go back to you're, you're telling
00:37:29.360 me that at 16, somebody is competent enough to drive a, a, a huge tin box, 70 miles per hour down
00:37:38.820 the highway. They're competent enough for that, but you wouldn't trust them with a Sam Adams.
00:37:44.820 My thinking is if this is someone you really can't trust with a Sam Adams,
00:37:48.360 then, uh, I'm not going to trust them with an SUV. So I think maybe we, you know, the Sam Adams,
00:37:54.480 the beer should be one of the first things when it comes to the adult things that we are allowing
00:38:00.840 teenagers to start doing and introducing them to, I think probably the beer should be one of the
00:38:04.860 first things. Like why don't you get that down? If you're in, if you, unless you don't want,
00:38:09.700 want to drink, which great, but if you do, let's get that down. Let's figure out how to do that
00:38:13.580 responsibly. And, uh, and then maybe we can move on to some of these other things. So I, that's how I
00:38:18.120 would look at. All right. Um, this is from, hold on. This from William says, Hey Matt, I've just
00:38:29.760 recently started watching your podcast. I love them. I've been watching them going backwards now.
00:38:33.280 And one of them, you answer a question. These podcasts will be very confusing if you watch
00:38:38.440 them backwards. So I would recommend, I would recommend the, um, traditional four words method.
00:38:45.140 I've been watching them going backwards now. And one of them, you answer a question saying we should
00:38:49.600 explore outer space. I was curious which one you think is more important to explore space or deep
00:38:53.820 into the ocean because we consistently keep finding strange creatures from the ocean. Thank
00:38:58.540 you for taking the time to read this. And I love your show. Yeah. It is a fascinating thing that there
00:39:02.860 is so much still on earth that we have not explored. There's so much about our oceans that we do not
00:39:07.860 know. The oceans are very mysterious to us because we haven't seen most of it, especially under the
00:39:14.160 surface. And you know what? I wouldn't even rank them, William. I'm all about, I think we should
00:39:19.180 explore everything. I think it's great. Explore the oceans, explore the space, explore the uncharted
00:39:24.720 wilderness, which still exists, jungles, oceans, Antarctica, explore everything. Let's, let's,
00:39:30.660 why not? Let's find out about this world we live in. We're not here for very long. I mean,
00:39:35.040 this is our chance to explore it. So let's do that. All right. Uh, from Rose says,
00:39:40.640 hi, Matt, love the show. I'm impressed by the fact that you have hobbies. You talk about beekeeping
00:39:44.760 and fishing. It seems like you also do a great deal of reading. How do you find time for these
00:39:48.820 hobbies and how do you develop them? I hate being the kind of person with no real interest aside
00:39:52.260 from watching TV, but that's what's happened to me. Did you just decide to become a beekeeper one
00:39:56.760 day and do it? How did it work? Yeah. Um, I, I, good question. I do have, I guess what I would call
00:40:04.340 maybe three hobbies. So fishing beekeeping now that's new. Uh, and, and I've always liked to
00:40:08.880 read. Uh, I actually did kind of just decide one day that I wanted to have hobbies. Like I didn't,
00:40:16.260 I was like you, I didn't have any hobbies. Um, and, uh, and, and I said, I would, I just,
00:40:22.420 I feel like I'd like to have hobbies. I think I, I don't want to be the kind of person who doesn't
00:40:25.800 have hobbies. And so what I started by doing is I literally looked up, I Googled a list of hobbies on,
00:40:32.900 and I just Googled like hobby suggestions or something. And I started scrolling through and
00:40:38.540 seeing if anything piqued my interest. And I saw a few things and I tried a few things out.
00:40:42.780 Brewing beer was one I tried gardening. I thought, you know, I, I like garden fresh tomatoes. Maybe
00:40:47.840 I'll do some gardening, try brewing beer, tried a few different things. Um, one hobby I saw suggested
00:40:53.260 was a knife making, and I still might pick that one up. I put that one onto the side. Um, that requires
00:40:59.580 a lot of equipment, but I liked the idea of that. That's cool. Tried something else. Didn't really
00:41:04.180 click. Um, and, uh, ultimately I decided to go with beekeeping because I, I, this is something I've
00:41:09.740 always, it's always been in the back of my mind. I've always been interested in it. And I said,
00:41:12.700 why don't I'll just do it. Why not? And fishing developed a little bit over time because we vacation
00:41:17.560 at lakes a lot. I think, um, although now it's become kind of an obsession for me. So it kind of
00:41:23.180 picked up gradually and now I am somewhat obsessed with fishing. I think it's, it is important to
00:41:30.700 have hobbies and that's why I decided I wanted to develop some. The advantage of having hobbies
00:41:36.560 is that for one, I think it makes you a more interesting person. Not, not saying you're not
00:41:40.220 interesting. Um, but I think just get there, there are more things about you, right? If someone asks
00:41:47.320 you, asks you to, to describe yourself, talk about yourself, you have more things you can say about
00:41:53.700 yourself because that becomes kind of troubling. Doesn't it? When you, you know, have you ever been
00:41:58.540 stumped by that question? When someone, a really basic question, someone says, uh, you know, tell me
00:42:01.880 about yourself and you realize that you have almost nothing to say. You don't even know what you can say
00:42:06.780 about yourself. So I think part of picking up hobbies is just having some things about yourself.
00:42:13.480 Um, so that's good. And it also, it gives you specific specialized knowledge about something,
00:42:22.160 which is important. It makes, I think it's good to be, and that's part of my thinking process with,
00:42:29.540 with a hobby is I, I want to have some subjects that I just know really well. Even if I can't use
00:42:37.020 that information, quote unquote, on a day to day basis, I think it's good to just know things and to
00:42:43.320 have certain areas that you know really well and that you're an expert on. Now I'm not an expert on
00:42:47.500 any of these things yet, but I'm learning about it. And I know a lot more about it now than I did
00:42:50.860 before. And I probably know more than the average person because this is what I've been learning
00:42:55.400 about. Uh, and then what you find is you start building this base of knowledge that seems
00:43:03.180 irrelevant, although it's not irrelevant because no knowledge is irrelevant because it's enriching for
00:43:07.840 you. It's enriching for your mind. So it can't be irrelevant, but you start building this base of
00:43:14.540 knowledge that seems at least not functional. And then what you find is that you, you kind of branch
00:43:20.340 off from there and you start learning other things related to it. And then the knowledge grows.
00:43:26.640 So part of fishing is it starts by learning about the kind of fish that you're, you know,
00:43:30.760 specifically what kind of things do they eat? What kind of lures do you use? So on and so forth.
00:43:34.360 Then you start learning about lakes and different bodies of water and, and, um, you know, different
00:43:41.260 habitats for different kinds of wildlife. You start branching off and learning even more.
00:43:45.720 So that's another advantage. And, uh, I don't know, there's just, um, gives you access to new
00:43:51.120 social communities of people who like the same kind of stuff, teaches you patience. I'm a big advocate
00:43:56.160 for it. So I would say as far as how to get into a new hobby, which I guess was your question,
00:44:00.100 which I haven't answered. Uh, I think you just pick one and start doing it. Find something that
00:44:04.760 seems vaguely interesting to you, pick it up, start doing it. Here's how you'll know
00:44:08.760 that, um, that, that this is a hobby that might click for you is when you, when you first start
00:44:15.740 doing it, you're depending on what it is, you're probably not going to be good at it. You'll probably
00:44:21.180 be very bad at it and clueless, but if you can still enjoy it and even, even kind of mysteriously
00:44:29.240 enjoy it, like you don't even, even know why you enjoy doing this thing, but you do. Um, and you
00:44:35.900 enjoy learning about it and reading about it, then I think that's a hobby that will stick.
00:44:42.000 If you try it for months and you're bad at it and you don't enjoy it and it just is terrible,
00:44:47.440 you know, you can just give it up and find a new one. That one's not for you.
00:44:49.800 But if you can enjoy it when you're bad at it, then that means it's a good hobby. And it also
00:44:55.380 means eventually you'll probably be really good at it. So that's my thoughts on, uh, hobby, hobby
00:45:02.500 swear. All right. Uh, we will, I think, leave it there. Thanks everybody for watching. Thanks for
00:45:07.380 listening. Godspeed.
00:45:19.800 A new survey of IQ scores throughout the West shows us that our intelligence is plummeting.
00:45:26.800 You only have to look around at the 2020 Democrat presidential candidates or the farce of congressional
00:45:31.700 testimony on the Hill to see that this is very likely true. We asked the question,
00:45:35.780 are we all just getting stupider? Check it out at the Michael Knowles show.
00:45:39.120 Thanks you.
00:45:55.120 If you wish to come back to sure, you sure keep bringing that down.