The Matt Walsh Show - June 18, 2019


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


Episode Stats

Length

47 minutes

Words per Minute

170.90996

Word Count

8,154

Sentence Count

566

Misogynist Sentences

10

Hate Speech Sentences

12


Summary

A conservative activist has his Harvard acceptance rescinded because of bad things he said to his friends privately two years ago. The dirt merchants who dug up dirt on him for political reasons win again. Also, OJ Simpson has joined Twitter and 700,000 people are following him. And finally, a trans poet is rearranging the alphabet. We ll talk about that today, also on the Matt Walsh Show.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a conservative activist has his Harvard acceptance rescinded because of bad things he said to his friends privately two years ago.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.
00:04:28.720 Um, let's just suffice it to say, if you haven't seen them, they are gross, stupid, racist, but
00:04:36.520 they were also the comments of a high school boy joking around with his buddies and trying
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
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.
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.
00:10:44.140 And then we've got this Lieutenant governor who's accused of rape.
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.
00:12:52.500 Roseanne compared, uh, Valerie Jarrett to the planet of the apes.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
00:18:59.320 I think it would be best for society when the dirt merchants come with dirt and they say,
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,
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
00:23:18.920 crazy and stupid things he's tweeting. And you see, that's exactly the problem. First of all,
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
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
00:25:13.360 have enough crazy and stupid in your life? Isn't there enough crazy and stupid out there?
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
00:25:24.960 crazy and stupid. There's crazy, you can, you can walk outside of your house and see crazy and
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
00:25:34.800 could see crazy and stupid anywhere. Do you really need more of it? But it really is an insatiable
00:25:40.500 addiction we have. It's like, oh, there's more, oh, more crazy and stupid. I need more. Yes, more,
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
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
00:26:03.860 because number one, it's just distraction and it prevents us from having to think or contemplate
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
00:26:36.320 stupid. So in our efforts to make our felt selves feel better for not being crazy and stupid, we have
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
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,
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
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
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.
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.
00:29:34.340 Well, that just, that doesn't mean anything. That's just, that's, that's literally just nonsense. I
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,
00:30:22.800 nonsensical garbage is named, you know, one of the poetry or this person, one of the poets of the
00:30:30.060 year, poetry of the year, whatever it was. Um, but you also find, here's what jumps out at me
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?
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
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
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
00:37:39.600 transactional sex. That's what pornography is. That's what prostitution is. The only difference
00:37:44.460 between prostitution and pornography is that in pornography, the prostitutes are being filmed.
00:37:50.300 So, I mean, if you film a prostitute, is it all of a sudden not prostitution anymore because you're
00:37:55.240 filming it? That's absurd. Obviously it's prostitution because you're paying the person to have sex
00:38:00.300 in pornography. These are people who are being paid to have sex or are even if they're not being
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.
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
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
00:47:38.280 named leftism. We'll talk about it on the Andrew Klavan show. I'm Andrew Klavan.