The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 278 - When The Smear Merchants Win, We All Lose

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a conservative activist has his Harvard acceptance rescinded because of bad things he said to his friends privately two years ago.

00:00:08.240 The dirt merchants who dug up dirt on him for political reasons win again, and I'll explain why I think that's a loss for everybody.

00:00:17.060 Also, OJ Simpson has joined Twitter and 700,000 people are following him.

00:00:23.040 What does that say about our culture?

00:00:24.420 And finally, a trans poet is rearranging the alphabet.

00:00:30.000 It's as nonsensical as it sounds.

00:00:31.940 We'll talk about that today also on the Matt Walsh Show.

00:00:39.700 Okay, well, I don't want to, you know, get too cheesy here to start with, but I do have to begin by wishing a happy birthday to a very special person.

00:00:48.860 This is someone who I love deeply, someone who, I mean, they're going to be embarrassed by this, but honestly, someone who is just really smart and generous.

00:01:00.000 Funny, kind, extremely good-looking, maybe the best person in the world.

00:01:06.560 This is someone who means the world to me.

00:01:09.340 So happy birthday to me.

00:01:12.500 It's my birthday.

00:01:13.360 I turned 33 today.

00:01:14.460 It's no big deal.

00:01:15.420 You know, I don't want you to think it's a big deal.

00:01:16.980 Like, don't even worry about it.

00:01:18.620 It's not like you guys have to, you know, send me presents and money or anything like that.

00:01:22.520 I wouldn't want that.

00:01:23.660 I mean, I'd take the presents and money if you send them to me.

00:01:26.720 I would take them.

00:01:28.060 But don't feel like you have to do that.

00:01:30.060 It's, you know, it's really no big deal.

00:01:32.740 It's just a birthday.

00:01:33.700 So forget I said anything.

00:01:35.500 But, you know, it is my birthday.

00:01:36.740 That's all I'm saying.

00:01:37.560 It's just, that's all.

00:01:38.280 That's all I'm trying to tell you.

00:01:39.460 Okay.

00:01:39.960 Harvard has rescinded its acceptance of a prominent gun rights activist, Kyle Cashew.

00:01:47.360 And we're going to talk about that in just a minute.

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00:04:02.220 All right.

00:04:02.980 As you may have heard yesterday, Parkland shooting survivor, gun rights advocate, Kyle

00:04:07.740 Kashev's Harvard admission has been rescinded.

00:04:13.200 He had been accepted into Harvard.

00:04:14.920 Now it's being taken away.

00:04:16.100 That's what rescinded mean, in case you didn't know, over comments that he made privately

00:04:19.920 to his friends when he was 16 years old.

00:04:22.520 Um, and the comments in question, I'm not going to repeat them here because I, I can't. 1.00

00:04:28.720 Um, let's just suffice it to say, if you haven't seen them, they are gross, stupid, racist, but 0.99

00:04:36.520 they were also the comments of a high school boy joking around with his buddies and trying 1.00

00:04:41.340 to be as shocking and outrageous as possible.

00:04:43.580 It's pretty obvious to me when you see the comments that that's what they're doing.

00:04:46.740 Now, teenage boys are known to do that.

00:04:48.680 I don't mean to scandalize you if you weren't aware of this, but, uh, boys, especially

00:04:52.500 at the age of 15 or 16, this is what they do.

00:04:55.840 They, they say the most outrageous and offensive things that they can think of to each other

00:04:59.860 privately.

00:05:01.460 Um, now he was not a public figure at the time and he would have had no idea that a couple

00:05:08.180 of years later he would be in the limelight due to a massacre at his school.

00:05:11.420 This was not as a 16 year old kid that was not anywhere on his radar any more than it would

00:05:15.880 be on any of our radars.

00:05:18.300 Um, now he has apologized for his comments, which were leaked to the media in a transparent

00:05:24.460 effort to destroy him for his second amendment advocacy.

00:05:28.540 Um, and since taking on this new role as a gun rights champion, he hasn't said or done anything

00:05:36.200 to demonstrate racism.

00:05:37.460 Um, so when he says that he's changed and that he's not the same person that he was

00:05:42.620 when he was 16, well, there's no evidence to dispute that claim because he hasn't done

00:05:48.700 or said anything since we've known about him to indicate racism.

00:05:52.580 Um, also we know that in between the age of 16 and right now, uh, he, he, he was, he did

00:05:59.760 experience a traumatic event, like a school shooting is a traumatic event and those kinds

00:06:04.980 of events, uh, can have transformative effects on people.

00:06:11.000 So when he says I've changed in the meantime, there is nothing absurd or unbelievable about

00:06:17.260 that.

00:06:17.520 In fact, it'd be kind of unbelievable if he hadn't changed considering what he went through.

00:06:21.320 Um, during the shooting, but despite his efforts to repair, whatever damage, the gross jokes

00:06:29.060 he told to his friends, you know, might have done to the people who were exposed to them

00:06:34.440 two years later, uh, because of a coordinated effort to destroy his reputation, whatever damage

00:06:39.100 that might've done.

00:06:39.640 Uh, and despite his, his, his apology for that, he was still punished anyway.

00:06:45.760 Um, I think this move by Harvard is craven.

00:06:49.600 It's nakedly partisan.

00:06:51.520 Every sane person knows that Kyle's affiliation with the conservative movement weighed heavily

00:06:57.920 against him.

00:06:58.980 Would his admission have been revoked?

00:07:00.900 Had he been an anti-Second Amendment advocate like, like his classmate, David Hogg?

00:07:05.760 Well, we can't know that for sure, but we have reasons to be suspicious.

00:07:09.220 And the reason we have to be suspicious is that we know the rules are not applied equally.

00:07:15.780 So one example people have been using, which I think is a good example is you take the governor

00:07:19.640 of Virginia.

00:07:20.840 Now the governor of Virginia, um, his, uh, you know, he had college yearbook photos, which

00:07:29.680 surfaced months ago, showing somebody in blackface and somebody in a, in a KKK hood.

00:07:36.700 And he originally said, Oh, uh, now remember what he, the way he originally responded to

00:07:41.180 that was he said, he wasn't sure, like he wasn't sure which one, who, if he was in the

00:07:46.380 picture or who he was, maybe he wrote, wore a Klan outfit, maybe he wore blackface.

00:07:50.120 He wasn't sure.

00:07:51.760 Um, now me, I can say definitively that I have never worn a Klan outfit or blackface.

00:07:57.760 I, you know, I, I can say that because I would remember doing that.

00:08:00.460 Um, the fact that Northam couldn't remember would seem to indicate maybe that, uh, either

00:08:06.120 he's lying or he dressed that way so often that he can't remember who he was in the picture.

00:08:10.740 But then later he denied it, but then he came out and said, okay, well, I wasn't that guy,

00:08:14.920 but I did wear blackface at another point when I was dressing up like Michael Jackson for a talent

00:08:19.560 show.

00:08:19.820 Um, he said he, he, he smeared, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, shoe polish on his face to look like

00:08:25.720 Michael Jackson.

00:08:27.580 Yet, um, Northam is still governor despite the fact that he engaged in racist behavior

00:08:34.340 and that he engaged in that racist behavior in his twenties when he was adult and adult.

00:08:40.600 He's still the governor of Virginia.

00:08:42.900 Now, if you want to miss the point, which a lot of people do these days,

00:08:49.820 you could argue that, well, these two cases are unrelated.

00:08:53.440 Uh, the, the Harvard admissions office has nothing to do with the governorship of Virginia,

00:08:57.740 right?

00:08:58.600 Um, governor, you know, it's not like, uh, the people at Harvard can revoke or rescind the

00:09:04.740 governorship from, from Northam.

00:09:07.380 Also governorships are a lot harder to revoke from someone than would be, uh, the, their acceptance

00:09:12.940 to a, to a college.

00:09:14.640 Um, but that's not the point.

00:09:16.740 Harvard made its decision because of the relentless pressure placed on it by leftists

00:09:23.120 and the media.

00:09:24.800 Northam, on the other hand, survived his racism scandal because there was not that kind of

00:09:31.020 pressure.

00:09:31.340 Now, in the first couple of, of days after the blackface photo came out, you did have 0.99

00:09:36.780 Democrats issuing statements and condemning, uh, Northam and so on and so forth.

00:09:41.860 But you notice that, you know, within two or three days they moved on and they don't talk

00:09:46.080 about it anymore.

00:09:46.580 The media doesn't bring it up.

00:09:48.000 They don't bring it up.

00:09:48.780 They don't talk about it.

00:09:49.840 Um, why is that?

00:09:51.020 Well, I think number one, it's because he's a Democrat, but also when, when the, when the

00:09:57.160 blackface photo scandal first started, um, and Democrats were issuing statements, well,

00:10:05.180 they thought that, okay, we'll just get rid of this guy.

00:10:07.300 The Lieutenant governor is, um, is also a Democrat.

00:10:10.660 So we'll just get him in there.

00:10:12.560 Also Lieutenant governor is a younger guy. 0.86

00:10:14.460 He's a black guy.

00:10:15.380 Uh, we'd prefer him over Northam anyway.

00:10:17.380 So it was self-serving, but then it comes out that the Lieutenant governor is, uh,

00:10:22.460 multiply accused and credibly accused of rape.

00:10:25.880 And then the third in command, the attorney general comes out and admits that, uh, that

00:10:29.980 he also dressed in blackface as a, as a, as a younger man.

00:10:34.540 So then Democrats start realizing that, wait a second, you know, if we get rid of Northam,

00:10:38.600 um, for blackface, well, then we also got rid of, got to get rid of the attorney general

00:10:43.240 for blackface. 0.92

00:10:44.140 And then we've got this Lieutenant governor who's accused of rape. 0.99

00:10:46.840 Who knows where that's going to go.

00:10:48.220 Fourth in command is a Republican.

00:10:50.500 So, you know, we don't want to, we're just going to forget about, we're going to drop

00:10:54.020 this and forget about it.

00:10:55.600 That's why they moved on because they never cared about the blackface thing.

00:10:58.700 They never cared about the racism.

00:10:59.820 It was all self-serving.

00:11:01.180 And then they realized that it's not in their best interest actually to get rid of Northam.

00:11:04.640 The best thing is just to move on from this and pretend it never happened.

00:11:07.640 And that's what they've been doing.

00:11:08.860 Um, so it is, uh, selective outrage, of course.

00:11:17.620 Now, if we were interested in developing a more consistent approach to these kinds of

00:11:24.820 controversies, which I know a lot of people are not interested in that, but if we were,

00:11:28.720 I would suggest that we take a few things into consideration anytime we have one of these

00:11:33.180 controversies or scandals where offensive stuff from someone's past comes up, um, I think

00:11:40.180 we should take a few things into consideration.

00:11:41.340 Number one, how old was the person when they did or said the offensive thing?

00:11:47.840 Number two, did they do or say the offensive thing publicly?

00:11:51.940 Number three, were they public figures when they did or said the offensive thing?

00:11:56.520 Uh, Kyle was 16.

00:11:57.780 He said, or wrote actually the things privately.

00:12:01.940 He was not a public figure.

00:12:04.220 All three of these factors in my mind would seem to call for grace and forgiveness.

00:12:09.140 Northam was an adult.

00:12:10.920 Uh, his behavior was not private.

00:12:12.880 He did it in a talent show by his own admission, but he wasn't a public figure at the time either.

00:12:17.860 And it happened a long while ago.

00:12:20.520 Uh, so I can see an argument for letting Northam off the hook on this one, but I can't see an

00:12:26.540 argument for letting Northam off the hook while holding Kyle to account.

00:12:31.040 It seems that, that you only have the intellectual credibility to call for forgiveness for Northam.

00:12:35.700 If you also call for forgiveness for Kyle, there's no reasonable argument that can make

00:12:40.420 Kyle the bigger bad guy here.

00:12:43.280 You see, that's the problem.

00:12:44.160 Now for another comparison, consider Samantha Bee and Roseanne.

00:12:48.240 Okay.

00:12:48.880 Bee called Ivanka Trump a feckless C word on her show. 1.00

00:12:52.500 Roseanne compared, uh, Valerie Jarrett to the planet of the apes. 0.96

00:12:58.080 Both of these women, um, are adults.

00:13:02.520 Both made their comments publicly as adults in front of millions of people.

00:13:07.720 Both were public figures at the time that they made their comments.

00:13:11.800 Both should have known better.

00:13:14.640 Both put their employers in a, in a difficult position, um, by their own choices.

00:13:22.500 So there's a reasonable argument in five, in favor of firing both of them.

00:13:27.580 There is no reasonable argument in favor of firing Roseanne, but not Samantha Bee.

00:13:32.960 Yet again, that's exactly what happened.

00:13:36.100 Roseanne was punished.

00:13:38.040 Her career is destroyed.

00:13:39.840 Kicked off her show, which was the number one show on TV.

00:13:43.080 Uh, Samantha Bee is, is, uh, even though nobody watches her show in the first place and nobody

00:13:47.660 cares about her, uh, she still didn't lose her job and her career is not destroyed.

00:13:50.980 If anything, she actually benefited from that.

00:13:53.620 And, uh, and she has more credibility and street cred among leftists. 0.99

00:13:57.620 So why is that?

00:13:59.240 Well, of course, because Bee's a liberal, Roseanne is actually liberal too, but she's considered

00:14:03.960 a conservative by default because she likes Trump.

00:14:06.340 Um, and that's, that's all that matters in the end.

00:14:09.380 Really, that's all that matters.

00:14:10.580 But, you know, I think as I've, as I've thought more about this, um, with Kyle, you know, I'm

00:14:21.860 talking about his age and the fact that he wasn't a public figure, so on and so forth.

00:14:25.700 Um, I think that's, that is part of the point, but maybe that's not even the main point here

00:14:33.440 because I've been thinking over the last day, I, I know that the situation with Kyle having

00:14:39.160 his, his, uh, acceptance revoked, it makes me very uncomfortable.

00:14:46.260 And I'm trying to figure, I'm trying to put my finger on what exactly makes me so uncomfortable

00:14:50.340 about it.

00:14:50.920 I've already mentioned a few of the things.

00:14:52.300 And I know any liberal who's watching was, oh, it's only because he's a conservative.

00:14:56.240 That's why you're uncomfortable.

00:14:56.900 You wouldn't care if he was a liberal.

00:14:58.420 Well, that's just not true.

00:15:00.720 You know, I, I, Roseanne, as I said, I, when Roseanne was fired, I said, yeah, she probably 0.76

00:15:04.920 deserved it.

00:15:06.660 Um, so I don't make these, I, I don't personally, I don't judge these things on a partisan basis.

00:15:11.540 I don't care about that.

00:15:14.160 I'm looking for a more consistent way to evaluate these kinds of cases.

00:15:19.560 So the, the thing aside from age and all of that, uh, because I agree that the age excuse

00:15:26.960 does seem on the surface kind of weak considering he was 16 at the time, but he's 18 now.

00:15:33.560 So it's not like this was 25.

00:15:35.960 It's not like he's 30 now.

00:15:37.700 And it was, he was 16 at the time or 40.

00:15:39.520 That was only two years ago.

00:15:41.640 Um, but the gap between 16 and 18, uh, is actually very significant or can be.

00:15:47.580 It's much bigger than the gap between 33 and 31 between 16 and 18 because of in, in that

00:15:53.480 age, you're just growing a lot, uh, you know, physiologically there's a, there are a lot

00:15:57.680 of changes happening.

00:15:58.580 And so someone can have a transformative change between 16 and 18, whereas between 40 and 42,

00:16:05.140 that's going to be a lot less likely because you're kind of stuck in your ways at that point,

00:16:09.580 but you're not at 16, um, especially when you undergo a traumatic experience in the middle

00:16:15.780 of that.

00:16:16.840 But that's not really the point.

00:16:18.820 The point is this, the sorts of people who dig up dirt against their political or personal

00:16:26.840 rivals should not get their way. 1.00

00:16:31.160 The only reason we know about this with Kyle is because these private conversations were leaked

00:16:38.440 um, and they were leaked, uh, by, I guess, friends who don't like him anymore because of his

00:16:46.560 political advocacy and they were, and, and it was, it was, uh, these messages were, were

00:16:53.360 taken and, uh, and amplified by dirt merchants in the media and others who again are trying

00:17:01.140 to destroy Kyle because they don't like his politics.

00:17:05.820 And that to me is very relevant.

00:17:08.440 You know, I think the court of public opinion should in this regard operate a lot like a,

00:17:13.140 a court of law where we should treat ill gotten evidence as inadmissible.

00:17:19.320 Now I know it doesn't work that way because the court of a public opinion is not a court of law,

00:17:23.380 but I'm saying in this particular situation, I think it should.

00:17:29.320 If we only know about something because of a smear campaign against someone where private

00:17:34.160 conversations are being leaked in order to destroy them, I think, again, I know it will

00:17:39.440 never happen, but I think what we should do is say, it's, you know what? I don't want to hear that.

00:17:44.540 We have no business hearing that.

00:17:48.480 Uh, that's why I never actually thought that Northam should resign for the blackface photo. 0.60

00:17:51.880 I thought he should resign for publicly advocating infanticide when he was an adult and governor.

00:17:58.480 Now that's something that he did on the radio as a governor. Now that we can hold him accountable for,

00:18:03.500 but we should be very wary of dirt dug up from the past.

00:18:08.400 Because when the target of a smear campaign is destroyed, it's the dirt merchants who win. 0.99

00:18:16.640 Not justice, not tolerance, not inclusivity, raw vengeance and opportunism. That's what wins the day.

00:18:24.220 And I consider that a loss.

00:18:26.880 So when you think about Kyle having his Harvard acceptance revoked, who wins?

00:18:33.520 Well, the people who leaked this stuff and tried to destroy them, destroy him, they're the ones who win.

00:18:42.320 And I don't, I don't see how that's a win for society or for our culture or for anyone, except for those people.

00:18:53.660 I think it's best for society when smear merchants and dirt merchants lose. 0.87

00:18:59.320 I think it would be best for society when the dirt merchants come with dirt and they say, 0.97

00:19:05.800 oh, look at this dirt we dug up on this guy. And the rest of us go, yeah, you know what? I don't care.

00:19:11.240 That's, uh, you know, we had, that's, that wasn't meant for our ears. We weren't meant to see that.

00:19:17.180 And if you think that sounds unreasonable, well, well, how do you respond or how should you respond?

00:19:22.040 Um, and if you think that sounds unreasonable, well, how, how would you respond or how should you respond

00:19:29.500 if a gossip comes up to you when you're just on a personal level, let's say someone, you know,

00:19:34.240 who's very gossipy comes up to you and says, Hey, you're never going to believe.

00:19:37.520 Guess what I found out about it. You know, so-and-so, uh, guess what they said to, to, to, to, to,

00:19:42.780 to someone else, uh, two years ago. Listen to this. I got some dirt on this, but you want to hear this?

00:19:47.940 Um, now if you're someone who likes to engage in gossip, you might say, Oh yeah, give me the dirt.

00:19:55.060 Let me hear this. This sounds good. But I think we all know that the proper response to that is to

00:20:00.980 say, I don't want to hear it. Don't tell me it's not relevant to me. You have no business telling me

00:20:06.540 that. Um, I'm not going to engage in gossip. I don't want to hear it. I think most of us know that's

00:20:14.500 how we should respond to gossip is I don't want to, even if it's true, a gossip doesn't always mean

00:20:19.380 that it's lies or it's not true. It could, could be true. But most of us understand, even if we don't

00:20:26.320 follow through all the time, most of us understand that, uh, the, the way to respond to gossips is to

00:20:32.300 shut them down and say, I don't want to hear it. I'm not having this conversation. And so I think on a

00:20:38.840 public level, what we should, we should do basically the same thing and say, I don't want to hear that.

00:20:46.400 Um, and that's, so that's, that's what it comes down to for me is I don't like the fact that we

00:20:58.260 are emboldening people like this. All right. Um, here's, uh, here's something else.

00:21:08.660 Famous murderer. OJ Simpson is out of jail now. And, uh, and on Twitter, if you didn't hear,

00:21:17.240 he sent out a tweet a few days ago, announcing his arrival to the platform. Uh, and everyone

00:21:23.320 responded with disgust. Oh, people say, Oh, this is so gross. OJ Simpson is tweeting. Now he should

00:21:29.720 be in prison. This is disgusting. You know, Twitter's a cesspool. That's what everyone said, 0.97

00:21:33.640 but here we are two or three days later, and it will come as no surprise that OJ is still tweeting

00:21:40.220 and he now tweets to 700,000 followers. So while everyone pretended to be disgusted by OJ on Twitter,

00:21:49.100 700,000 of those people decided to follow him and think about what following someone on Twitter means.

00:21:55.900 It means that every time you sign on to Twitter, you want to see what this person is saying,

00:22:03.480 right? You want to follow them around in cyberspace and hear everything they're saying,

00:22:09.480 whatever thoughts happen to pop into their head. You, you want to hear it, whatever comes to their

00:22:14.500 mind. You want to have immediate access to it. Um, you want those thoughts posted in your feed so

00:22:19.980 that you can see them right away, a shortcut and 700,000 people so far want that kind of access to

00:22:28.760 OJ Simpson, a man who at this point is, Oh, now he's, he was a famous football player before this.

00:22:35.540 He was in Hollywood for a while, but the only reason he's really famous now, when you hear OJ

00:22:40.020 Simpson, first thing you're thinking is that he decapitated two people. Um, and, uh, and that's,

00:22:45.260 but people wanted to follow this guy. I just, the only reason I bring this up, I just can't think of

00:22:49.760 a better, and it kind of relates to what I was just talking about. Really. Um, I can't think of

00:22:55.880 a better encapsulation of our culture than this. And, or everyone pretends like, Oh, I'm so out as

00:23:03.680 OJ Simpson. I'm so outraged this guy. And then, and then all these people go, it's like, yeah,

00:23:07.740 but I'll follow him anyway. You know, I mentioned this on Twitter a couple of days ago and people

00:23:12.580 told me, well, I follow him so that I can be up to speed or, um, I follow him so that I can see what 0.99

00:23:18.920 crazy and stupid things he's tweeting. And you see, that's exactly the problem. First of all, 1.00

00:23:24.940 why do you need to be up to speed on what OJ Simpson is saying? We've got this culture now of

00:23:33.680 people feeling like they need to be in the loop, no matter what the loop is. Never stopping to think,

00:23:41.000 is this a loop that I actually need to be in or want to be in? How is my life going to be enriched

00:23:48.880 by this? Uh, how is this actually going to make my day better or, or my life better? We've got this

00:23:55.820 obsession with being informed that without any care for the relevance or the quality or importance of

00:24:02.320 that information. That's one of the reasons why when people talk all the times about, Oh, we need to be

00:24:06.960 more informed. People aren't informed enough. No, people are informed enough. People aren't formed

00:24:11.800 too much. Probably we live in the most informed, um, civilization ever in history without a doubt.

00:24:20.640 I mean, people have access to tons of information and people have tons of information bouncing around

00:24:27.460 their heads. The problem is that most of that information is useless and pointless,

00:24:32.880 and there's no reason why anyone needs to know it. And the problem also is that we have

00:24:39.740 information. We are informed rather than being knowledgeable and smart because there's a difference

00:24:48.000 between having knowledge and having information. Um, and then, and then people say, well, I want to

00:24:54.880 see crazy and stupid stuff that he tweets. Well, why though? This, this is a, this is a very unhealthy 0.99

00:25:02.380 impulse that we have. And it seems to be an insatiable appetite that we have for this way.

00:25:08.460 I want to have, I want to see all the crazy and stupid stuff. Do you not, do you really not already 0.99

00:25:13.360 have enough crazy and stupid in your life? Isn't there enough crazy and stupid out there? 1.00

00:25:20.180 You can turn on the TV anytime and see crazy and stupid. You can go anywhere on the internet and see 1.00

00:25:24.960 crazy and stupid. There's crazy, you can, you can walk outside of your house and see crazy and 1.00

00:25:29.920 stupid. You can maybe even look in the mirror if you're me and see crazy and stupid. Uh, so you 1.00

00:25:34.800 could see crazy and stupid anywhere. Do you really need more of it? But it really is an insatiable 1.00

00:25:40.500 addiction we have. It's like, oh, there's more, oh, more crazy and stupid. I need more. Yes, more, 1.00

00:25:44.700 more, more. We see, we see another source of crazy and stupid and we've got to get our fix. We just 1.00

00:25:51.020 need to, we need to surround ourself by it all the time. Why is that? I don't get it.

00:25:55.660 Well, I do kind of get it. I think it's, um, I think we want a lot of crazy and stupid in our life 1.00

00:26:03.860 because number one, it's just distraction and it prevents us from having to think or contemplate 0.99

00:26:12.820 anything. And I think number two, it makes us feel better about ourselves. It makes us feel smarter.

00:26:19.480 It makes us feel more sane, more rational, but that's the thing. Is it really smart, sane, or rational

00:26:26.580 to go seeking crazy and stupid stuff and immerse yourself in it? No, you see that is both crazy and 1.00

00:26:36.320 stupid. So in our efforts to make our felt selves feel better for not being crazy and stupid, we have 1.00

00:26:44.680 actually become crazy and stupid. That's the moral of the story. Um, sounds like a, an ASAP's fable or 1.00

00:26:53.860 something like that. Okay. I have one more, uh, thing to mention here. If I can, I'm just stalling for a

00:27:04.620 minute as I, as I pull it up. Okay, here we go. So on the website, queertee.com, that's the name of the

00:27:13.440 website. Not a website I checked very often, but, uh, it's been, it's been, uh, this, this certain

00:27:18.960 article has been all over social media. The headline of the article is trans poet, Joss Charles

00:27:27.000 rearranges the alphabet to survive its ferocity against her body. I feel like I should read that

00:27:34.640 against because it might've been confusing. Trans poet, Joss Charles rearranges the alphabet

00:27:41.000 to survive its ferocity against her body. And, uh, and then this, uh, so it's an article about

00:27:48.740 this poet who is rearranging the alphabet. I'll read a little bit of the, of the article for you.

00:27:53.220 Speaking of crazy and stupid, you see all the topics now are just blending into each other. This is, 0.98

00:27:58.040 this is pretty, pretty good what I'm doing. I hope you appreciate. Um, it says, uh, Charles has reworked

00:28:05.140 the structure of language to capture the trans experience, establishing her as one of the most

00:28:10.440 promising poets of her generation. Charles combines a deep understanding of poetic traditions with her

00:28:16.760 own personal experience to create works that address gender and identity issues in a unique and

00:28:22.460 moving way. Her second volume of poetry field name of the name of the poetry book is field. That's 0.96

00:28:29.500 F E E L D not felt field creates a language resembling middle English to challenge our

00:28:37.780 limited vocabulary to describe the trans experience. In the process, Charles has won praise as one of the 0.63

00:28:44.540 most important young poets today and the appropriate recognition field was chosen by the New Yorker as

00:28:50.340 one of the best poetry books of 2018 field challenges readers and not just because of the language it is

00:28:56.680 at once lyrical and pointed here. Here's a couple of lines they give us from the poetry book. Uh,

00:29:04.000 here's, here's a line. Did you know not a month goes by a tran? I know doesn't die. 1.00

00:29:11.820 And that's a U spelled with just the letter U no spelled K N O a month spelled M O N T H E and by spelled B Y E.

00:29:22.460 And then, uh, some more lyrics here. Gender is not the tran or gain. Gender is yes, a hemorrhag. 0.93

00:29:34.340 Well, that just, that doesn't mean anything. That's just, that's, that's literally just nonsense. I 0.97

00:29:38.100 don't know. Gender spelled G E N D R E or gain spelled O R G A N E. I don't even know. I don't know what

00:29:45.300 that word is. This is a made up word. Um, and, uh, anyway, it's, uh, it, it, it goes on from there.

00:29:53.800 You know, uh, this is, there's so much that can be said about this, or maybe there's not much. Uh, it's just,

00:30:04.140 it's just utter nonsense, but you see a few things happening here. Number one, we see the continued

00:30:11.980 disintegration of language of poetry of art, uh, where something like this, this gimmicky, ridiculous, 0.92

00:30:22.800 nonsensical garbage is named, you know, one of the poetry or this person, one of the poets of the 0.68

00:30:30.060 year, poetry of the year, whatever it was. Um, but you also find, here's what jumps out at me 0.96

00:30:36.340 is we can't lose sight of this. It's the incredible arrogance of this person of, uh, of, of the left,

00:30:51.560 especially of gay activists, trans activists. You know, this person is saying, Oh, you know what? 0.72

00:30:58.120 The regular language isn't good enough for me. Regular language. I mean, there are, there are

00:31:02.960 thousands of words in the English language. It just doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't capture my

00:31:06.780 experience. My experience is so transcendent and so beautiful. It's so, so deep and perplexing and

00:31:14.260 wonderful that there's just no, I have to invent new words for it. And even regular words that already

00:31:21.200 exist, you know, that it's beneath me to use those words. I am going, I'm going to, I'm going to

00:31:25.220 rearrange the letters because that's just, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's for, that's for the

00:31:29.720 plebes. You know, that's, that's for the, that's for the peasants to use word, regular words. And I,

00:31:34.100 I need new words. That's really what's going on here. It's just incredible arrogance that you find.

00:31:43.460 I'm, I'm so constrained by the alphabet. You know, I have lived my whole, I've lived 32, well now 33

00:31:51.540 years of life because it is my birthday, by the way. I don't know if I mentioned that. Um, I've lived 33

00:31:55.700 years of life and I have been able to express everything I've wanted to express using the

00:32:01.400 regular alphabet and regular words. I, so I, and, and just everyone I know has been able to do that.

00:32:05.740 Almost everyone in the world has been able to do that. And, uh, but not you, of course, you need,

00:32:10.780 you need special words. You need special words. Not because everything needs to be special for you

00:32:15.920 because you're so special. All right. Uh, let's move on to some emails. Matt Walsh show at gmail.com.

00:32:27.120 Matt Walsh show at gmail.com. Um, this is from Peter says, Matt, I think I caught you in an

00:32:33.500 inconsistency. You say that you think people have the right to burn the flag because it's free speech,

00:32:39.480 but you've also previously said that you think pornography should be banned. I know those two

00:32:44.460 things are not the same, but how can you be a free speech advocate with one and not the other

00:32:48.800 yesterday? It seemed like you were taking a free speech absolutist position, but your previous

00:32:53.160 statements reveal, uh, that you are not a free speech absolutist. How do you explain the contradiction?

00:33:00.000 Yeah. We talked about yesterday about the burning the flag issue. I said, it's free speech. I have

00:33:03.260 said in the past that I think porn should be banned. Um, so that's a good point. You know, that's a,

00:33:08.120 that's a, a good thing to bring up. Did you catch me in a contradiction?

00:33:14.460 I don't think you did. Um, and let me, let me explain the difference.

00:33:22.520 I think when deciding whether something is covered by, by free speech, we need to consider two things.

00:33:30.740 All right. Number one, is the thing in question speech? Okay. In order for it to be free speech,

00:33:38.860 it has to actually be speech is the primary point of the thing in question to convey a coherent message,

00:33:48.880 right? That's what speech is. That to me is speech. It is conveying a message. That's speech.

00:33:56.540 So if someone is arrested for, uh, you know, for instance, urinating in public,

00:34:00.960 well, they can't claim free speech because the primary point of urinating is not to convey a message.

00:34:07.840 Okay. You're not trying to get a message across when you urinate, you're just doing it because you

00:34:11.440 have to. Um, so that's not free speech. It is speech. Um, in my mind, even if it doesn't involve

00:34:21.900 spoken or written words, if the people who witness it can see it and say, okay, okay, yeah, I get the

00:34:29.920 message. So, uh, that's why I think burning the flag is speech, but we'll get to that in a second.

00:34:40.780 So then the second thing to take into consideration is does the speech in question cause real active

00:34:46.440 harm to other people? So this is why slander is illegal because yeah, slander is speech. It conveys

00:34:53.440 a message, but the point of the speech is to cause direct and intentional harm to another person.

00:35:00.420 And so that's why it's illegal. Okay. Now let's, let's apply this is burning a flag speech.

00:35:08.040 Yes. I think obviously it is. We all know it is because that's exactly why people are against it.

00:35:14.300 You're against it because you hate the message that it sends. This is what I was explaining yesterday.

00:35:18.460 Now, if you see someone burning a flag, it's, it's not the simple act of burning a flag that you

00:35:23.380 oppose, right? Because you could burn a flag for good reasons. You could be disposing of the flag.

00:35:28.540 That's a proper way to dispose of a flag. So it's not the burning of the flag. You have a problem with

00:35:32.360 it's the message that's being sent. That's what you have a problem with. And that's what everyone

00:35:37.920 says. Everyone says, Oh, you know, you, you burn the flag. It's a, it's a symbol of a, you're

00:35:43.000 showing ingratitude. You're, you're, it's a disgrace to our country. You're spitting all over the 0.93

00:35:46.920 sacrifice that our troops made. I agree that yes, that's what it does. But so, but you get the

00:35:52.820 message, right? So it is conveying a message. You clearly understand the message. Now I don't agree

00:35:58.160 with the message. It's a bad message. It's a stupid message. Uh, it's an offensive mess, but it is a

00:36:03.180 message. So it is speech in the same way on the opposite end. If someone flies a flag, we all understand

00:36:13.140 the message they're sending. They're saying, I love America. I'm proud to be an American. We all

00:36:17.180 get that. We know that's the message. We all understand that burning the flag is the opposite

00:36:23.700 message. We all get that too. Is pornography speech? I would say no. What message is being

00:36:34.460 conveyed by two people having sex? If you watch a guy burn a flag for two seconds, you know exactly

00:36:40.860 what he's trying to say. If you see two people having sex, what are they saying? What message

00:36:47.240 are they trying to send you? Um, what ideas are they expressing? Now you might say that the sexual

00:36:56.940 relations in the, the, the, the couple, the people having sex are conveying a message to each

00:37:02.440 other. Um, but that's not pornography. Pornography involves the third party witness, right? So what

00:37:10.780 message is being conveyed to that third party witness, I would say there is no real message.

00:37:17.380 And if you say that porn is speech, then you also have to say that prostitution is speech,

00:37:22.400 but prostitution is illegal almost everywhere in the country. And most people agree, unless you're a 0.99

00:37:27.400 hardcore libertarian, you agree. The prostitution should be illegal where porn and prostitution

00:37:31.680 are the exact same thing. It's transactional sex and it's sex, um, uh, uh, for money, which is 0.92

00:37:39.600 transactional sex. That's what pornography is. That's what prostitution is. The only difference 0.99

00:37:44.460 between prostitution and pornography is that in pornography, the prostitutes are being filmed. 0.81

00:37:50.300 So, I mean, if you film a prostitute, is it all of a sudden not prostitution anymore because you're 0.97

00:37:55.240 filming it? That's absurd. Obviously it's prostitution because you're paying the person to have sex 0.99

00:38:00.300 in pornography. These are people who are being paid to have sex or are even if they're not being 0.80

00:38:06.420 directly paid, they're somehow probably gaining money from it, um, profiting from it somehow.

00:38:14.900 So that's why I think it's not speech. It's prostitution and prostitution is not speech. 1.00

00:38:20.020 It's a transaction. Um, and that's not necessarily the same thing. Number two, harm. What harm does burning

00:38:28.820 a flag cause to any person? Provided it's done safely, it doesn't start a forest fire. What harm is done?

00:38:35.060 Um, if you see a person burning a flag, it makes you angry. You're upset by it. You oppose it.

00:38:42.060 Does it harm you? I mean, are you really traumatized by it? Be honest. Like you see a guy burning a flag.

00:38:48.120 I know it really pisses you off as well. It should. All right. Is it going to affect the rest of your,

00:38:53.260 you'll be so traumatized by the, by witnessing that you can barely move on with your life.

00:38:57.160 No, it doesn't, it doesn't traumatize people. It doesn't scandalize the public. It doesn't cause

00:39:02.000 people to become anti-American. In fact, if anything, it galvanizes people the opposite

00:39:06.760 direction to defend America. Um, whereas with pornography, I would argue that, uh, it absolutely

00:39:13.360 does cause real harm, especially to kids. Kids suffer real trauma from their exposure to pornography.

00:39:23.760 It causes real damage psychologically to people. It has a real effect on your brain, which is lasting.

00:39:33.140 And that's to say nothing of the harm the porn industry does to those in it. When you look at

00:39:37.820 the suicide rate, the drug abuse rate, the STD rate, uh, within the porn world, you see that it causes a lot

00:39:42.560 of harm to everybody involved. And so that's why I think you could argue for banning pornography,

00:39:49.580 but not flag burning. All right. This is from, uh, Maggie says, hi, uh, my name is Maggie. I'm an

00:39:56.240 18 year old from Wyoming. I'm a new listener. And the first show of yours that I happened upon

00:40:01.920 was one in which you claim that adding sour cream to eggs was the best way to achieve the perfect

00:40:06.960 breakfast. I didn't realize, I didn't believe this in the slightest, but after listening to a few more

00:40:11.780 of your shows, I realized that I agree with you on almost everything else decided that your culinary

00:40:15.460 options opinions may also be something that I agree with. After trying it, I concede that you are,

00:40:21.100 uh, the Supreme leader in the kitchen as well. Keep up the good work. This is from Dallas,

00:40:27.800 Matt. I'm always looking for better recipes. So I tried your scrambled eggs recipe the other day,

00:40:31.880 uh, that I heard on your show. I don't know if you came up with that yourself or not,

00:40:36.440 but I don't think I'll ever find a better plate of scrambled eggs than the glorious manna.

00:40:40.500 I just finished eating. Thank you so much for sharing that. And if you have any more gems like

00:40:44.660 that one, I'd love to hear them. This is from Brian. Salutations, future theocratic dictator,

00:40:50.360 overlord of this realm and any other realm and had a bit of inhabitable by human beings.

00:40:54.200 I want to start this email out by saying that I have no culinary experience whatsoever.

00:40:57.800 I'm a notorious egg burner. After listening to your podcast and your recipe for fluffy scrambled eggs,

00:41:02.500 I decided to give it a shot. I went to the grocery store, picked up butter, not milk and sour cream.

00:41:07.180 I did everything according to your explanation and Eureka breakfast was served and it was amazing.

00:41:13.720 I managed to not burn the eggs and ruin Sunday breakfast as well. My girlfriend and I

00:41:17.480 started calling the recipe huevos a la Walsh. Anyway, thank you again and keep up the amazing podcast.

00:41:25.340 Those are just, that's a small sample of the emails that I got, um, extolling the virtues of my

00:41:33.860 scrambled egg recipe, which I shared on the show a couple of days ago. And if you missed it,

00:41:39.720 you have to go back and, uh, and find it. But, um, I really did. I think I did change a lot of

00:41:46.340 people's lives because so many people have been making scrambled eggs incorrectly and humiliating

00:41:53.780 themselves and all of mankind by serving up burnt, crispy, disgusting flakes of eggs that they call

00:42:02.960 scrambled eggs. No fluffiness, no flavor. Um, so many people have been doing this. So I decided to

00:42:10.960 finally share the proper scrambled eggs recipe. And, uh, anyway, those are just some of the reviews.

00:42:15.960 That's all. All right. Uh, let's do one more. This is from Jasmine says, uh, Matt, since you're a

00:42:23.800 Christian, I wanted to, I wanted to ask you a question that's been nagging me. As you may know,

00:42:29.600 in Acts, uh, four 32 through 35, it says now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart

00:42:35.620 and one soul, neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had

00:42:40.160 all things in common. And with great power, the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the

00:42:44.080 Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all. Nor was there anyone among them who lacked for all who

00:42:49.920 were possessed possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of the things that were

00:42:54.640 sold and laid them at the apostles feet. And they distributed to each as anyone had need. Although I am

00:43:00.540 a capitalist, I read this and see the redistribution of wealth in the early church. Does this mean that

00:43:06.200 the Bible advocates for socialism? Uh, Jasmine, no, that doesn't mean that it's socialism because notice

00:43:13.280 one element at play choice. The early Christians chose to live that way. This is not socialism. That's the

00:43:21.260 opposite of socialism. Socialism is, is compelled by the state. The state comes in, takes charge,

00:43:26.740 uh, takes what it wants, redistributes. That's what socialism is all about. What you find there

00:43:32.560 are people who choose to live a certain way. Personally, I'm a huge critic of socialism, but I

00:43:38.360 think it's great when people share, when they help less fortunate, when they give to charity, when they,

00:43:42.600 uh, live simple lives. I'm a big fan of that, but I just think people should choose that.

00:43:48.540 And so that is, that's free market. It's free. People are living how they want to live,

00:43:56.280 doing what they want with their own money. Um, by the way, why doesn't the Bible call for a giant

00:44:05.500 welfare state? Well, I think for one thing, God knows that the government, the governments are

00:44:10.520 corrupt. And so when you give them too much money and too much power, horrible things are going to

00:44:14.700 happen as we have, as we have seen play out with socialist governments over the last 100 years or

00:44:19.780 so. Um, but even more importantly, uh, what's the point of sharing? What's the point of giving to the

00:44:28.580 less fortunate? What's the point of helping those in need? Is the point to cure poverty? Well, no,

00:44:34.920 because Jesus said, we're always going to have the poor with us. In fact, to even encourage people to

00:44:39.700 be poor. So I don't think Jesus saw poverty as necessarily a problem that had to be solved.

00:44:47.520 Yet he did tell us to give to the poor. Um, so how do you, how do you square that? Well, I think that,

00:44:56.340 um, the answer is love, right? That's really the point. When you stop on the street and you give some

00:45:04.780 food to a homeless person. Yeah. He gains a meal. Okay. And which is a very practical and necessary

00:45:10.880 and good thing, something that he needs to live, but he also benefits from the act of love. Um,

00:45:20.760 you are extending a hand, you are lifting him up. You are noticing him as a human being.

00:45:27.300 You are making him feel more human. And in turn, he makes you feel more human by accepting your charity

00:45:35.680 graciously and with gratitude. And I think that's the real point that love is the point. The point is

00:45:45.100 to love your fellow man, to let them know that they are loved, to build them up with love. Um, and,

00:45:54.900 and that's it. And that is lost. That's completely lost when the government does it because nobody

00:46:02.440 feels loved by the government. Nobody is humanized by the government. Nobody is lifted up by the

00:46:08.380 government. The opposite is true to the government. You're a number, you're a figure, you're a statistic.

00:46:13.280 So that's why, one of the reasons why people get stuck on welfare and never get off of it because

00:46:17.900 it's dehumanizing. It's depressing. It's, it's, uh, it just makes you feel like a, like a number. Just,

00:46:24.320 they, they, they, they throw an EBT card at you. They, they, they, they send you a check,

00:46:28.360 whatever. They don't care about you. You're dealing with bureaucrats and bureaucracy. Bureaucracy

00:46:33.780 doesn't care about you. It doesn't look at you like a person isn't concerned about you.

00:46:40.800 Um, yet an individual person who chooses to help you. Well, that is someone who's,

00:46:49.680 you know, that, that is when you feel the love as it, as it were. Um, so I think that's the

00:46:57.300 difference and, uh, we will leave it there. Thanks everybody for watching. Godspeed.

00:47:03.140 Hey everyone. I'm Andrew Klavan, host of the Andrew Klavan show. What Harvard did to pro-freedom

00:47:21.140 activist, Kyle Kashuv sucks. And if you make excuses for Harvard, you suck. But then the truth is 1.00

00:47:27.100 Harvard isn't Harvard anymore. Just like the New York times isn't the times and Disney isn't Disney.

00:47:31.980 These once great institutions are just the skins of their former selves being worn by an alien being 1.00

00:47:38.280 named leftism. We'll talk about it on the Andrew Klavan show. I'm Andrew Klavan.

The Matt Walsh Show - June 18, 2019

Ep. 278 - When The Smear Merchants Win, We All Lose

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