Ep. 414 - CNN Makes Campaign Ad For Trump
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, I explain why it's not funny when people mock others for no other reason than that they hate them, and why it doesn't matter if it's funny or not, because it's meant to be funny.
Transcript
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Welcome to the show. You know, we spend a lot of time in this culture, a lot of time and energy
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supposedly exposing, attacking, weeding out forms of bigotry. And this zealousness to get rid of
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bigotry could be a good thing, even an overzealousness, even an overzealousness that
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leads to sometimes to calling something bigotry, even when it isn't bigotry. That could be a price
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worth paying, except that the problem is our crusade against bigotry is, of course, rather
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selective and inconsistent and self-contradictory and hypocritical. And what we discover in the end
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is that we're no different than any culture in the past. All cultures have had their accepted
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bigotries and their unaccepted bigotries. There are acceptable bigotries and unacceptable, and that's
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the same for us. Now, to root out and reject all bigotry, that would be novel. That would be unique.
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That would be progress. And as I said, maybe even a price, maybe even worth the price of overzealousness,
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but that's not our situation. We have simply chosen different bigotries as acceptable and different ones
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as unacceptable. So it was a lateral move, not a progression. And when I say we, of course, I mean
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the powerful forces in our culture, not you and me necessarily, but media, academia, Hollywood,
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government, and so on, which brings us to a perfect example of acceptable bigotry in our culture today.
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This example provided to you by CNN, an alleged news network. I'll just play the clip for you if you
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haven't seen it yet. Here is Don Lemon with two other guys laughing at and mocking millions of
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working class Americans. Watch this. He also knows deep in his heart that Donald Trump couldn't find
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Ukraine on a map if you had the letter U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it.
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He knows that this is, you know, an administration defined by ignorance of the world. And so that's
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partly him playing to their base and playing to their audience. Uh, you know, the, the, the credulous
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boomer Rube demo that backs Donald Trump, um, that, that wants to think that, that, that Donald Trump's
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a smart one in there. Oh, y'all, y'all elitist are dumb. You will, you elitist with your geography and
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your maps and your spelling, even though my math and you're reading. Yeah. You're reading, you know,
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your geography, no one, other countries, sipping your latte, all those lines on the map.
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Only them elitist know where Ukraine is. Sorry. I apologize.
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But it was Rick's fault. I blame Rick, but in all honesty, but I blame Rick.
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Why not? Sorry. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait. Can I tell you a second? Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
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Sorry. No, it's good. Sorry. Rick, that was a good one. I needed that. Okay. So listen,
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let's get back to business here. Okay. First of all, my first problem is that it's not funny.
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The worst, the worst sin that any joke can commit is, is failing to be funny. And if it's, if,
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if a joke succeeds in being funny, then it's redeemed itself, no matter the content of the joke,
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really. Uh, but it's not funny. And the reason why it's not funny is that being funny. Isn't the
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point when, when Don Lemon is cackling like a slap happy drunk and says, Oh, I needed that.
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What he needed was an excuse to mock people. He hates. That was the delight, the delight in that
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quote humor for him and for the other people on camera is just, it was an outlet, a way of venting
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hatred for this group of people. That's all. Uh, it wasn't the humor that, that anyone needed,
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uh, because there wasn't any humor there. There was no wit or anything like that. This was just
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sheer mockery, mockery out of spite and hate. And that kind of mockery is never funny. Not because
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it's offensive, but because mock, and I'm not saying that mockery itself is never funny. Mockery can be
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extremely funny. But when you're mocking people simply because you hate their guts, uh, and for
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no other reason, it's not going to be funny because there needs to be some respect or at least some
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kind of understanding in humor for it to be funny, for it to be actually humor. Uh, and not, not just
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you, not just you ranting and raving. Now, the second thing quickly, and you're just speaking for
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myself, um, I don't care at all. Just to clarify here for anyone who doesn't understand what people
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are upset about. Um, and I, I think I speak for a lot of other people, but for myself anyway, I don't
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care at all about the first part of this where they're making fun of Donald Trump. That doesn't
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bother me, bother me. I will never be offended by insults directed at politicians. I think insulting
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politicians is as American as apple pie. I think it's, uh, I think it's patriotic. I think it's our
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patriotic duty to, to insult and mock politicians. I'm fine with that. I'd rather err on the side of
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disrespecting politicians than err on the side of giving them too much reverence or any reverence
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because we shouldn't have any reverence at all for politicians in this country. And I do think
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that there are too many people on both sides of the aisle who err too much on the side of reverence.
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Uh, I don't think it's a, it's not a left versus right thing. I think it's a matter of the human
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condition. There are some people who are inclined to fall into cults of personality and so on. So
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there are some Trump supporters like that, just like there were some Obama supporters like that.
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Um, and other politicians as well have supporters like this who, who, uh, can't stand any mockery of
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their guy and, and, and have again, reverence for him. I think that's a problem. And this is
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one of the things that separates us from places like Iran and Saudi Arabia. In this country, you can
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get on the TV and you can ruthlessly mock our politicians and powerful people and they can't do
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anything to you. I think it's good for them. It's good for them to, to experience that, to be reminded
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that they're just people, they're human beings, they're just bureaucrats. They're not kings. And it's
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good for us to remember that about them. So that I'm fine with now to do it on an, on a supposedly
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unbiased news network is embarrassing and, and, uh, and, uh, inappropriate obviously, but whatever,
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I don't care. Insult, insult politicians, all you want. It's not going to offend me. The problem is it
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doesn't stop there. Of course, the Trump stuff is only the first five seconds. It goes on for another
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minute directed at, clearly directed specifically at white, blue collar, especially Southern people.
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And the joke, the quote unquote joke is that they are dumb hicks who can't read and can't spell and
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can't figure out how to use a map. That's the joke. So this is bigotry, plain and simple.
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Mocking a politician, that's not bigotry. Mocking millions of, of Democrats, of, of, of Americans based on
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their racial and socioeconomic demographic, that's bigotry. And we'll talk more about this in just a
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cackling hyenas on CNN. Um, I want you to imagine this, imagine that, imagine that exact same segment
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that we, that we just played for you, except on Fox during the Obama years and directed at Obama's
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urban voters. Imagine that. If, if, if, if anyone who is skeptical that this is bigotry we're dealing
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with, well, imagine in that scenario, exact same thing, exact same kind of mockery, but directed at
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a different politician's supporters. The outrage in that case would be nuclear in proportion and
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justifiably so. I mean, the, but the left, they would go beyond that. I mean, they'd be,
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they'd be calling for an FBI investigation. Probably they'd be, they'd be asking for hate
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crime charges to be filed. And I'm not exaggerating, you know, I'm not exaggerating, but there's not
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going to be anything close to that sort of reaction here because bigotry against white working class
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people, especially in the South is totally acceptable in our culture. It's one of the last
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remaining acceptable bigotries. Or with this group of people, you could basically say whatever
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you want about them. You can make a caricature of them. You can mock them. You can cut them down.
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And why can you do that? Well, because they don't count.
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Their opinion doesn't count. Doesn't matter. They don't matter. That's the attitude.
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Now, I don't want to spend 20 minutes of the show hyperventilating over this. Oh, they made fun
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of us. It hurts. It hurts so much. Give me my fainting couch. I don't want to do that. And on one
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level, I, I, I don't care what they think of us. It doesn't bother me, but there is an enormous
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double standard at work here. And it's worth pointing out. It's worth pointing out the, the double
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standard. Because remember, these very same people, especially on CNN, they're doing that
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one minute. And then the next minute, they're fretting over, you know, the coarseness of Donald
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Trump and how mean and insulting he is and so on. Not to mention, they're talking about bigotry and how
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we need to get rid of bigotry. If they didn't do that, listen, if, if, if, if, if they would just,
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it wouldn't even really bother me that much if they were mocked, that they were mocking millions
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of Americans, if they would be open and say, okay, yeah, this is, this is how we are. No, we don't,
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we don't care about having respectful dialogue. We don't care about bigotry. We don't care about
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any of that. If we hate someone, we're going to say it. At least if they took that approach and
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they were honest, I could have some respect for the honesty at least. But it's the hypocrisy and
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the double standard that annoys me the most. More than the insult. It's the, it's what it represents.
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But, um, really Trump fans should be thanking CNN for this because this is the most effective Trump
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ad anyone could ever come up with. This is millions of dollars worth of campaign ads right here that
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Trump doesn't have to spend. So it's 2016 all over again. That Trump may have put a few ads out,
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but he, he, he could have spent no money on ads at all because the media was advertising for him
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and they're doing it again. They haven't stopped doing it for three years. Uh, if the people at
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CNN were to sit around trying to dream up a way to get Trump reelected, they could not have thought
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of a better strategy and they couldn't have thought of a better 60 or a better, more effective, more
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persuasive 60 second segment than that to persuade people to vote for Trump. If for no other reason
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than to do the opposite of what those people want. One other thing about this, because, uh, a defense that
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you'll hear with this kind of thing, people will defend it by saying, well, Trump, Trump mocks
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people all the time. Trump's a big meanie head himself, which is a very childish defense, but it's
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also, it also misses the point because yeah, Trump can be very mean and insulting. We know that
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Trump can mock people. Uh, and I'm, I'm not even going to claim that Trump, you know, yeah, Trump
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mocks people, but he don't, but he never punches down. He does punch down. Arguably when you're the
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president of the United States, if you're punching at all, you're always punching down because everybody
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is less powerful than you. So he's, he's not above that, but think about the people that he mocks
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and insults. It's going to be other politicians, people in the media, Hollywood celebrities.
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And that's pretty much it. We're other world leaders. Okay. It's a, it's a pretty long list
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of people that he's insulted, but they're all in that realm, right? What, what he doesn't do,
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what I've never heard him do. And correct me if I'm wrong, if anyone's ever heard this,
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I have never heard him mock Democrat voters across the board that I've never heard him do.
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And that's the difference here. This is something that you see on the left. They are increasingly
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cavalier and blatant about their, their feelings about millions of, of working class people.
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Trump really doesn't do that, which, which should tell you something. That should be kind of a
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cautionary tale. It should be a word of warning for people on the left that even Donald Trump,
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who has no compunction about insulting people, even he doesn't do that.
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All right. So let's go briefly back to the sad, sad story of Stephen King. You know, we talked about
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it a few, few weeks ago on the show, Stephen King sent out, it was around the time of the Golden Globes,
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I think. And, uh, he, he sent out a, a, a tweet saying basically that we should award works of art
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based on their merit, based on how good the art is based on the quality of it and not based on
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demographics. You know, he said that diversity, right? It's like the point is not diversity when
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it comes to art. The point is the merit of the art of the work of art itself. That was the point that
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Stephen King made. Well, of course that is not acceptable on the left. And so the, um, the
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pitchfork mob came after him. And so he spent the last several weeks on an increasingly pathetic and
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hard to watch apology tour, just begging for forgiveness. This, this, this, this brief moment
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of sanity and clarity from Stephen King. And he, um, he's been begging for forgiveness for it for the
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last few weeks. And it just gets more and more pitiful. Uh, reading now from the Daily Wire,
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this is the latest in Stephen King's apology tour, apologizing for his lapse into common sense.
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Daily Wire says, in an op-ed for the Washington Post on Monday, the renowned author, uh, scolded
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the recent Academy Award nominations for their lack of racial and sexual diversity, arguing that the
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whole business is rigged in favor of white folks. He says, has there been progress in the film
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community? Yes, some. I'm old enough to remember when there were only a handful of African American
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directors and about the only director of Hollywood was, um, Ida Lupino, who made hard-edged noir
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bee pictures in the 1950s and later worked in television. Um, but King blames the lack of diversity
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among those nominated on the diversity of the Academy's voting members, noting that they are only 32%
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women and 16% minorities. King says, not good enough, not even within shouting distance of good enough.
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King closed out his post, uh, op-ed by reflecting upon how a perfect world would be completely
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colorblind before lamenting on how that perfect world has been supplanted by a system rigged in
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favor of white folks. He writes, my overall attitude that as with justice, judgments of creative
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excellence should be blind. But that would be the case in a perfect world, one where the game isn't
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rigged in favor of the white folks. Creative excellence comes from every walk, color, creed, gender,
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and sexual orientation. And it's made richer and bolder and more exciting by diversity. Blah, blah,
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blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. You get the point. Just a simpering, uh, groveling. You could tell
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he was, he was like on his hands and knees while probably while he was typing this, weeping onto the
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keyboard. Please forgive me, please. He goes from saying, listen, you know, the issue here is not
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racial diversity with art. It's just about, was it good or not? Really common sense. He goes from that
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to, um, the, the, the, the arts are rigged against, against, uh, minorities and so on and so forth.
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This is what happens. Um, and this is why it's, you know, it's, we, we talk about having common sense
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in our culture and how common sense is so important. Common sense is important, but I think most people
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have common sense. That's why we call it common, right? If, if, if most people didn't have it, it
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wouldn't be common sense. So most people have it. And there's this illusion we have, I think, and it is
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kind of an illusion that people don't have common sense anymore, that everyone's going crazy. I don't
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think that's, there might be an element of that, but that's not really the problem. It's not common
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sense that we lack. It's backbone. It's courage. You need to have some backbone and courage
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to stand for common sense and then keep standing when the irrational hordes come after you.
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So Stephen King is not a crazy person. He obviously has common sense, but he doesn't have any courage.
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He doesn't have any moral fortitude whatsoever. And think about how lacking in courage you
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must be to back down this way when you're Stephen King. I mean, you're rich beyond most
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people's imagination. This guy's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Like 15 of his books
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have been made into movies. And he's completely in a position where he could say, I don't care
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what you people think. Yeah, that's my opinion. Go ahead and go cry about it some more. What
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are you going to do to me? What are you going to do? I'm still going to have fans. Even if
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I don't, I'm rich, I'm wealthy. I've, you know, I've, I've, I've made my point. He's in a position
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where he could say that, but, um, so lacking in courage that, uh, he refuses to do it. It's
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Write Walsh in there. How did you hear about us box? So that they know, uh, that, uh, we sent you.
00:22:17.940
All right. So Anne Frank, um, is, uh, the chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute.
00:22:24.020
And she is arguing that people shouldn't talk about sports in the workplace. Men specifically
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shouldn't because it makes women feel left out. In an interview on the BBC, she said, quote,
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a lot of women in particular feel left out. They don't follow those sports and they don't like
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either being forced to talk about them or not be included. I have nothing against sports enthusiasts
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or cricket fans. That's great. But the issue is many people aren't cricket fans. Um, I, for
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one, I'm a huge cricket fan. I could talk for hours about it, but I won't. And then, but
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she goes a step further and she starts talking about how discussions of sports, a discussion
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about sports is essentially a gateway drug that can lead directly into sexual harassment.
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That's, that's her argument. I'm not making that up here. I'll play a clip of that part of
00:23:20.500
We were talking earlier, you said one of the points about this is that football banter
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can be the gateway to more offensive behavior, to much more loudish behavior. Is that one
00:23:29.520
Absolutely. Um, it's a gateway to a more loudish behavior and it's a, if it just goes
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unchecked, it's a signal of a more, uh, loudish culture. And it's very easy for it to escalate
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from, you know, the VAR talk and chat to, um, slapping each other on the back and talking
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about their conquests at the weekend. Yes. A gateway into laddish behavior, a gateway.
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You got to watch out for those, for those laddish gateways. Uh, because, and, and look,
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she's right. I can't tell you how many times I've been talking to a guy about sports and
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next thing you know, he's slapping me on the back and telling me about his sexual conquest.
00:24:08.860
It happens all the time. It's very normal. Actually, it's not normal at all. And this
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just shows, um, something that I have pointed out before about feminists is that, and this
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is one of their problems, I think, that they, they, they don't appear to know anything about
00:24:28.900
men, which maybe isn't surprising. That's why they're feminists, but they don't know anything
00:24:34.840
about men. They don't understand how men operate. And they have this cartoonish idea
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about, about men. It's as if they've never met a real one before. And all of their ideas
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about men they got from watching, I don't know, um, movies in the 1980s or something.
00:24:55.560
So they don't know anything about men, but the, the, the bigger issue here with this is,
00:24:59.720
this is another example of, well, are, are we treating men and women equally or not?
00:25:08.780
I mean, when, when I see a woman, am I supposed to treat her as a woman or am I supposed to
00:25:16.740
just treat her as a coworker, irrespective of gender and talk to her the same way that
00:25:21.760
I would a man? I mean, which is it? You kind of have to decide. It can't be both. It has
00:25:27.800
to be one or the other. And if I, if, if, if it is, uh, if it's, you know, we're treating
00:25:35.380
everybody exactly the same, not taking their gender into account at all. That's not my,
00:25:39.960
see, that's not what I advocate for. I think that you do take gender into account in social
00:25:44.060
interactions. That's part of what chivalry is all about. So I think you should do that,
00:25:49.600
which isn't to say that you should never talk to a woman, a woman about sports, but in general,
00:25:53.360
yeah, I think in social interactions, you take that into account, you take gender into
00:25:57.920
account. That makes sense. But that's not what feminists would say. They would say, don't
00:26:02.300
just treat a woman like a person. Forget about her gender completely. Well, if that's the case,
00:26:09.940
then we, then that's, that's it. And then we're, we're going in that direction. You choose that path.
00:26:17.060
That's a completely different path. You can't have it both ways. All right, let's go to emails,
00:26:22.560
mattwalshowatgmail.com, mattwalshowatgmail.com. This is from Maximilian says, hey, Matt, love the
00:26:28.160
show. I think I found a personality test worth taking. Have you ever heard of the big five
00:26:32.400
aspect scale? Jordan Peterson is one of the people who helped put that together and I respect his
00:26:37.860
opinion on a lot of things. So at the very least it's worth looking into. An example of how it points
00:26:41.700
out the negatives and positives is that I got a 77th percentile for compassion, meaning that I'm
00:26:48.520
more compassionate than 77% of people. But it, something tells me I wouldn't be in the 77th
00:26:55.320
percentile, but it gave me a 1% in assertiveness, meaning pretty much everyone is more assertive
00:27:00.160
than me. In my opinion, this personality test is the closest to reality as I've seen. By the way,
00:27:04.980
I agree with your opinion on personality tests. Most people just want to hear good things about
00:27:08.800
themselves. I like how you, you tell me you got a 1% in assertiveness and then immediately you tell
00:27:15.440
me you agree with me. So very, very well done. Illustrating the point. But, um, I mean, that sounds
00:27:22.780
like an interesting take on personality tests, I guess. Maybe I'll check it out, but I still feel that
00:27:27.120
the whole concept is arbitrary and sort of weird. I mean, can you really quantify a trait like
00:27:34.020
assertiveness and assign a numerical value to it? 1%? Why not 3%? Why not 7%? I mean,
00:27:42.980
I think personalities are more fluid than that. Harder to quantify. Conditional.
00:27:50.100
Situational. Based on circumstance. People don't really have the exact same personality
00:27:55.900
in every situation. So that's part of the problem. Uh, this is from Ian says, Matt, I agree with you
00:28:03.460
that personality tests are useless. What is your take on IQ tests? Same thing? Well, at least with IQ
00:28:10.740
tests, the person taking the test can't easily rig it to get whatever favorable result they want,
00:28:16.040
right? It's not necessarily easy to rig an IQ test for yourself so that it comes back with a 170 IQ.
00:28:22.480
Uh, you have to actually do an efficient job of answering the questions and completing the tasks
00:28:27.580
and everything. But even so, I would say IQ tests are basically useless also. Um, I, you know,
00:28:36.760
so pretty much any test that's supposed to tell you about your intelligence or your personality,
00:28:41.460
I think it's all basically bunk. And I don't know why we have this obsession with trying to measure and
00:28:47.640
quantify every aspect of the human person, even the most complicated and indeterminate parts of us.
00:28:55.040
We want, we want a, we want something quantifiable. We want a number, right? Um,
00:29:01.640
now IQ tests may measure certain aspects of intelligence, but they don't measure intelligence
00:29:08.760
as a whole. It's like if you're doing a fitness test. Now, physical fitness, that is something you
00:29:13.140
can quantify and I think rather easily measure. But if you're doing a fitness test, you couldn't
00:29:17.280
do a fitness test. And the only thing to do on the test is pull-ups because a person might be able
00:29:22.880
to do 19 pull-ups and yet be in pretty bad shape, just like a person may only do five pull-ups and
00:29:27.720
still be in pretty good shape. So there needs to be more to it than that. The problem with,
00:29:31.240
one of the problems with an IQ test is that it only tells you about one sort of aspect of
00:29:38.840
intelligence. So if somebody has a high IQ, that means, okay, uh, they were good at accomplishing
00:29:45.420
the kinds of tasks that are on an IQ test. So it means that they're probably good at detecting
00:29:53.080
patterns. It means they can probably think logically in a certain way. And so, okay, fine.
00:30:01.580
If someone has a 140 IQ, you can be pretty certain that they are, for example, good at finding and
00:30:08.640
understanding numerical patterns. But that has, that, that is not even close to the full story on
00:30:17.200
intelligence. There are whole other realms of intelligence. Now, personally, I think the most
00:30:23.040
revealing, quote, test of a person's intelligence is just to talk to them, especially to talk about
00:30:30.160
an abstract subject or concept. I don't mean talk to them about what they had for dinner.
00:30:35.580
I mean, talk to them about something abstract. And as far as I know about with, with, with, uh,
00:30:43.260
an IQ test, it doesn't have anything to do with that. They don't, they don't go anywhere near that.
00:30:49.540
So if you were to say to someone, now I think, and even this wouldn't tell the whole story,
00:30:53.720
but here's my thing. If I could pick only one test of a person's intelligence, this is what I would
00:31:02.420
choose. I would just ask them a question like, I don't know, what is justice? Some abstract concept
00:31:11.180
like that. And then listen to what they say. It's not about answering it correctly or incorrectly.
00:31:16.160
It's just about the depth of a person's thought, their verbal dexterity in explaining their thoughts,
00:31:23.500
um, their ability to grapple with an abstract concept. Now, I, I think that tells you a lot
00:31:31.220
about their intelligence. Doesn't tell you everything. And I think there are probably people
00:31:36.740
who would score a 90 on an IQ test, which is relatively low, only slightly above average, right?
00:31:44.260
And yet, if you were to talk to them about a subject like that, they could give you a brilliant
00:31:48.900
and fascinating and thoughtful answer, just like there are people who might score a 140 and you try
00:31:54.040
to talk to them about an abstract subject and they have nothing to say. So that's just one of the
00:32:01.920
issues with, uh, IQ tests. All right. Um, this is from Dr. Pat says, dear Met, I am having emailed
00:32:13.700
you many, many days. You never are responses me. You're my favorite person. I get many smarter
00:32:20.300
listening to your mouth. I would have many honors if you read this email on your show. May you having
00:32:27.240
many blessings in your lift. Sincerely, Dr. Pat. Thank you for that email. It's very touching.
00:32:35.440
Um, and, uh, this is from Heidi. Finally, she says, Hey Matt, so based on your raving review of
00:32:44.000
Ad Astra, I knew that my family and I should watch it. You did say that you thought it was better than
00:32:48.620
Interstellar. My family and I love that movie. So we were excited to see what this Ad Astra movie was
00:32:52.580
all about. Two crazy psycho space monkeys later, all we, we all realized that was, uh, that was two
00:32:58.700
hours we would never get back. The Ad Astra movie was more about the human condition and that you
00:33:03.680
should never cross paths with monkeys, that you've been locked up in a spaceship for a long period of
00:33:07.820
time. Whereas Interstellar was more about the space-time continuum, wormholes, the search for
00:33:11.980
life on other planets. It was fascinating. It left you really thinking and pondering about the universe
00:33:16.500
and how it works. Ad Astra left us thinking about how much better it would have been if we'd never
00:33:20.400
watched, uh, Ad Astra. When you become supreme dictator, will you be subjecting the people to only
00:33:25.760
watching movies that you deem as good? If this is the case, my only option will be to move my family
00:33:30.260
and I out of the country. It's our only hope. P.S. My husband and I also watched The Godfather for the
00:33:34.640
first time ever this year, and we watched about an hour of it before falling asleep and haven't finished
00:33:39.060
it since. Well, Heidi, you really buried the lead there because you gave me this whole diatribe about
00:33:45.560
how I'm wrong about Ad Astra. And at the very end, you admit that you have horrible taste in films.
00:33:52.140
I feel like you should have said that at the beginning. You want, you want to lead with that.
00:33:57.140
Disclaimer, I have terrible taste. Here's my thoughts about movies. The Godfather, of course, is, is quite
00:34:03.340
literally the greatest film in the history of cinema. I, I can almost forgive you for falling asleep
00:34:09.760
during it because you're a woman. And, um, and the Godfather, for whatever reason, often doesn't
00:34:17.020
resonate quite as much with women. All right. But for a man to fall asleep, you said your husband fell
00:34:22.560
asleep. That's disgraceful. That's disgraceful. As for Ad Astra, look, I, I, I, I, you're right that
00:34:30.700
Ad Astra is more about the human condition. It's more, a more ruminative, thoughtful film. And that's
00:34:35.420
what I liked about it. You say that interstellar was more about wormholes and space-time and life
00:34:40.760
on other planets, et cetera. But see, that's my, exactly my issue. I wish that interstellar was
00:34:45.700
about those things. I thought that interstellar was going to be about those things. I remember
00:34:50.080
the marketing campaign for the movie is what, it's one of my most anticipated movies ever. I was
00:34:54.820
looking forward to that movie for, I mean, for months or years before, right? When I first heard
00:34:59.100
about Christopher Nolan making a movie that deals with these crazy scientific and cosmological
00:35:05.160
concepts, I've been waiting for a film like that. And I'm still waiting because actually
00:35:10.680
that's not really what the movie was about. They spend the first third of it on earth.
00:35:15.360
They go into space. They visit a couple of planets, go into a black hole and end up trapped
00:35:20.740
in a bookshelf. That's the whole movie. Now the black hole scene, the rendering of the black
00:35:27.420
hole, that was beautiful and very well done, almost worth the price of admission. But I was
00:35:31.760
expecting a lot more spacey stuff than what we got. Because it turned out that Christopher
00:35:37.100
Nolan also was mostly interested in using space as a forum to explore the human condition.
00:35:45.300
Which I have no problem with that. And that's what Ad Astra does. Other sci-fi films have done
00:35:51.180
the same thing. But I just don't think that interstellar does a good job of that. Their way of exploring
00:35:58.600
the human condition is to have Anne Hathaway deliver like 19 speeches about the cosmic power
00:36:03.580
of love. So both films really were about the same thing and did the same sort of thing. It's just that
00:36:10.080
Ad Astra did a better, more subtle job of it and I think was a smarter movie. Whereas Interstellar
00:36:17.320
hits you over the head with a two by four shouting the point of the movie into your ear every five
00:36:22.200
seconds. And that's why I didn't like it. But I'm not gonna say I didn't like it. I mean,
00:36:28.040
it was a fine movie. But it wasn't nearly as good as it could have been. All right. Well,
00:36:35.060
I think we'll leave it there. Thanks everybody for watching. Have a great day. Godspeed.
00:36:39.740
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