The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 408 - Another Media Narrative Falls Apart

00:00:00.000 All right, great to be back and start another week. Not really, but sort of. I hope you all

00:00:04.600 had a great, a wonderful weekend. I'm not sure if you noticed, but the Women's March happened 0.95

00:00:09.880 this weekend. And the hilarious thing is that nobody seems to have noticed and no one seems

00:00:15.800 to care, which is unfortunate, really, when you think about it, because I don't mean to make light

00:00:20.020 of it, but you think of all those cats that were left alone for the day. And I'd hate to think

00:00:23.760 that they were left alone for no reason at all. Attendance for the Women's March has been, of

00:00:29.500 course, plummeting every year since the first year in 2016. And there was a big deal made of the huge

00:00:36.200 turnout in 2016. Well, 2017, it was lower. 2018, even lower. 2019, last year, there were, I think

00:00:42.940 the estimates I saw is about 700,000 people showed up. But that is including all of the 650 local

00:00:50.100 protests that happen across the country. Add all of that together, 650 plus the big one in D.C.,

00:00:55.020 you get to around 700,000. Pretty paltry turnout when you consider the number of protests that were

00:01:01.300 being held. Now, it's interesting, I think, to compare this to the March for Life. The Women's

00:01:09.260 March couldn't, which the March for Life, which, by the way, happens this coming Friday. Women's March 0.93

00:01:14.060 couldn't sustain itself for even three years. The March for Life, on the other hand, has been going

00:01:19.300 strong for 40 years and consistently pulls half a million people at just one march, just into D.C.,

00:01:26.940 not at 600 different locations. The difference, I think, why is it that the March for Life can

00:01:33.540 sustain for 40 years or more while the Women's March essentially lasted one year and has just been

00:01:41.020 dying a slow death ever since? I think there's a few differences. First of all, the March for Life has

00:01:46.320 a clearly defined purpose and goal, whereas the Women's March, well, nobody could ever really figure 0.97

00:01:51.260 out what exactly these people wanted or what they're so upset about. We know they don't like

00:01:55.040 Trump, okay, we get that, but is there anything else? Is there any actual injustice that they're

00:02:00.960 trying to fight against? And then the other thing is that the March for Life is full of young,

00:02:07.660 vibrant, energetic, positive people. And if you go to the March for Life, that's the first thing,

00:02:13.300 if you've never been, it's the first thing that jumps out at people when they go is, number one,

00:02:17.400 everybody's so young here. Number two, everyone's so happy. They're determined. There is a certain

00:02:26.540 righteous anger at the injustice of abortion, but there's also an optimism and positivity there,

00:02:33.980 as opposed to the Women's March, which is full of, well, this.

00:02:38.680 The patriarchy. Donald Trump. Mike Pence. White supremacy. Racism. Misogyny. Homophobia. Transphobia.

00:02:53.120 Capitalism. That's, you know, an angry, bitter 50-year-old woman in neon hair shouting obscenities 1.00

00:03:00.940 into the void is really the perfect encapsulation of modern feminism in the year 2020. That's what 1.00

00:03:09.040 feminism is right there. What you just saw, that's it. That's all feminism's got. And it's also the 1.00

00:03:15.240 perfect encapsulation of why nobody wants anything to do with these people and why no normal person

00:03:20.340 would want to show up at a march with them. And that, I think, brings us to the biggest difference

00:03:25.000 between the March for Life and not just the Women's March, but most other political rallies that you

00:03:30.980 see. The big difference is that the people at the March for Life are there to defend the rights of

00:03:39.700 other people. Okay? Nobody is there for a selfish reason. Nobody is there demanding something for

00:03:45.640 themselves. There's not anything wrong in principle with, you know, rallying or marching to defend your

00:03:52.600 own rights. Nothing wrong with that. But I think it's, it always seems profound to me and pretty

00:04:01.160 beautiful that at the March for Life, that's not what people are doing. They're not defending their

00:04:05.140 own rights. They're defending the rights of other people. Everyone is there to speak for and on the

00:04:10.960 behalf of humans who cannot speak for themselves. It is then a fundamentally selfless event, and it's

00:04:18.440 precisely, I think, what motivates and attracts people to it. Ironically, or maybe counterintuitively,

00:04:26.020 the fact that you're not going for yourself is exactly why people want to go.

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00:05:59.920 Now, okay, so I really want to begin today with...

00:06:07.820 I guess it's too late to begin. I've already started. But I want to talk about a story that

00:06:11.820 went viral last week, but that's already been abandoned by the media, certainly, and by most

00:06:17.740 people. We've moved on to other things, and this is the game that the media loves to play.

00:06:22.960 They send a story massively viral, get everybody talking about it, or talking about rather one

00:06:28.480 version of it, and plant that version into people's heads, and then move on. Move on quickly,

00:06:34.260 and especially move on quickly, once the real facts start coming out. Then you're... It's not...

00:06:40.040 No, you're dropping that to the side and saying, oh, look over here. There's something else to talk

00:06:46.020 about. Here's another... Point to another shiny object for people to focus on, so that the impression

00:06:51.540 of the story you gave them stays in their heads at the back of their mind while they move on to

00:06:56.600 something else. And usually, I think people in my position let the media get away with this game,

00:07:02.860 following their lead, about what to talk about, because we don't want to be seen as discussing

00:07:07.580 yesterday's news or being irrelevant. Fortunately, though, I don't especially care about being

00:07:14.820 relevant. Irrelevancy doesn't bother me that much. So I want to go back to ancient history of five days

00:07:22.120 ago and discuss this. You may remember seeing this story online about a girl who was supposedly

00:07:29.140 expelled from a Christian school simply for having a rainbow cake on her birthday. That was the 1.00

00:07:36.620 narrative. Narrative is very simple. Evil Christian school expels innocent student for something as 0.63

00:07:43.960 silly as a rainbow cake. Evil Christian school is so paranoid and so homophobic that even something as

00:07:50.900 innocuous as a rainbow decoration on a cake sends them into a tizzy. That was the story. Now, to refresh your

00:07:58.480 memory, here are some of the headlines from the mass media about this story. NBC. Christian school expels teen

00:08:06.340 after rainbow sweater and cake were deemed lifestyle violations. Huffington Post. Kentucky teen expelled from

00:08:13.800 school for rainbow shirt and cake, mom says. The Today Show. Christian school expels teen after she

00:08:20.460 poses with rainbow birthday cake. Washington Post. Christian school expels teen after she posed with

00:08:26.400 rainbow birthday cake, mother says. CBS. Christian school expels teen for rainbow sweater and birthday

00:08:32.480 cake that violate, quote, Christian values. So you get the idea. Some of these headlines at least put on the

00:08:40.920 little addendum of mother says or according to mother. Some of them don't even put that on there.

00:08:46.520 They just they just report it as fact. CBS just reports as fact. This kid was expelled for this

00:08:53.520 reason. Now, let me actually take one of these articles, the CBS one, and I'll read to you how they

00:09:00.820 frame the story in the article. It says a teenager from Kentucky celebrated her 15th birthday last month by

00:09:07.940 blowing out the candles on a rainbow cake while wearing a rainbow sweater. After her mother posted

00:09:13.080 a photo from her birthday party on Facebook, the teen was expelled from her Christian high school.

00:09:18.240 Kayla Kenny was a freshman at Whitefield Academy, a private Christian school in Louisville,

00:09:22.400 until she was expelled last week. Her mother said the school called her daughter's sweater and cake

00:09:27.580 lifestyle violations. Kenny's mom, Kimberly Alford, told the Louisville Courier-Journal that she received an

00:09:36.120 email from Whitefield Academy's head of school, Bruce Jacobson, expelling her daughter. He wrote

00:09:40.440 that the picture she posted on Facebook demonstrates a posture of morality and cultural acceptance

00:09:45.740 contrary to that of Whitefield Academy's beliefs. While the rainbow flag is a symbol of LGBTQ rights,

00:09:52.420 Alford said that when she ordered the cake, the design was described as having assorted colors and was

00:09:57.720 not meant to have a deeper meaning. Wow. Pretty horrible, right? I mean, it seems horrible.

00:10:04.360 If you're frankly stupid enough to still take these kinds of stories at face value, which unfortunately

00:10:11.140 lots of people are, it seems. But there is no excuse to be that stupid anymore. There is no excuse to be

00:10:18.020 so gullible as to hear some kind of outrageous accounting of an event from the media and assume

00:10:27.040 that it must be exactly as the media portrays it. And that's in fact what I said last week when

00:10:32.360 somebody emailed the show and asked me what I think about this story and, you know, what's my take

00:10:39.400 on it. I said, well, based on the version the media is giving us, sounds like this girl suffered a

00:10:46.300 horrible injustice. But I'm not going to simply believe that version. Yes, that version says that

00:10:54.220 the school did a horrible thing. But that version, I'm not going to believe because there's almost

00:10:59.340 certainly another side to the story. And sure enough, there is another side to it. And we'll

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00:12:39.520 the parts available for your car or truck. Write Walsh in there. How did you hear about us box so

00:12:44.340 that they know that we sent you. Now, the other side of the rainbow cake story, which by the way,

00:12:54.320 you know, why have cakes become the most controversial pastry in America? I remember a time

00:13:04.340 when cakes were just cakes. You know, you just have a cake. But now it's every six months,

00:13:10.280 there's an outrage centered around a cake, which I think is very upsetting. I want to go back to a

00:13:14.420 time when, you know, a cake is just a nice, delicious dessert that you eat. But in any case,

00:13:20.000 Rod Dreher in the American Conservative has a fascinating piece posted on the website right now

00:13:26.200 titled Rainbow Cake Girl, The True Story. You could go read the piece. And he gives the other side.

00:13:31.960 He talked to some of the people at the school. He also looked at the social media postings of the

00:13:39.060 girl in question and read the public statements from the school on this matter. And he presents

00:13:45.260 a different picture. Now, I'm not going to go through and reiterate all of it. You can go read

00:13:49.220 the piece yourself. Suffice it to say, first of all, that she was not expelled simply for a cake.

00:13:54.940 The cake thing was the last straw in a long line of infractions, including some that her mom even 1.00

00:14:00.800 admits to, like vaping in school, for example. But there were many other issues, according to the

00:14:06.080 school and other parents at the school. So to report that she was expelled for the cake

00:14:11.340 is inaccurate. It's a lie. If somebody commits a series of infractions, and the sum total of which

00:14:18.980 gets them expelled, and then you come along and say that the last infraction in the series is the

00:14:25.600 thing that got them expelled on its own, then that's just not true. That's dishonest.

00:14:31.800 Second point, according to Dreher's piece, the cake was not just a random cake. Allegedly,

00:14:39.160 one of the main bones of contention that the school had with this girl is that she, at the school and

00:14:43.820 on social media, had constantly been promoting the LGBT lifestyle. This is a Christian school

00:14:50.300 that believes in the biblical teaching on homosexuality. And everyone who goes to the 0.96

00:14:56.000 school agrees in writing, you know, by signing on to the rules of the school, agrees to affirm

00:15:03.800 that biblical teaching, or at least to not publicly contradict it. Now, if you disagree with the school's

00:15:13.300 view on homosexuality, that's fine. You don't have to agree. Just, you're free to go to any other

00:15:21.980 school. Just don't go to that school. It's really simple. This is what, every time we get one of these

00:15:28.420 controversies with someone's expelled from school because of some LGBT thing, just don't go to that

00:15:34.400 school. There are so many other schools. And this is a private school also that you have to pay for.

00:15:39.520 You can go to public school if you want, or find a different private school. Trust me, there are a

00:15:45.260 lot of Christian schools out there who don't care at all about their Christian identity, and they'll 1.00

00:15:49.600 throw open the doors for you. Or you can homeschool. I mean, there are so many options. If you choose

00:15:58.280 to go to this particular school, you are signing on to those rules. So, allegedly, this family agreed,

00:16:06.640 signed on the dotted line, then proceeded to disregard the agreement they made as this girl

00:16:14.160 allegedly went around promoting LGBT stuff at school and online. And then after all this back

00:16:20.240 and forth with the school and the school's repeated warnings, she posts a picture of with the rainbow

00:16:26.080 cake and the rainbow sweater. And we're supposed to believe that the rainbow aesthetic in this case

00:16:32.200 was totally arbitrary and random and not at all meant to symbolize anything. Come on.

00:16:40.360 Now, of course, if the media had reported this story honestly, and just said that a student was

00:16:49.960 expelled from a Christian school for promoting the LGBT lifestyle, which actually would not even be

00:16:55.160 fully honest, because there's more to the story even than that, but that's at least more honest.

00:17:01.160 If they had done that, that still would be considered a controversial and bigoted move by a lot of

00:17:06.540 people. So the media could have still ginned up outrage and contempt towards this school, which is

00:17:13.560 really what they were trying to do, what this was all about. Could have done that by being mostly

00:17:17.480 honest. In other words, the real story in a lot of people's minds these days isn't much better than the

00:17:24.400 fake story that the media originally gave us. Which, you know, fine, be that as it may, the truth

00:17:32.240 matters. And the right of a private school to have a certain identity matters. And the responsibility

00:17:39.200 of students and parents to abide by the rules they agreed to upon entering the school matters.

00:17:46.440 You don't have to agree with the school's moral position on homosexuality, but you should be able to

00:17:51.380 see that students and families don't have the right to enter into a private school and then openly

00:17:57.600 flout, blatantly disregard the rules and policies they expressly promised they would follow. And that's

00:18:05.660 what's happening here. Now, one other thing I want to say about this, you know, personally, I'm always

00:18:16.540 uncomfortable talking about stories like this. You know, I don't want to be publicly discussing

00:18:24.900 a 15-year-old girl's sexuality or her views on sexuality or anything like that, or her problems

00:18:32.880 at school, or the fact that she was expelled. I think all that is her business. It's between her and the

00:18:41.700 parent and the school. Um, and I'm not in the business of publicly shaming children who make

00:18:46.920 mistakes. But this is the situation that the media and the, and the parents create. Okay. It's the

00:18:54.140 parents who decided to bring this issue to the media and to air their grievances against their school

00:19:01.200 to the national media, um, to publicize their daughter's situation. And it's the media who blasted

00:19:09.900 this story all over the place. And then, you know, the rest of us who would rather not talk about it

00:19:14.760 are left with a decision. Are we going to ignore it and let a false narrative metastasize? And even

00:19:22.520 at the expense of the school and its administrators who are being unjustly smeared, are we going to do

00:19:27.860 that? Or are we going to speak up for truth and for fairness? If the latter, which is what I

00:19:34.820 favor, um, then we're forced to discuss aspects of a kid's private life, which again is entirely on the

00:19:42.360 parents and the media for creating this situation. Because really, you know, we're so used to this

00:19:51.000 these days, this kind of thing that I think we don't even, we don't even, um, give it a second thought

00:19:56.180 anymore. But you know, there's no reason taking all the LGBT stuff out of it. I mean, whatever a girl 0.81

00:20:06.240 gets expelled from her school. There's no reason why that is national news. No reason, no reason why

00:20:14.020 NBC and CBS need to be covering it. No reason why thousands, hundreds of thousands, if not millions

00:20:20.820 of people online need to be chiming in. It's not national news. It has no national relevance.

00:20:27.360 Um, this is something that happened in Louisville, Kentucky. And if you don't go to that school and

00:20:32.300 you're not in that community, uh, it has no relevance to you, doesn't affect you. Um, you, you have no

00:20:39.460 insight into the situation because it is, it's, it's, it's a, it is a controversy between individuals

00:20:45.500 in a particular place. So you don't know anything about the situation. You can't know anything about

00:20:50.820 it. You couldn't possibly have anything worthwhile to add. And so that's why this shouldn't be national

00:20:58.620 news. And that's why in the past, prior to the internet, we would never hear about something

00:21:03.020 like this. If you were in the community, you'd probably catch wind of it. But certainly if you

00:21:09.020 went to the school, you would, you would know about it. But then that's okay because you're close

00:21:13.900 to it. You're close to it. So it, it does affect you in some way. Um, it's certainly something that

00:21:20.000 you're around and you might actually have some insight into it because you know the people

00:21:23.620 concerned and you know, all that kind of stuff. But if you were, you know, if this happened in

00:21:29.020 Louisville, Kentucky and you were living in Jersey city, you just never hear about it. And you would

00:21:35.380 go about living your life. But now these personal, um, issues, these small localized personal issues

00:21:46.200 become national news and everyone butts in. And, um, and it just, it, nothing good can come of it.

00:21:57.180 And that's why it frustrates me. It makes me angry, especially to see parents encouraging this.

00:22:02.000 Even if you think that your kid is in the right, even if you think your kid's a perfect little

00:22:06.680 angel, um, why would you want, why would you want millions of people to know about this?

00:22:17.700 See, if it were me and, and my kid were expelled from school, I'm certainly not, I'm not going to

00:22:22.940 put it online. Uh, I'm, I'm certainly not going to publicize it myself. And if the media comes to

00:22:28.060 me for some reason and asks me about it, I'm going to have no comment. I'm going to say,

00:22:31.360 leave us alone. This is, you know, what do you, this has nothing, this doesn't concern you, CBS.

00:22:38.780 All right. Let's, um, let's read some emails. By the way, while I put, I, um, while I pull up

00:22:47.860 these emails, I, uh, I wanted to mention, I watched the force awakens with my kids on Saturday.

00:22:55.220 Um, first time I've seen it. Um, I, I think it's maybe a known fact about me at this point that

00:23:02.420 I'm not a big star Wars fan, but my sons are major into star Wars now. I don't know how it happened.

00:23:07.980 I tried to shield them from the fate of becoming a star Wars fan, but it, it, I, it, against my

00:23:15.260 wishes, they become obsessed with star Wars. It's like something, it's like almost something

00:23:19.700 evolutionary, something clicked in their minds. And all of a sudden they're running around the

00:23:23.460 house with lightsabers. Um, and, uh, which side note to the side note on Friday, my, my son says to me,

00:23:30.760 he says, daddy, I want to be a, I want to be a Jedi when I grow up. And I said, oh, you know,

00:23:36.080 me too. I might not be a big star Wars fan, but I, I'd love to be a Jedi. And he said, but you're

00:23:41.240 already grown up and you're not a Jedi. And I said, yeah, yeah, that's true. Daddy, you failed.

00:23:51.460 Yes, I did. In so many ways, son. In so many ways. Kids always know how to lift your spirits like

00:23:56.820 that. But anyway, um, so I watched the movie and, uh, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm at the age of 33 now and

00:24:04.620 I'm, I'm just now getting acquainted with the star Wars universe. So I have only two questions I wanted

00:24:08.760 to throw out there. And maybe you can email your answers to me because I really am curious. Um,

00:24:14.920 first of all, and this was bugging me the whole time I'm watching the movie.

00:24:18.800 Are people drawn to the dark side because they want to wear the cool helmets and masks?

00:24:24.140 I've noticed a real deficiency with the good guys when it comes to cool helmets and masks.

00:24:31.180 Why is it that only the bad guys wear them? It seems like anyone could wear the,

00:24:36.480 and they wear them when they don't need to. You've got like storm troopers walking around the ship,

00:24:42.200 you know, on friendly territory. And there's apparently the ship's oxygenated so they could

00:24:47.320 take the helmet off, but they're, you know, they're in the break room having some coffee and

00:24:51.120 they've got the helmet still on. So, um, but, and I get it cause it looks cool. It just,

00:24:55.660 it's a cool look. And I'm, my thing is the good guys, they could probably, I mean,

00:25:02.340 Kylo, uh, you know, uh, Kylo Ren, right? The whole reason he went to the dark side is honestly just

00:25:08.820 that he wanted to wear a cool helmet and he wanted to look like Darth Vader. That's the whole reason.

00:25:13.360 There's the only reason he became a bad guy is because he wants to wear the cool costume.

00:25:16.700 So you could, I think the good guys could really stop that from happening and kind of stop the

00:25:23.420 bleeding as it were, losing all these Jedis to the dark side. If, if someone just ran to Party 1.00

00:25:28.240 City and grabbed some costumes and then they could say to somebody like Kylo Ren, no, no, no, look,

00:25:33.660 we got costumes too. You know, you want your own costume, you want to design something, that's fine.

00:25:38.240 We've got people that can make costumes. And then my second question, and this, this really,

00:25:43.580 this, this bugs me the most. And this honestly might be one of the main reasons I never got into

00:25:48.400 Star Wars. What I don't understand is this. It's, you're, you're in a galaxy with extraordinarily

00:25:56.520 advanced technology. We're talking so advanced that, that just your average commuter ships can

00:26:03.720 go the speed of light. The Millennium Falcon is, is in a junkyard and it can go the speed of light

00:26:10.660 or go, go faster. Not only that, but is it, Han Solo crashes the ship in the Force Awakens,

00:26:17.860 crashes it while going the speed of light and no one even gets a bruise.

00:26:24.880 So these are ships that are, can not only go that fast, but are made of some kind of material that

00:26:30.080 is literally indestructible. That's the kind of technology you have. On top of that, you got

00:26:35.420 robots that have, that can pass the Turing test. They're conscious. See, C-3PO appears to be

00:26:40.360 conscious, right? He has thoughts and feelings. Okay. Really advanced technology. And yet you're

00:26:47.000 using swords. I mean, a lightsaber is a glorified sword. It's a laser sword. All of this technology

00:26:53.900 and you're using a sword to fight people. You're telling me you couldn't come up with a weapon that

00:26:59.180 would make that sword irrelevant. And if a guy comes at you with a laser sword, you could just

00:27:05.020 shoot him, right? And that'd be the end of it. Now I know you're going to say, oh, well, they could

00:27:07.740 block the, well, you see in the movie, they block the lasers with their sword. Yeah, that's because

00:27:11.420 the laser guns, the lasers that come out of the lasers and the laser guns are super slow. You see

00:27:16.260 how slow those lasers are? They go at the speed of a nerf, of a nerf bullet. At most, they go the speed

00:27:22.880 of a fastball, of maybe a minor league fastball. And that's why they're so easy to block. And everyone

00:27:28.320 gets on the stormtroopers case when they say, and I've heard this before about how that's, you know,

00:27:31.720 the joke is the stormtroopers can't hit anybody. And they got the worst aim in the galaxy. But the

00:27:37.700 reason is that the lasers are going so slow, so they're easy to dodge. So why not make a gun with

00:27:44.320 a laser that goes the speed of an actual laser? And in lieu of that, just get a regular gun, like a

00:27:51.800 sawed-off shotgun. And you could kill every Jedi in the galaxy, no problem. So that's my thing. I

00:27:58.700 just, I don't get it. It would be like if I made a story about a future world with super advanced

00:28:06.500 technology where, you know, everybody in their home has a 4D, 50 feet TV screen that's about the,

00:28:13.960 you know, is about the width of a postage stamp and all, you know, holograms and virtual reality.

00:28:19.960 Yet, we're still using VHS tapes. It just doesn't make any sense. And it bothers me.

00:28:26.840 All right, let's go to emails. This is from mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.

00:28:34.220 This is from Jonathan, says, future Supreme Overlord Walsh, I was listening to your podcast

00:28:38.180 today about forgiving student loan debt and how it is conceptually no different than forgiving any

00:28:42.700 other kind of debt. But why does having debt make someone more deserving? I don't see how a person

00:28:47.720 taking on debt for things he, she can't immediately afford and paying it off later makes him slash her

00:28:54.920 more deserving than a guy who made decisions to save money up front and only bought things he could

00:29:00.200 already afford so he wouldn't have to take on debt in the first place. Why wouldn't the logic for

00:29:04.800 forgiving student loan debt make literally everything free from the government? Your future

00:29:09.900 subject, Jonathan? Well, yeah, Jonathan, that's exactly the point. There's no reason to favor,

00:29:16.940 to give a special privilege or benefit or entitlement to people who haven't paid off their student loan

00:29:23.560 debt. And that's what we were talking about on Friday. First of all, a lot of people have debt

00:29:31.000 in this country. Most people do. Most adults do. Whether it's car loan debt or credit card,

00:29:36.140 mortgage. I mean, most people have all those things. And if, so if you're going to start

00:29:40.720 forgiving debt, why not forgive that? Or yeah, I mean, why not, why not go the other way? If you

00:29:45.680 got a, if you got a trillion bucks to, to throw around, why not reward people who already paid off

00:29:50.100 their debts? So that's just one of the problems with the student loan forgiveness idea. This is from

00:29:57.560 Laura says, hello, Matt, Supreme Leader of the world. I come to you to have my husband's bacon judged.

00:30:02.980 He says that today it is perfect, but you as the all-knowing will be able to tell me if it is or

00:30:08.660 not. I have attached a picture for you. Okay, Laura, perfect bacon, you say? Well, pride cometh

00:30:18.020 before the fall, but let's see here. Let's take a look at it. This is the, let's take, let's put the

00:30:23.140 picture up on the screen. This is the supposedly perfect bacon. There it is. Okay. So I think I get it

00:30:30.980 now. Your husband meant that this is the perfect example of terrible bacon. I think that's what he

00:30:36.820 meant to say. I'm going to assume that's what he meant to say because that would make sense in that

00:30:42.680 context. Yeah. Okay. So the coloring is okay. The actual cook on the bacon is okay. I'm not liking the

00:30:50.440 color at the top left corner there. You see that bacon, that piece is much darker than the rest. So

00:30:56.220 the incongruity, the lack of symmetry there is very troubling to me. Then at the very bottom,

00:31:01.820 you've got that horizontal piece that looks sickly and looks like it has yellow fever or something.

00:31:07.980 So that's a problem. But all of that, you know, would only knock this bacon down to about a C plus.

00:31:15.060 So if I'm just going based on the cook and the color, I'm going to say C plus. Not bad,

00:31:20.520 also not great. The thing that drops it the rest of the way to an F and becomes grounds for deportation

00:31:28.360 is the most obvious thing of all is the mangled, twisted, contorted shape of the bacon itself.

00:31:35.260 So what was your husband doing? Was he torturing the bacon to get it to talk? I mean, it's already

00:31:40.280 dead. Someone let him know. There's no, there's, it doesn't have anything to tell him. What did the

00:31:45.100 bacon do to him that made him feel like he had to draw and quarter it?

00:31:50.520 You know, when someone puts bacon down in front of me, I expect to see strips of bacon,

00:31:57.920 strips of bacon, not mangled clumps of bacon, a perfectly shaped strip, neatly sitting there,

00:32:05.740 politely waiting for me to eat it. Okay. I want to see bacon that is proud.

00:32:12.580 I don't want to see bacon that's begging me to put it out of its misery. That's my problem.

00:32:16.720 Now, I, uh, I assume that when you saw this bacon by your husband, your immediate response was to

00:32:24.420 contact a divorce, a divorce attorney. And I don't blame you for that. And I'm not saying that it

00:32:30.380 would be wrong to divorce your husband for making bacon like this. Um, I mean, certainly legally,

00:32:36.420 ethically, biblically, you, you would be well within your rights, but look, you got to think about the

00:32:41.780 kids, Laura, if you have kids, if you don't, then, then get out of there as fast as you can.

00:32:46.640 If you do, um, you don't want to leave them with a man who prepares breakfast this way.

00:32:52.540 And so I'm, you know, I'm, I'm sorry that you're going through this in your marriage.

00:32:56.000 Um, I, and I, and the other thing is I don't blame your husband. I blame whoever taught him

00:33:01.900 how to make bacon, that monstrous person. And now I fear that he's going to pass that down to his own

00:33:07.820 children. And it's like a curse that will never end. Let's put a stop to it. All right.

00:33:14.920 Glad we could have this talk. Uh, this is from Trinity says, hi, Matt, random topic. Have you ever

00:33:20.560 taken the MBTI personality test? What is your opinion on this type of test? Yes, Trinity, the,

00:33:28.120 uh, Myers-Briggs personality test. I did take it and I failed. I got an F minus on the personality

00:33:33.640 test. Um, no, actually I haven't taken it at all. I, I have no interest in taking it. Honestly, um,

00:33:41.620 I don't understand this obsession people have with, with taking tests to find out their personality.

00:33:48.740 Like, don't you know your personality? Isn't that the one thing you know most of all in the world

00:33:54.040 is who, you know, I mean, you are a better authority on your personality than anyone else

00:34:01.660 could be. So is it possible that a multiple choice test could provide better information

00:34:07.800 about your personality than direct access to your mind could? But this isn't really about

00:34:14.800 information. I realize, um, I don't think people take these personality tests for information

00:34:19.820 about themselves. I don't think anyone takes it because they really want to learn something

00:34:22.780 about themselves. I think they take it for confirmation. They want to have a certain

00:34:28.740 personality, uh, personality trait or a certain personality, generally speaking. And so they take

00:34:34.440 the test to find out if they do or to find out that they do. Because I'm sorry, I don't believe,

00:34:40.540 I've seen the questions they ask on these personality tests. I don't believe anyone takes

00:34:45.660 them honestly. I think you, you kind of know what personality you're shooting for. And so

00:34:51.040 you're going to give the answers that will get you that personality. Uh, so it's more, if anything,

00:34:57.000 it's a test to find out what kind of person you wish you were. Um, maybe there's some value

00:35:02.900 to that. I don't know, but it's, it definitely doesn't tell you who you are. It tells you what

00:35:06.280 you wish you were. And, um, that's why I find most of the time when someone takes a personality

00:35:11.300 test and if I know the person and they tell me what their result was, I'm all as an objective

00:35:19.400 observer, I'm always thinking, really, that's your personality. Are you sure? Because as someone

00:35:25.020 who has no stake in the matter and I'm not rooting for them to have any personality, you

00:35:28.260 know, any particular personality trait, uh, I can really see it as wishful thinking because

00:35:33.320 it's always like, yeah, you know, I took the test and it told me that I'm an assertive

00:35:37.440 leader, but also thoughtful, but also sociable and intelligent and mysterious. Okay. So you're

00:35:45.100 James Bond. Basically the personality test told you that you're James Bond. What a coincidence

00:35:49.060 that you, it turns out you're the coolest person ever. You're the most interesting and deep and

00:35:54.840 thoughtful and you know, yeah, what a, what a huge, what, what good for you. Um, my other

00:36:01.740 issue with personality tests is maybe a more relevant problem is that I just reject the

00:36:07.720 whole premise of them. I don't, I don't think that a personality can fit neatly into one of

00:36:12.820 a few standard types because the, the, uh, the Myers-Briggs test, that's the one that has

00:36:18.240 all the, like the INTJ or whatever, right? So there are, they've got a stable of, of several

00:36:26.900 personality forms. And I guess the assertion is that everybody fits into one of those labels.

00:36:34.460 And I just don't agree with that. Um, I think that notion of personality is absurd. People are

00:36:41.780 complicated. People change. Personalities change. Personalities also are not this static thing that

00:36:47.400 stays with you your whole life. Uh, gender is not fluid despite popular notions, but personality

00:36:53.740 is, you know, personalities can change quite a bit. And so I just don't agree with it.

00:36:59.920 Finally from Joey says, your argument about not forgiving student loan because what about the

00:37:04.180 people who already paid it back is stupid. So should they not cure cancer because people already died

00:37:10.340 from it? Speaking of stupid, Joey, first of all, the fundamental unfairness to people who've already

00:37:21.220 paid back their loans is just one objection that I have to the student loan quote forgiveness.

00:37:28.660 Um, there are many other objections that I went into great detail about, but as far as that one

00:37:33.760 objection goes, your analogy is very bad. And, um, let me explain why. First of all, cancer is not a

00:37:43.720 thing that you contractually agree to and enter into. It's something that happens to you. You are a

00:37:51.080 victim of it. A student loan, on the other hand, is something that you agree to and enter into. You

00:37:55.780 are not a victim of it. It is not something that just happens to you. You don't wake up one day and

00:38:00.220 you've got, you've got student loan debt. You don't go to the doctor and the doctor says, oh, I'm sorry

00:38:04.660 to tell you, uh, I know this isn't what you want to hear, but you owe $50,000 to the University of

00:38:09.920 Maryland. It doesn't work that way. I mean, you know it because you went in and not only did you agree

00:38:14.840 to the student loan, but you, you eagerly agreed to it. I mean, you really sought it out and wanted it.

00:38:20.420 And so you got it. Um, second thing is we don't even have the theoretical ability to bring somebody

00:38:27.800 back from the dead, right? So the idea that it's unfair to cure cancer now because it'd be unfair

00:38:33.540 to, to cancer victims that have already died would, is of course is ridiculous. But forgiving student

00:38:40.820 loans and refunding student loans that have already been paid back, both of those require the same

00:38:46.220 thing, which is money. Okay. We don't, it's not like we've discovered some new cure for student

00:38:52.900 loans. It's just, we always knew what the cure is. It's money. You just, you need money. Um, and

00:39:01.300 if we have trillions of dollars to throw around somehow, then we have the theoretical ability to

00:39:08.600 do both. And if we're only forgiving the loans and not refunding, that's a choice that's being made.

00:39:17.180 And, uh, and then we have, that choice has to be justified. If you've got all this money

00:39:22.160 and you're doing something with, with loans with it, I mean, you could refund the loans. It is,

00:39:29.540 it is a theoretically possible thing to do. Um, but it's a, we, you know, according to Elizabeth

00:39:36.300 Ward and these plans that are put forth, that's not part of the plan and they should have to explain

00:39:41.220 that. So if you want to compare this to an illness or physical inner injury, for some reason,

00:39:47.320 the analogy would have to be something like there's a disease that causes people after a while to lose

00:39:54.000 their limbs and eventually someone discovers a cure, but the cure could also regrow limbs as well as

00:39:59.520 as stop you from losing them. Um, but then we decide to only give the cure to people who have

00:40:06.580 not lost the limbs yet rather than giving the cure also to the people who have lost it, uh, because we

00:40:11.700 figure that, well, they've already figured out how to live with, you know, fewer limbs and so they 0.99

00:40:15.820 don't need it. I guess that would be the analogy, but that is also a dumb analogy. It's less dumb than

00:40:24.860 yours, but it's still dumb because at the end of the day, like I said, this isn't student loans are

00:40:31.640 nothing like a disease at all. It's just not the same thing. Um, and so that's the difference.

00:40:40.700 Hopefully I've explained it well enough. You know, if you're a regular listener to the podcast, you've

00:40:47.120 almost certainly heard me talk many times about my position on the pro-life issue, whether in my

00:40:52.120 podcasts, my speeches or Q and A's, uh, this is something I've spoken about many, many times.

00:40:57.240 Abortion is not a reproductive rights issue. It's a parenting issue. Reproduction has already occurred 1.00

00:41:02.000 by the time, uh, the abortion happens. So this is, this got nothing to do with reproduction at all,

00:41:06.520 as a matter of fact. But since the passing of Roe v. Wade, over 60 million pre-born children

00:41:10.520 have been killed in the womb. 60 million children who've never had a chance to give the world

00:41:16.120 their love and, and, and, and to fulfill their potential, um, and bring that into the world as

00:41:22.340 well. And also countless young women have been harmed physically and emotionally, and they've

00:41:26.240 been deprived the gift of motherhood, a gift that they may not see as a gift when they walk into the

00:41:31.640 clinic. Uh, but then of course the clinic is there to feed upon and take advantage of that fear.

00:41:38.140 And last year, the left went even further off the cliff, passing the New York law, uh, you know,

00:41:42.500 allowing abortions up to birth and the Illinois law, allowing abortion, um, up to birth, including

00:41:48.880 partial birth abortion, which is the most barbaric procedure that you could possibly imagine. And this

00:41:54.740 year, almost every democratic candidate supports no restrictions on abortion and Democrats in office

00:41:59.720 have even moved to lift protections on babies who survive abortion procedures, allowing abortion,

00:42:05.680 allowing abortion doctors to kill them after birth. We remember the infamous statements of Ralph

00:42:11.200 Northam, Ralph Northam talking about, you know, making a decision after the baby has already been

00:42:15.860 born. And to make matters even worse than all that, pro-life advocates are actively being targeted by the

00:42:22.080 pro-abortion left. This past June, I spoke at a rally in Philadelphia after, um, after Brian Sims,

00:42:29.000 the representative there, uh, was harassing pro-lifers, peaceful pro-lifers who were outside

00:42:35.680 of abortion clinics. The Daily Wire has also been targeted. When my boss, Ben Shapiro spoke at the

00:42:41.000 March for Life last year, our advertisers were targeted by left-wing media watchdogs and several

00:42:45.900 of them pulled their ads from our program because he was speaking at the March for Life. This wasn't

00:42:51.140 the first time, nor will it likely be the last time that, uh, we are attacked in an attempt to shut

00:42:57.140 down pro-life voices. We're also not the only targets, of course. Live action is one of the biggest

00:43:03.860 voices in pro-life movement. Um, they, uh, they continue to do some of the most important work

00:43:09.680 in that space from raising awareness and education on the abortion issue to undercover videos that

00:43:14.220 expose Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics for the horrific human rights abuses that

00:43:18.720 they, that they are responsible for. Um, live action has been targeted numerous times on social

00:43:25.040 media. They've been banned from advertising on Twitter for their calls to defund, to defund Planned

00:43:29.880 Parenthood. They've been banned from Pinterest altogether for, quote, um, spreading medical

00:43:36.780 misinformation, which is not misinformation at all, by the way, but it's in fact information is,

00:43:41.920 these are, these are facts that they are spreading. They've also seen their advertising efforts and

00:43:46.500 their online distribution restricted, um, depending on, on the platform. So this has happened across the

00:43:52.080 board for them, but this cause is too important to stay silent. That is why our dailywire.com members

00:43:57.580 are so important. Your membership keeps our cameras on and our microphones turned on. Your direct

00:44:03.620 support helps us to, uh, say no to advertisers who cave to left-wing ideologies. You keep us and our

00:44:10.140 message from being canceled, even though, as you know, there are very many people and organizations

00:44:15.560 out there that would love to cancel us. Uh, but you're the ones who keep that from happening.

00:44:20.080 And that is why from now until January 31st, a portion of any dailywire.com membership will be

00:44:26.620 donated to live action with promo code live action to support awareness and education around the world

00:44:32.640 on this issue. So please join dailywire.com, stand with us against censorship, and you can make your

00:44:39.220 pro-life voice even louder in the process. And I think we'll leave it there. Thanks everybody for

00:44:43.120 watching. Thanks for listening. Godspeed. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to

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00:45:02.280 Michael Knowles show, and the Andrew Klavan show. Thanks for listening.

00:45:06.040 The Matt Wall show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer, Jeremy Boring, senior producer,

00:45:11.340 Jonathan Hay, supervising producer, Mathis Glover, supervising producer, Robert Sterling,

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00:45:21.700 The Matt Wall show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.

00:45:26.040 President Trump's impeachment trial is about to begin, but the most important story of the day

00:45:31.020 isn't the Senate charade to acquit the president. Our political rot runs all the way back to the

00:45:36.380 motherland where Queen Elizabeth is about to deroyal Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

00:45:41.340 We will examine why with great power comes great responsibility. Then the women's march flops, 1.00

00:45:48.400 Elizabeth Warren continues her months long campaign collapse, the New York Times comes

00:45:52.900 out with its presidential endorsement, and we get the dumbest article on the internet today.

00:45:57.320 Check it out on the Michael Knowles show.

The Matt Walsh Show - January 20, 2020

Ep. 408 - Another Media Narrative Falls Apart

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