Ep. 39 - What Conservatives Can Learn From The Roseanne Implosion
Episode Stats
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Summary
Roseanne has been fired from ABC for a racist tweet about a former White House advisor, Valerie Jarrett, who is in fact a black woman, and a former Muslim Brotherhood member of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes.
Transcript
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So let's talk about Roseanne for some reason. Roseanne, as I'm sure you've heard, has been
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canceled because Roseanne, the person, went on a bizarre, deranged tweet storm that included a
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racist tweet. And it was a really racist tweet. I mean, actually racist. There's a definite boy
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who cried wolf thing that goes on with racist claims where everybody's accused of being racist
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and everything is racist and so on and so forth. But in this case, there's a wolf. There's a real
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wolf here because this was actually racist. Roseanne tweeted, this was her tweet,
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Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby, VJ, as in VJ was the baby. And VJ refers to
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Valerie Jarrett, who's Obama's former White House advisor, and she's a black woman. Now, some
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conservatives on Twitter have really embarrassed themselves by trying to defend Roseanne on the
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basis that Valerie Jarrett is not actually black. And so it's not racist to say she's from Planet
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of the Apes, but she is definitely actually black. And I mean, I've even seen, I've seen people
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passing around photos of Valerie Jarrett where she, where her skin has been lightened in the photo
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through Photoshop in order to defend Roseanne. I mean, this is just, it's really pathetic.
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She's not only is she a black woman, but she's clearly black. There's not, it's, I, I'm no Rose,
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I'm not a Valerie Jarrett biographer. Okay. Well, I know very few things about her. In fact,
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what I just said is everything I know about her. I know she was a former White House advisor and she's
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a black woman. And I know that she's a black woman because I've seen her. And if you do actually
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investigate her, her lineage, you'll find that both of her parents were black. So she's, and in fact,
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she apparently even has her maternal grandfather was a prominent black architect or something like
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that, I believe. So she's, she's definitely black and no way around it. Roseanne said that,
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and she's obviously black and Roseanne said she's from Planet of the Apes. And she was also now to put
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this in fully in context, Valerie Jarrett was also born in Iran. So you've got a black woman born in
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Iran and Roseanne says that she's the love child of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes.
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That is super, super hyper racism on steroids. That's, that is the, if that's not a racist comment,
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then it is impossible to make a racist comment. Racist comments don't exist. If that is not a
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racist comment, I don't know how else to put it. There's no justifying that there's no claiming it's
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not racist. It is. Okay. And it's not, this is one thing people are not playing a gotcha game with
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Roseanne where they're jumping on some innocent comment and trying to make it. No, this is, she
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said that a black woman's from Planet of the Apes. And so, you know, just don't say that it's a really
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easy thing to not say, right? Most of us can go through our whole lives and never say that a black
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person's from Planet of the Apes. It's a really easy thing to not say. And if you don't think it,
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if you don't think that way, then you probably would never say it. And especially should be easy
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as for, for Roseanne as a, whatever, 65 year old wealthy multimillionaire prominent woman who's
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getting paid millions of dollars from ABC to do a show. I think ABC expects her to not go on a public
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forum and say racist stuff. And that's not a, that's a, that's a pretty reasonable expectation.
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Just don't do that. Don't say that. Why would you say that? You've got hundreds of people that
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are reliant on you for a job. Think about all the people that work on Roseanne and now they're out of
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a job, not because of ABC, but because of Roseanne, because she's mentally unbalanced and selfish.
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And so she can't control herself. You know, this is her fault. 100%. The firing makes a lot of sense.
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I'm sorry, guys. This is not a, uh, it's not a free speech issue. Roseanne is not a martyr. Okay.
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She's not being persecuted. She brought this entirely on herself. 100%. Roseanne, because she's
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loony, put her employers in a position where they had to choose. This is, this is the position that
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her employers were in. They had to choose between defending slash minimizing her statements, comparing
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a black woman to the planet of the apes. On one hand, they could do that. And this is a major company
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in the year 2018, reliant on sponsors and advertisers. And so they're thinking they can
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get in that corner. Okay. And try to make that argument to die on that hill, or they could
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just fire her. And they chose the latter. And you know something that's a perfectly sensible
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thing to do. And I'll tell you this, if it were my employee and I'm paying them millions
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of dollars and then they go on a public forum and say crap like that, I would definitely fire
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them. I wouldn't even have to think about it. Of course you're going to fire them. It's
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not my responsibility as an employer to defend you on that. It's your responsibility as someone
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getting paid millions of dollars by me to not embarrass me like that and to not cause
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a PR nightmare where I could lose millions of dollars. It's your responsibility to not do
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that. And you couldn't even fulfill it. So get out of here. You're done. Any sensible business
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person will make the same decision. And I know you're going to say, well, she millions of people
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are watching her show. She's got a great, you know what? They're going to find another show
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that's going to do fine. And most of the people that are saying they're going to boycott ABC and
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Disney, they won't do it. They just won't. You know, if there's another show, most of the people
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right now say, I'm done with ABC. If Roseanne's not on ABC. Yeah. You know what? If ABC has a show
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next week announces a new show and you think it's interesting, you'll watch it. Everybody's going to
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just watch, you know, people just, if people want to watch something, they're going to watch it. It
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doesn't matter now. And, and, and by the way, just, just to say one thing, I think this is
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important. It would be different. I think it would be different if let's say Roseanne had made a comment
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like this a long time ago, she'd made a joke like this. And, um, somebody went on a dirt digging
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expedition and dug this up to try to destroy her. And they, you know, went sifting through
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and they went through the effort to go find this thing from a long time ago and use it against her.
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And let's say that were to happen. And then this is brought to the forefront and Roseanne's
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embarrassed and she apologizes and she says, yeah, that was a long time ago. I regret it. You know,
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I made jokes like that. I've grown since then. I'm not that kind of person anymore. I'm, you know,
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I'm an old, I'm a 65 year old woman now. Um, this is, that's not who I am anymore. If that's
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how it had gone, then I would probably be on Roseanne's side. I would say, look, you know,
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you can't, people make mistakes. It was a long time ago. And, uh, she, she's moved on since then.
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She's grown. So no, I don't think you should take her past sins and hang them around her neck,
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but that's not what happened. This is something she just said yesterday publicly in front of everybody.
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And she's, and she's making excuses for it now. Now she says that she was on Ambien and that's
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why she said it. So she has not taken, she said it publicly yesterday and, um, she won't even take
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ownership of it. She refuses to take ownership. She's saying that she was on Ambien and that's
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her excuse. So, you know, what can you do? Um, this is, you have no choice, but to just fire her.
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Now, I think this story serves or should serve anyway, as a cautionary tale for conservatives
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and to understand why let's back up for a moment. Okay. Let's back up to the,
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let's, let's go back to the nineties. Okay. To understand, to get the full picture in the full
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context. So in the nineties, Roseanne was one of the most left-wing sitcoms in the history of American
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television, if not probably the most left-wing. In fact, um, at the time it promoted abortion,
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it promoted gay marriage. It was blatant in its agenda and ahead of its time in that regard.
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Now it's not so unusual to find shows that promote those things, of course, but, uh, back then it was
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unusual. So Roseanne was not, uh, not only a leftist sitcom, but it was a radically leftist sitcom
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and it was ahead of the curve in terms of its leftism. So that's the show. Then it ends
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and Roseanne, the person goes on to become a far left political activist. She runs for president as
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a socialist. She's an avowed socialist. She champions left-wing causes. Um, she was so mad
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at Chick-fil-A because it's CEO supports traditional marriage that she tweeted a few years ago. And I
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quote anyone, anyone who eats crap filet. Well, she didn't use crap. She used the S word. So anyone
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who eats Chick-fil-A deserves to get cancer. Anyone who eats Chick-fil-A is deserves to get the cancer
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that is sure to come from eating antibiotic filled tortured chickens for Christ. So she tweeted
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just to recap there. Okay. Uh, she tweeted that, that the Christian conservatives who eat Chick-fil-A
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deserve to get cancer. And then when she was criticized for this, she lashed out at the Christian
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liars who were attacking her. She never actually apologized for the tweet. And in fact, what she
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did is she backtracked and she made an excuse and she later claimed, okay, she later claimed that she,
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she wasn't saying that anyone deserves to get cancer. What she was trying to do was she was
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trying to warn us of the, um, of the, the negative health effects of eating fast food. She was trying
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to warn us of the health impact of eating fast food. That's what she was claiming that tweet was
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about. So she has a pattern of not only saying vile, disgusting things, but of refusing to take
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ownership of them and refusing to have the moral courage to own them and to apologize for them.
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And instead coming up with lame, ridiculous, uh, excuses, the kind of excuses that a 12 year old
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would come up with. That's the pattern of behavior for Roseanne that goes back years.
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And then there's a few years of this kind of, so just remember, by the way, um, if you're a Christian
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conservative and you, and you like Chick-fil-A, you support traditional, traditional marriage,
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and you also love Roseanne. Just remember that she wants you to get cancer. That's what she said.
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So she thinks you should get cancer. That's her opinion about you. So I don't know. I mean,
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that maybe is a relevant point. A few years of this stuff continues. And then during the 2016 campaign,
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Roseanne randomly says that she likes Trump of all the things that she's rambling about
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nonsensically. That's one of the things that she happens to say, although her left-wing
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convictions still remain intact, she likes Trump. And suddenly this woman who has spent a career
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spewing far left lunacy all over the place and promoting and mainstreaming far left ideas,
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this woman who has wished cancer on Christian conservatives now becomes a hero of conservatives
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simply because she likes Trump. And then the new show was announced. And in the first episode of
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the new show, there's a storyline involving a cross-dressing nine-year-old. So there's no,
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it's not like she has a change. She's had a change of heart and she's changed and she's grown and the
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show is going to be different now and everything. And, and this, what used to be a far left show is now
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going to be a conservative family value show. No, it's still far left. It is still actually ahead
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of its time and it's far leftness. Cross-dressing nine-year-olds on a family sitcom is still unusual.
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So again, Roseanne is ahead of the curve on, on, on the leftism, but still conservatives,
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some of them anyway, champion this show in spite of the gross perverted sexualization of children,
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all because Roseanne likes Trump. That's it. That's all it takes. Every, nothing else matters.
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She just likes Trump. And some of the people that have this attitude, they said, well, I've forgiven
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Roseanne. It's, it's forgiveness. No, it's not forgiveness. If she didn't like Trump, you wouldn't
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be saying any of the stuff you're saying right now. Be honest. Don't tell me it's because you've
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forgiven her. It's because she likes Trump. It's the only reason. If everything else stayed the same
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with Roseanne, but she didn't like Trump, you'd hate her. You wouldn't be, you wouldn't be watching
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the show. You wouldn't support her. It's only because of the Trump thing is that's the only
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reason. That's it. So then that happens. And then Roseanne proceeds to say racist stuff. So
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what did conservatives achieve by latching onto a celebrity who happened to utter one thing they
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agreed with? What did conservatives achieve? Nothing. I'm afraid to say they embarrassed themselves.
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That's what they achieved. They embarrassed themselves. We are embarrassed now. And somehow
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you've got this far left person who says something racist. And now suddenly we have to take ownership
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of that. That's our thing now when it shouldn't be. This is a far left comedian. Why is, why is this
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our thing? Becomes our thing? Because for some ridiculous reason, we latched onto her.
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And so we're embarrassed. And that is generally what happens when conservatives, you know, with
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conservatives and their desperate, sad, pitiful celebrity infatuation. This is generally what
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happens. Whenever we cling on to any famous person who says one single thing we agree with,
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we end up looking stupid. And whether it's because Roseanne says something racist,
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or because we invite Clint Eastwood to the Republican National Convention, and he yells at a chair
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for 45 minutes, we always end up looking ridiculous. And so maybe we should stop doing this.
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You know, maybe, maybe, maybe it's, we should look at a different strategy. Here's the problem.
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I think we seem to believe, and I keep using the word we, I realize I, I'm talking about conservatives
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generally, of which I guess I am a part, although conservatism is, is now such a meaningless term
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that I, I don't even know how I can associate myself with it. But just for the sake of argument,
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I'm talking about conservatism generally. So here's the problem. We seem to believe that the way to
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defeat the left is to copy it. That's what we're doing. We're, we are like the pitiful little,
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um, sad little, uh, little brother, you know, who, who sees his older brother and just imitate,
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starts dressing like him and imitates everything he does. And so we treat the left like our older
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brothers. And so we're just copying everything they do. And then pretending that we're beating
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them somehow that way. You see, we beat the left by becoming them. Ha ha. You didn't see that coming,
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did you? So we see that they have a bunch of celebrities on their side. And we think that
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well, that means we need to get us some celebrities, but the problem is that they have
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cool celebrities on their side. Okay. They have like LeBron James and we have Roseanne who isn't
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even really on our side. And we have, uh, we, we have Roseanne and we have, uh, I don't know,
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James Woods and one of the Baldwin brothers, I think, and Scott Baio. Okay. Those are, those are our
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people. The liberals have all the cool ones. And we have, uh, this is our collection of, uh,
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of misfits that we, that we've, that we've brought together. So it doesn't work. We aren't
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going to beat the left at its own game. We aren't going to out celebrity them and we should stop
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trying. Now it's, it's one thing. Don't confuse what I'm saying here, because if we do find a piece
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of pop culture art, like a film or a television show or music or whatever, that really does effectively
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convey a truthful, essential message, then we should champion it. We shouldn't go overboard.
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We shouldn't become groupies, but we should support it. But Roseanne is emphatically not that show.
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First of all, it's just a bad, it's a stupid show. Second, it's, it's a vehicle for left wing
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values. That's what it's always been and still is or was anyway. So it's not in any way, the kind of
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thing that we should be supporting. It's not, this, this is a vehicle for left wing values, not for
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conservative values, whatever those are at this point. On the rare occasion that we get something
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like a movie or a show that is, that is really different and champions what we might call
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conservative values, quote unquote, then I think, yeah, we should support it. Just an example is my
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wife and I just, a couple of nights ago, my wife and I went to see the movie, A Quiet Place, which I
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think has, and, and, you know, it's been out for a while now, it's very popular movie. And I agree with
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what many other people have said about the film, that even though on one level, it just seems like
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your standard sci-fi horror film, it actually, I think, has some very profound and beautiful
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pro-life, pro-family, pro-faith themes. And on top of that, it's just a well-done, effective,
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skillfully crafted and executed film. And it's also entertaining. And so in that case, yeah, I think we go
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support a movie like that. A movie that shows this family bonded together by faith, the man in this
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protector role, the woman as a strong but feminine character, you know, that's something that I think
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we should support. So I do think that pop culture and movies and film, they are, they are a very
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powerful way to get across a message. But the problem comes when we latch on to literally any pop
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culture property, that even vaguely sort of dimly echoes a few right wing talking points. That's the
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problem. We just end up discrediting ourselves and we come across in the meantime, also, like we have
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horrible taste, which I don't think helps our case either. But the point remains, we are not going to win
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the culture with celebrity, especially not with these celebrities, okay, especially not with Roseanne.
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But we won't win with celebrity regardless. Even if we had some of the cool ones, we still wouldn't,
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we still wouldn't win that way. I think we win the culture. If it's going to be won at all,
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we win it by being radical and firm in our convictions. We win by being authentic, genuine,
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thoughtful, intelligent. We win by sticking to the truth, by being adults, okay? We don't win by
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debasing ourselves, by desperately defending whatever racist crap Roseanne says. That's not
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how we win. We don't win anything. We just make ourselves look ridiculous and we convince precisely
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no one. What exactly is being won by rallying around Roseanne? What does that achieve at all?
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What are we helping? Who are we convincing? Now, you might say, you might say, well, truth and dignity
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and moral values, they haven't won yet, Matt. They're losing. So what are you talking about? You
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can't win that way. Yeah, they haven't won because so few of us actually care about those things or fight
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for them. That's why they haven't won because we've given up on them. We haven't even tried to
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fight for them. Most of us don't even try to fight, but we've just given up. Most of the things,
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when it comes to being really pro-life and pro-family and pro-marriage, most so-called
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conservatives have given up on that. They don't even try to fight for it. And then they rationalize
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and they reason and they say, oh, it's because it's a failure. It's not winning. Well, you haven't
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even tried. Why don't you get up and fight first? Why don't you give it a shot before you tell me
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it can't be done? Before you surrender, why don't you actually get up off of your butt and actually
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try to fight for these things? Don't sit there and tell me that it's not working or it can't win that
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way. And let me tell you something. If we have actually gotten to a point in our culture where
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truth and morality and dignity can't win, well, then it's done. We're finished in that case. And
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so what's the point? Then at that point, you may as well retain your own dignity for yourself and your
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family. You may as well hold on to that and worry. And, you know, if everything's collapsing all around
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us, then you may as well hold on to your own dignity and your own moral sense because it's all falling
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apart anyway. And there's no advantage in just abandoning that at the last moment.
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And we also have to ask ourselves, you know, what does it mean to win? We keep using this phrase,
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winning, winning. Well, how do we win? I don't think we win by winning is not electing Republicans.
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Plenty of Republicans have been elected over the last many decades, and yet the culture is still on the
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trajectory that it's on. I think we win fundamentally by building a culture
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culture that is grounded in objective truth, moral values, and faith, and fortified by strong
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families. That's what it means to win. There's no other winning. That's winning. Whether or not that
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can actually be achieved at this point, I don't know. I'm a little bit pessimistic in that regard, but
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if we're going to go down, I'm going to go down swinging. I don't know about you.
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But that's what it means to win. That's what we should be fighting for. And the way this ties
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into Roseanne is that defending Roseanne and latching on to Roseanne and these dumb celebrities,
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that doesn't help advance that cause at all. In fact, it undermines it. It hugely undermines it.
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Especially when you're latching on to celebrities who for the last many, many, many years of their
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career have only been contributing to the cultural decay, which is what Roseanne has spent her entire
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career doing and is still doing. She is a part of the problem. So pray for her. Yes. But don't stand
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in her corner. All right. And there's, you know, look, there's better shows out there anyway. There
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aren't a lot of good shows, but there are a few decent ones. So maybe watch one of those. And
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if there's ever a time when we turn on the TV and there are no good shows and it's just a bunch of
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trash, well, then we could turn the TV off and read a book. You know, that's, that's also an option.
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I think a very worthwhile option as well. So thanks for watching. Thanks for listening, everybody.