The Matt Walsh Show - July 09, 2021


Ep. 750 - Won't Someone Please Think Of The Ivy League Grad Students?


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour

Words per minute

175.89754

Word count

10,653

Sentence count

779

Harmful content

Misogyny

32

sentences flagged

Toxicity

29

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

As the student debt crisis continues to spiral out of control, a Wall Street Journal article asks us to feel sympathy for Ivy League grads who are drowning in six-figures. We ll talk about that and more, including former media darling Michael Avenatti getting a prison sentence, Rand Paul looking to revoke the federal mask mandate on airplanes, and we ll cancel Scarlett Johansson for complaining in a recent interview that she is underappreciated and also underpaid.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, as the student debt crisis continues to spiral out of control,
00:00:04.760 the Wall Street Journal publishes an article asking us to feel sympathy for Ivy League grad
00:00:09.200 students who are drowning in six-figure debt after discovering that their master's degrees
00:00:14.160 aren't leading to lucrative jobs. Who would have thought? For some reason, I struggle to feel any
00:00:18.660 sympathy for these people. We'll talk about that. Also, five headlines, including former media
00:00:22.320 darling Michael Avenatti gets his prison sentence. Rand Paul looks to revoke the federal mask mandate
00:00:27.960 on airplanes, and we'll discuss the latest alleged racism controversy over at ESPN.
00:00:33.480 In our daily cancellation, we'll cancel Scarlett Johansson for complaining in a recent interview
00:00:37.100 that she is underappreciated and also underpaid. She makes like $50 million a year, though. 1.00
00:00:42.380 We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
00:00:44.520 You know, everybody wants privacy when they go online, and I think most people think, well,
00:00:59.220 you just put your browser in incognito mode, and that's all you need to do, and you get all the
00:01:03.800 privacy that way. But it doesn't always mean what you think. You know, we all take little risks every
00:01:08.700 day when we go online, whether we think about it or not. We think our connection probably won't be
00:01:12.640 interrupted by hackers. Our data probably won't be used against us, but using the internet without
00:01:17.640 ExpressVPN, that just doesn't make sense. It's like driving a car without insurance. You're taking a risk
00:01:22.920 that you simply don't need to take. Why take that risk? Every time you connect to an unencrypted
00:01:28.660 network, cafes, hotels, airports, any hacker on the same network can gain access to your personal data,
00:01:33.780 whether it's your passwords, your financial data, your financial details, whatever it is.
00:01:37.500 That's the kind of risk you're taking. It doesn't take much technical knowledge either to do it,
00:01:40.980 just some cheap hardware. A smart 12-year-old could do it. I couldn't do it,
00:01:44.840 but I'm not as smart as a smart 12-year-old. And your data is valuable. Hackers can make up to
00:01:49.500 $1,000 per person selling personal info on the dark web. So what do you do about this? You get
00:01:54.240 ExpressVPN. You can secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash Walsh. That's
00:02:00.200 E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash Walsh. And you get an extra three months free at expressvpn.com
00:02:06.620 slash Walsh. There are a lot of villains in the story of the student debt crisis. It takes
00:02:12.080 more than one bad guy to get us to a point where there is now at last count $1.7 trillion in total
00:02:19.000 outstanding student loan debt. $1.7 trillion, by the way, is more money than currently exists
00:02:24.300 in circulation in the United States. Now, most people aren't paying off their student debt in
00:02:29.260 cash, obviously, but this is just a way of gaining perspective. There is more student debt than there
00:02:34.540 is physical currency in the entire country collectively. How did we get here? Who are
00:02:41.020 the villains exactly? Well, the universities would have to be at the top of the list. They're the
00:02:45.020 ones charging exorbitant tuition fees for an education that is rarely worth the cost. And
00:02:50.040 even when it is worth the cost, there is still no reason why it should cost that much, much.
00:02:56.300 Also, we should blame in equal terms the government, the banks, the public school system for pushing
00:03:01.040 kids into the university system to begin with. Many parents, too, must take their share of the blame
00:03:05.800 for pushing their own kids into this. And what about the employers who fuel this madness by requiring
00:03:11.960 degrees from entry-level applicants who will be performing jobs that do not actually necessitate
00:03:18.240 having a degree? We talk about all the jobs that need degrees, and most of the time, the need is
00:03:24.580 artificial. There's no reason, there's no real reason why a person without a degree can't do the 1.00
00:03:30.340 job. It's just that the employers have put that requirement there artificially. The vast majority of
00:03:37.380 jobs are learned by doing. So most jobs are learned, in other words, on the job. There's no reason why that
00:03:45.700 expensive piece of paper should be necessary, and yet employers often require it out of pure laziness, because
00:03:51.360 it's an easy way to whittle down the applicant pool without having to put in much effort. So all of
00:03:56.680 these parties deserve blame. Then what about the students themselves who take out these loans?
00:04:03.140 Personally, I would much prefer to blame the powerful and corrupt institutions I already listed, 0.99
00:04:08.920 and the adults who should know better, instead of kids just out of high school who are too dumb and 0.99
00:04:13.860 naive to understand what they're getting themselves into. I mean, everybody is stupid at 18. I certainly was. 1.00
00:04:19.660 And that's a good reason why 18-year-olds shouldn't be granted six-figure loans in the first place.
00:04:25.360 It's also a good reason why they shouldn't have the right to vote, by the way.
00:04:29.120 So I'm sympathetic to the idea that many of the people saddled with this debt are victims.
00:04:35.600 They were exploited. I don't know what else you can say about saddling kids fresh out of high school
00:04:41.760 with this kind of crippling debt. Does that mean that I think the taxpayer should have to pick up the
00:04:46.200 tab and foot the bill for student debt forgiveness? Absolutely not. You cannot undo the exploitation
00:04:52.940 of one group through the exploitation of another. If you want to grant some kind of student debt
00:04:59.440 forgiveness for some people by seizing the endowments from these universities, then maybe
00:05:04.080 we can talk. But the only thing more unfair and immoral than handing out massive loans to ignorant 0.94
00:05:09.120 18-year-olds is forcing taxpayers who didn't take out the loans to pay them back. And the college 0.89
00:05:15.140 graduates who demand that such a system be put in place for their sake immediately lose all sympathy
00:05:21.440 from me. You have all this debt. I'm sympathetic. But the moment you point to me and say to the
00:05:29.680 government, no, force him to pay it back. No more sympathy. You're no longer a victim.
00:05:35.780 The moment you try to right the wrong done to you by committing a wrong against someone else.
00:05:41.460 Someone steals your car. I feel bad for you. You steal my car in exchange. And now you're just a
00:05:47.840 thief like the guy who took yours. That's how that works. But there are some supposed victims of the 0.99
00:05:55.020 debt crisis who ought to engender no sympathy at all from anyone in the first place. The Wall Street
00:06:00.020 Journal just published a piece yesterday which highlights this group. The headline, alongside a
00:06:06.000 photograph of a man in his 30s looking sad and dejected, reads, quote, financially hobbled for
00:06:11.760 life, the elite master's degrees that don't pay off. Columbia and other top universities push
00:06:17.060 master's programs that fail to generate enough income for graduates to keep up with the six-figure
00:06:21.860 federal loans. This is an article all about the pathetic saps who took out massive loans to pay for 0.97
00:06:28.140 graduate school, Ivy League graduate school, and now are, as the headline suggests, financially hobbled 0.97
00:06:33.180 for life. Now something to keep in mind as I read some of this to you, and this is very important.
00:06:39.520 The average age of a grad student is 33. And that means that a great many of the people currently in
00:06:46.420 grad school are my age or older. So these are not kids. These are grown adults. So here's what the
00:06:53.440 article says, quote, recent film program graduates of Columbia University who took out federal student
00:06:58.720 loans had a median debt of $181,000. Yet two years after earning their master's degrees, half of the
00:07:06.140 borrowers were making less than $30,000 a year. I'm sorry, it's not funny, but it kind of is.
00:07:11.460 $30,000 a year, that's minimum wage. And you took out $181,000 in debt to go to an Ivy League,
00:07:18.600 you get a master's degree, and you're making a minimum wage. Anyway, continuing, the Columbia
00:07:24.400 program offers the most extreme example of how elite universities in recent years have awarded
00:07:29.320 thousands of master's degrees that don't provide graduates enough early career earnings to begin
00:07:34.560 paying down their federal student loans. Recent Columbia film alumni had the highest debt compared
00:07:40.260 with earnings among graduates of any major university master's program in the U.S., the journal found.
00:07:45.380 The New York City University is among the world's most prestigious schools, and its $11.3 billion
00:07:50.800 endowment ranks it the nation's eighth wealthiest private school. Okay, pausing for a moment.
00:08:01.020 A master's degree in film, for what purpose? You're going to get out of grad school at the age of 36,
00:08:10.060 36, or whatever, 35, broke, paralyzed by debt, and then yada yada, you're a famous film director.
00:08:19.300 Is that the plan? You can't yada yada through that. What exactly? Fill in the blanks there.
00:08:25.680 The problem is that nobody is going to see a film simply because the director has a master's degree.
00:08:31.920 Here's a conversation that has never occurred on planet Earth one time. Okay, this has never been,
00:08:35.940 I'll be the first person to say this. Hey, man, let me tell you about this movie I saw. It's really
00:08:40.420 worth watching. It's great. You should see it. First of all, the director has a master's degree
00:08:44.640 in film studies. Nobody cares about that. Nobody cares about most master's degrees.
00:08:51.260 There are a few useful ones, but for the most part, grad school is essentially a glorified Ponzi scheme.
00:08:57.260 So back to the article. It says, at New York University, graduates with a master's degree
00:09:02.700 in publishing borrowed a median $116,000 and had an annual median income of $42,000 two years after
00:09:10.200 the program, the data on recent borrowers show. At Northwestern University, half of those who
00:09:14.660 earned degrees in speech language pathology borrowed $148,000 or more, and the graduates had
00:09:20.560 a median income of $60,000 two years later. Graduates of the University of Southern California's
00:09:25.460 marriage and family counseling program borrowed a median $124,000 and half earned $50,000 or less
00:09:32.820 over the same period. Then the article starts getting into the specific sob stories of some
00:09:38.180 of these pathetic rubes who mortgage their financial future just so they could brag about 1.00
00:09:42.760 having a master's degree. I'm not going to subject you to very much of this portion, but here's a 0.98
00:09:47.020 taste. Quote, there's always those 2 a.m. panic attacks where you're thinking, how the hell am I ever
00:09:53.680 going to pay this off? Said 29-year-old Zach Morrison of New Jersey, who earned a master's
00:09:58.040 of fine art in film from Columbia in 2018 and praised the quality of the program. His graduate
00:10:03.540 school loan balance now stands at nearly $300,000, including accrued interest. He has been earning
00:10:09.440 between $30,000 and $50,000 a year from work as a Hollywood assistant and such side gigs as
00:10:14.660 commercial video production and photography. Matt Black graduated from Columbia in 2015 with an MFA
00:10:20.080 in film and $233,000 in federal loans. He signed up for an income-based repayment plan that in leaner
00:10:28.300 years requires no remittance from him. With interest, his balance stands at $331,000.
00:10:34.040 Mr. Black, a 36-year-old writer and producer in Los Angeles, said he grew up in a lower middle-class
00:10:38.500 family in Oklahoma. He earned $60,000 in a good year and less than half of that in dry stretches.
00:10:44.460 The faculty at Columbia was stellar, he said, but he blamed the school for his calamitous financial
00:10:50.900 situation. He said, quote, we were told by the establishment our whole lives this was the way to
00:10:56.120 jump social classes. Instead, he feels such goals as marriage, children, and owning a home are now out
00:11:02.300 of reach. Okay. Certainly, Columbia is partly to blame for his calamitous financial situation.
00:11:08.620 They're the ones offering this utterly worthless product. A master's of fine arts in film. Worthless.
00:11:17.600 No value. And they offer it and they make enormous profits off of it. If they were in any other
00:11:24.720 industry running a scheme like this, they'd be sent to prison. What these colleges are doing is criminal.
00:11:32.140 They are selling things for enormous amounts of money, knowing that they are plunging their
00:11:41.820 students into a lifetime of debt. And they also know that what they're selling has no value.
00:11:48.620 Any other industry, you go to jail for that, but not for universities. So yeah, I blame them all day
00:11:59.200 long. But do you know who else is to blame for Matt Black's calamitous financial situation? Matt Black.
00:12:05.820 I mean, he said it himself as an adult, a grown adult. He took out $233,000 in loans
00:12:12.540 simply because he'd been told that it's a good way to, quote, jump social classes.
00:12:20.680 He did it because he wanted to feel smarter and better than you. And now he's broker than you.
00:12:25.280 And I bet he feels dumber too. This is vanity, materialism, greed, not just on the part of the 0.99
00:12:32.880 university, but on the part of these adults who are buying what they can't afford, hoping it'll be
00:12:37.280 a shortcut to elite status. The whole thing is a mess from the undergrad level to the grad student
00:12:45.060 working towards his PhD and finger painting. It is all to borrow a term calamitous. And it's only
00:12:51.560 going to get worse. You see, there is no real remedy. As long as we keep pretending that the best path
00:12:59.400 for everyone is to spend the first 35 years of their lives sitting in classrooms and accumulating
00:13:05.360 pieces of paper and letters that they can put next to their names. The answer is, everyone's talking
00:13:12.840 about, well, how do we make it cheaper? How do we make it more affordable? How do we make it so more
00:13:16.740 people? No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the answer. The answer isn't to make sure more people
00:13:22.920 can do this really stupid, calamitous thing. The answer is to abandon this path, or at least to let 0.98
00:13:32.720 people know that there are many other paths aside from this one. You may have been told that you need
00:13:39.560 to whittle away the first third of your life in classrooms, but the people who told you that were
00:13:45.640 lying. They were literally selling you something. You don't need to. And most likely, you shouldn't.
00:13:56.960 There are some exceptions, but for most people, you should. Figure out what you want to do with your life,
00:14:01.460 and then go and simply do it. You want to be in the film industry, then just go and try to do it.
00:14:10.420 There's a really good chance you'll fail, but there's also a really good chance you'll fail
00:14:14.860 with a master's degree. You shall have more debt at the end of that failure.
00:14:19.680 Failure is part of life. You want to do anything worth doing, there's a really good chance of failure.
00:14:25.980 So just go and do it. You might need some college, depending on what you want to do,
00:14:28.960 or some kind of formal education outside of high school in order to fully achieve your goals,
00:14:32.980 whatever they are. But there is a very good chance you don't. There's a good chance you don't need
00:14:36.420 any of that. And it's almost certain that you don't need any kind of grad school.
00:14:42.100 That's the truth. And if we really want to solve this problem, we need to start telling it.
00:14:48.300 Now let's get to our five headlines.
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00:16:17.540 All right. Well, not a headline, but I just, I think it's, we should acknowledge it was a
00:16:21.380 reporter's birthday yesterday in the White House press pool. Some reporter's birthday.
00:16:27.180 And Jen Psaki made sure to acknowledge it. Now you, I'll play this for you and just ask yourself,
00:16:35.520 is this the kind of relationship that you want the media to have with those in power?
00:16:44.680 If democracy dies in darkness, as the Washington Post says, well, then what's happening here
00:16:50.580 exactly? Let's, uh, let's, let's watch.
00:16:54.620 Hi everyone. Hello. Happy Thursday.
00:16:58.680 Is it Thursday? Happy birthday?
00:17:00.500 I said happy Thursday. Well, I was going to say, I did hear it was Steve Holland's 29th birthday.
00:17:06.280 So happy 29th birthday. I'm a terrible singer, but I am willing to lead a song here if you are all game.
00:17:13.420 Is this a good day to ask for an interview with the press?
00:17:17.580 It may be. It may be. Who's with me? Someone here has a good voice.
00:17:22.720 Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Steve. Happy birthday to you.
00:17:37.660 All right. I will also note Brian Karam, excellent voice. I don't know what you do with that, but
00:17:45.740 that's, that's one thing I learned today.
00:17:48.920 One bit. Isn't that sweet? One big happy family. Isn't that nice and cute to see that
00:17:53.840 media and government getting along so well, not disturbing at all. How do you go from that
00:17:59.040 to, she's, she's giving the, the press briefing. How do you go from that to holding your feet to
00:18:07.220 the fire and trying to get to the truth? Well, you don't. There's no way to transition that, but
00:18:13.400 they have no plans in doing that in the first place. Also, the other thing that comes to mind
00:18:18.320 when I listen to that is first of all, she, she really does have a terrible, she makes me sound like
00:18:21.940 Pavarotti with my singing voice, but also the happy birthday song is just a terrible song. It really is.
00:18:28.100 We need a, we need a different, can we, as a, as a people come together and come up with a better
00:18:32.420 song? It's a bad song. Then again, I'm anti-birthdays. I will say, speaking of birthdays,
00:18:38.160 and usually I'm a curmudgeon about birthdays and I don't like the birthday song or anything,
00:18:43.360 but I was recently, just a couple of weeks ago. I, there are times when I think celebrating a
00:18:48.360 birthday is okay. And there, there are a few occasions when even I can appreciate the birthday
00:18:53.160 song. So we were at a, I was at a restaurant with my wife like two weeks ago. And this guy
00:18:57.720 starts, you know, starts clanging on his, his glass to get everyone's attention. And then
00:19:04.460 he lets us know that his, his mom was sitting right next to him is, was celebrating her 100th
00:19:08.360 birthday that day. And then she, he led the entire restaurant in, uh, uh, in singing happy
00:19:14.640 birthday for his mom. And I, I thought I even sang, can you believe it? I didn't really sing,
00:19:18.900 but I, I, I lip synced, which is more than I'll usually do. Cause I thought, you know what?
00:19:24.320 100 years. Yeah. You earned yourself that. And then we looked over in the, uh, the booth couple
00:19:31.680 down from there. We noticed there was a, an old couple had to be in their eighties and they were
00:19:39.100 sitting there and they were, they were holding hands and looking deeply into each other's eyes
00:19:42.880 in their eighties. My wife's looking at that and we've got the 100 year birthday.
00:19:48.220 And, uh, my wife is saying how cute everything is and how nice. And then, and then, and then I,
00:19:53.580 and I appreciate it. And I said to her, and these were my exact words. I said, uh, there's a lot of
00:19:58.520 wholesome happening here tonight, which just to prove that I have a romantic side too.
00:20:04.080 I can appreciate these moments. All right. Uh, I can appreciate this moment too, from the Daily
00:20:09.400 Wire reports, quote, a New York judge sentenced disgraced lawyer, Michael Avenatti to 30 months in
00:20:15.280 prison for attempting to extort Nike of up to $25 million. The case is one of several Avenatti is
00:20:22.700 currently involved in while he was addressing the court prior to the judge's sentence. Avenatti
00:20:26.460 reportedly cried, um, judge, judge Paul Gardefi of the Southern district of New York ripped the lawyer
00:20:32.720 during his sentencing saying that his conduct was outrageous. He, uh, so on and so forth. And now
00:20:39.340 he's looking at 30 months in prison. Um, personally, he committed a crime. He's going to jail. He deserves
00:20:47.860 it. That's fine. Um, the fact that he tried to extort Nike, I don't really care about that. Nike is
00:20:53.160 probably the least sympathetic company on earth. Uh, and the great thing is whether you're on the right
00:20:59.940 or the left, you've got plenty of reasons to hate Nike. So I don't really care that he did that.
00:21:04.500 What I do care about though, are he's, he's actually got, he's, he's facing criminal charges.
00:21:10.860 He's got two or three other cases where he's facing criminal charges and the more serious
00:21:15.840 things he still has not gone to trial for, including, I think in California, he's accused of
00:21:22.020 defrauding many of his clients. And these are just normal people. This isn't Nike. And he's accused
00:21:30.220 of stealing money from him. You could read the details of that. Um, if you want to know what a,
00:21:36.340 what a scumbag this guy is trying to extort Nike, that just makes you really, really stupid, makes 1.00
00:21:41.720 you dishonest, but also incredibly stupid. You're not going to get away with that. Defrauding his 1.00
00:21:46.720 clients the way that he has, um, that makes you stupid also, but an incredible scumbag. And now he's 1.00
00:21:53.200 going to prison. And, uh, so it's a, I think a good time to go back a little trip down memory lane
00:21:59.140 and see how the media treated this guy. Not all that long ago. We're not going back 15 years.
00:22:05.960 It's a couple of years ago. This is, uh, put together, I believe by the Washington examiner,
00:22:12.380 a nice little montage of the media and their treatment of, uh, of Michael Avenatti, who now
00:22:18.460 is going to prison for extortion and is going to be getting more prison time for fraud and everything
00:22:22.980 else. But here's what the media was saying about him just a couple of years ago. He's Donald Trump's
00:22:27.460 worst nightmare. Michael Avenatti. Joining us once again is Michael Avenatti. Let's bring
00:22:31.700 in Michael Avenatti. Michael Avenatti. Michael Avenatti. Michael Avenatti. Thank you very
00:22:35.280 much. He's out there saving the country. Don Meacham says he may be the savior of the
00:22:39.000 republic. You are something of a folk hero now. I owe Michael Avenatti an apology. I've been
00:22:44.140 saying enough for writing, Michael. I've seen you everywhere. What do you have left to say?
00:22:48.120 I was wrong, brother. You have a lot to say. I, uh, am just dying to hear what you think.
00:22:53.940 These people all like you. I'm the only person right here Donald Trump fears more than Robert
00:22:58.840 Miller. We think you guys are the tip of the spear that's going to take down Donald Trump.
00:23:03.840 Michael Avenatti's a beast. Okay, that's true. And he's a beast. He's a beast. I hand it
00:23:08.740 to her and I hand it to Michael Avenatti. But he has a great bigger calling here that being
00:23:13.480 a lawyer is minimal compared to what he's doing. No one has talked tougher directly to Donald
00:23:19.520 Trump on TV than Michael Avenatti. And Donald Trump is afraid to mention his name.
00:23:25.440 Okay, so you get the idea. And it goes on for like another minute. That was the Washington
00:23:28.620 Free Beacon, by the way, put that together. Uh, I mean, if they were capable of shame,
00:23:33.880 they would feel it, but they, they aren't. So it almost feels pointless to even bring this
00:23:37.740 up. They don't care. And it's not like, it's not like anyone was blindsided by this.
00:23:46.320 No intelligent person is shocked when you find out that Michael Avenatti is committed
00:23:52.680 extortion, is accused of fraud. No, no one, no one is going, Michael Avenatti did that.
00:23:59.780 I can't believe it. Of course, it was clear from day one. The first time I laid eyes on
00:24:05.660 the guy and heard him speak is like, okay, this guy's a scumbag. This guy's a rat. That's, 1.00
00:24:10.800 that's very clear. Then we have the worst one. I do, I do want to play this. This is the worst one,
00:24:17.160 um, of all from the view. And, uh, this gets, so what you just heard there is hero worship of
00:24:26.960 Michael Avenatti. And now we get into full on deification. Listen to this.
00:24:32.680 Lately to me, you're like the Holy Spirit. You are all places at all times, right? I mean,
00:24:39.920 you, I do, I see you all over cable news. I see you, you know, there is a, a, a seat available.
00:24:45.660 If you want to be a co-host at the view, you might, you know, there's people here you can pitch.
00:24:49.480 There's Anna Navarro, like the Holy Spirit. That is, uh, that is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. 1.00
00:24:54.120 That is literally the unforgivable sin that she committed. But again, doesn't care. No shame,
00:24:58.940 no embarrassment. Um, and, uh, Michael Avenatti going to prison. Okay. Number two, also from the
00:25:06.160 Daily Wire, it says Senator Rand Paul is planning to introduce legislation to revoke a federal mask
00:25:10.620 mandate for travelers on airplanes. The, uh, TSA has continued to mandate that all travelers wear
00:25:16.180 masks on airplanes with limited exceptions, as many state governments have rolled back COVID-19
00:25:20.540 restrictions. Uh, the current TSA mandate is in place until at least September 13th.
00:25:25.460 And Paul tweeted on Thursday, when the Senate returns to session,
00:25:28.560 I'll be introducing an immediate repeal of the mask mandate on planes. Enough time to stop this
00:25:32.560 farce and let people travel in peace. There is, there's no reason. There's never been a good
00:25:41.380 reason for it, in my opinion, especially now. I mean, that's the absurdity of this, but living here
00:25:48.400 in Nashville, and I've done a lot of flying recently in particular, and you walk around all day,
00:25:54.220 no one's wearing a mask anywhere, but then you go into an airport and magically we're all, now we all
00:26:00.100 need to wear a mask. There's no reason to do it whatsoever. It's, they may as well, to anyone who
00:26:09.000 says, yeah, well, there might be no reason, but it's, it's, it's not a big deal. It's not, it's not,
00:26:13.520 and it doesn't cause any real problems. Well, first of all, it does. We, I talked a few weeks ago
00:26:20.740 about the incredible skyrocketing rise in violent incidents on airplanes.
00:26:30.020 I don't remember the exact number, but usually it's something like there's a hundred or something
00:26:33.860 a year across the entire country where there's some sort of unruly incident among passengers,
00:26:39.520 people get kicked off. We're at like over a thousand incidents and we're not even
00:26:44.340 close to through the year yet. And almost all of that is being driven by the mask thing.
00:26:52.760 So it is causing problems. It's making people unsafe when you have these incidents happening.
00:26:59.440 But also imagine if, uh, they, they may as well decree that when you're in an airport,
00:27:05.200 you have to hop on one leg. That's what you have to do. When you're in the airport, hop on one leg
00:27:10.480 just because, and if you don't, you get kicked out.
00:27:16.900 Would you go along with that and say, well, it's not, all you're doing is hopping on one leg. It's
00:27:21.420 not a big deal. It's utterly arbitrary. That's why it's a big deal. There's no reason for us to be
00:27:29.920 doing this yet. We're told to do it. And there are significant consequences if we don't, uh, so
00:27:38.380 at least Rand Paul's on top of that. And I'll be, I'll be interested to hear what the arguments are
00:27:44.200 from all the people, especially the Democrats who will oppose this move because you know,
00:27:49.080 they're going to, uh, next from the Hill, it says job openings held at a record high of 9.2 million
00:27:57.200 in May while resignations dropped slightly from historic peak. The number of open jobs on the
00:28:02.200 final business day of May changed little from the peak set in April. Um, quits fell to 3.6 million
00:28:10.140 from a record high of 3.9 million in April, but remained well above level seen earlier in the year.
00:28:14.980 And so this is the same story that we've, that we've seen. And it's, it continues record numbers of,
00:28:20.860 uh, of open jobs. We've got companies that are begging people to come work for them. 0.50
00:28:25.800 Um, I'm sure you've seen the same thing. I see these signs all the time now, even in fast food
00:28:29.920 places, begging for employees, uh, offering signing bonuses. I don't remember ever seeing that at a
00:28:37.180 McDonald's before, but now I see it all the time. And with all the traveling I've been doing, I've,
00:28:42.600 I've been in way too many McDonald's I have to say. And, uh, many of them have that offering a
00:28:47.120 signing bonus, like it's the NFL or something to McDonald's employees, but they can't find employees
00:28:52.040 because the government has made it profitable to just stay home.
00:28:59.860 And you can't, you can't have a functioning society that way where doing nothing is an option,
00:29:07.160 doing nothing at all. When you make that an option for people, you just cannot function as there is,
00:29:14.420 there is no society that has worked that way. We're going to have millions of people choosing to do
00:29:20.580 nothing. It's not like they're dropping out of the business world because they're working on the
00:29:26.360 farm. You go back 200 years ago, most people didn't have quote unquote jobs, but they were,
00:29:33.040 they were still working every day to live. Now try having a society where people aren't in a job,
00:29:41.600 but they also, they aren't doing any other kind of work and they're just sitting at home.
00:29:47.020 Next, uh, speaking of businesses, here's a tweet from Matt Jones, who is according to his bio and
00:29:53.300 award-winning entrepreneur. And, um, this is not an award-winning idea in my mind. He says,
00:30:00.320 he tweeted, now everyone's coming back to the office. We've upgraded our lanyards. So we all know
00:30:04.640 where we're comfortable. And then you see, there are three lanyards that I guess the employees,
00:30:09.600 I don't know what kind of company this is, but the employees of this company, they could choose
00:30:12.920 between three different lanyards. There's a green, uh, an orange and a red. And the green signifies
00:30:19.880 that you're okay with hugs and high fives. Orange signifies okay with talking, but not touching.
00:30:27.820 And, uh, the red says, hi, I'm keeping my distance. And all the employees are supposed to wear one of
00:30:33.100 those to signal to each other where their comfort level is in this post COVID world. Is there a
00:30:38.880 lanyard for adults who don't need to communicate through lanyards? Cause that's the one I would
00:30:43.180 choose. Also another question. What about colorblind people? Some people can't tell the difference
00:30:49.040 between red and green if you're colorblind. Um, so they're going to be charging in there trying to
00:30:52.960 bear hug the red lanyard people, which actually is pretty great. Come to think of it. Although I mean,
00:30:59.600 who is hugging at work anyway? Sounds like a, it's a literal invitation for sexual harassment
00:31:05.960 complaints. Hug. Okay. With hugs at work. Maybe there should be another lanyard, a dark green,
00:31:13.880 which says, um, I want to hold my coworkers in an erotic embrace and whisper my sensual fantasies
00:31:20.640 into their ears. I mean, if we're hugging, we might as well go all the way around the bases, I guess.
00:31:24.660 Uh, but you know, the thing is if I had to choose one of these, really, if I had to choose one,
00:31:29.400 I would go with red. I would go with the stay the hell away from me. You freaks 0.99
00:31:33.840 lanyard, but not because of COVID just because I'm an antisocial hermit.
00:31:41.000 And frankly, as an antisocial hermit, I'm, this is one of the things that has really bothered me
00:31:44.940 over the last year is to see my culture and my way of life being appropriated by the COVID people. 0.98
00:31:51.380 And so when I, when I just operate the way that I always have keeping my distance from people,
00:31:56.660 now it's assumed that I'm worried about COVID when that's not it at all.
00:32:02.060 I had this experience on an, on an elevator a couple of weeks ago. I was, I was on the elevator
00:32:06.020 and, um, then someone comes running down the hall, this guy, and he's like, Oh, hold that,
00:32:10.140 hold that. And of course I'm not holding the elevator for you. I just stood there and it closed.
00:32:14.140 You can catch the next one. It'll take 20 seconds for the next one to come.
00:32:18.900 And, uh, and then I felt bad, not because I didn't hold the elevator for him, but because I realized
00:32:23.220 he probably thought I was afraid of COVID and that's why I didn't want him on the elevator.
00:32:29.080 No, it's not that at all. I just don't like human interaction. That's it.
00:32:34.640 Not COVID related. All right. Finally, uh, so I've been meaning to talk about this for a few days,
00:32:41.440 Rachel Nichols over at ESPN. Um, she's a ESPN personality and she was accidentally,
00:32:50.000 I'm still not sure exactly how this is supposed to have happened, but she was having a private
00:32:54.600 conversation with someone and she was accidentally quote unquote recorded on, on someone's cell phone
00:33:00.260 in this private conversation, complaining that ESPN had given her NBA hosting gig to a black
00:33:06.280 female personality at the channel. And she was saying that she'd been given that job for diversity
00:33:11.480 reasons. And then this recording was circulated around ESPN. And it was like, this happened a year
00:33:16.660 ago. And it was, people knew about it at ESPN. It kind of made the rounds. It never went public.
00:33:23.180 Um, and, uh, and now suddenly it is public. And first of all, here is the, this is from the New
00:33:27.900 York times. They released it. Here's Rachel Nichols talking about this issue. Here it is.
00:33:32.300 So they said to me, Hey, instead of hosting the NBA finals, like why don't you do Doris's silent
00:33:37.720 reporter job for the NBA finals? Cause guess what that would clear the way for?
00:33:44.720 Uh, for Maria to do the hosting for them. 1.00
00:33:49.720 For Maria to do the hosting for them. 0.99
00:33:51.820 Yeah.
00:33:52.320 So I have declined. I don't know what their next move is, but they are feeling pressure because
00:34:00.240 of all of that. And, um, I'm trying to figure out like how to just, you know, my thing is like,
00:34:08.460 I, you know, I wish Maria to do all the success in the world. She covers football. She covers
00:34:12.880 basketball. If you need to give her more things to do because you're feeling pressure about your
00:34:19.120 like crappy long time record on diversity, which by the way, I myself like know personally from the
00:34:24.320 female side of it, like go for it. Just, you know, find it somewhere else. Like you're not 1.00
00:34:29.540 going to find it with me and taking my thing away. So that's Rachel Nichols. She's the white woman 0.99
00:34:36.220 and she was replaced by, that was a conversation from last July. And, uh, Maria Taylor is the woman
00:34:43.680 that she was replaced by for hosting the NBA finals. Um, and as it happens, another big coincidence
00:34:50.340 here that Maria Taylor who got the hosting gig and remember this, so this, this audio has been
00:34:57.500 circulating around the company internally. Everyone knew about it. Um, Maria Taylor's contract was,
00:35:04.020 she, she was up for a contract extension. She was negotiating contract and that's going to be 0.97
00:35:08.300 happening in the next week or two. And so right when this contract negotiation is happening, that's
00:35:13.620 when this, uh, audio goes public. What a big coincidence. And now, uh, Rachel Nichols had,
00:35:21.240 so she had been taken off of the hosting gig and it had been given to Maria Taylor. That's what she 0.71
00:35:25.240 was complaining about. Now that this has gone public, she was removed also as a sideline reporter,
00:35:30.780 which is what she had been demoted to. And she was replaced by a woman by the name of Malika Andrews, 0.99
00:35:36.240 who is also a black woman. So she was, she was complaining, you know, that she had been
00:35:43.940 replaced by a black woman for diversity purposes. And because of that complaint, 1.00
00:35:49.100 rather because the complaint went public, ESPN punished her by replacing her again. 1.00
00:35:55.420 Maria Taylor though, by the way, she finally spoke out about this issue. She had been kind of quiet
00:35:59.700 about it. And, uh, she finally tweeted yesterday. She said, during the dark times, I always remember
00:36:04.700 that I am in this position to open doors and light the path that others walk down. I've taken some
00:36:10.540 punches, but that just means I'm still in the fight. Remember to lift as you climb and always keep
00:36:16.160 rising. Okay. So she's the, you know, she's the hero and also the victim in this situation. Clear from
00:36:24.200 her tweet here. It doesn't even make, why I don't watch ESPN and I also don't watch the NBA.
00:36:34.700 And I don't care who hosts it, but it certainly seems very plausible that Rachel Nichols is correct
00:36:42.160 in her original assessment. If she had had this job and she was good at it, if that's the case,
00:36:48.080 and then she was suddenly taken off of the job, right? When the, when the BLM stuff was, uh,
00:36:53.660 was happening last summer, replaced by a black woman, really good chance that it was done for 1.00
00:36:58.200 political and quote, diversity reasons. But why would ESPN shy away from that?
00:37:05.380 Are they supposed to be open about that? They're trying to give an opportunity to, uh,
00:37:09.000 you know, trying to diversify and give an opportunity to an underrepresented person.
00:37:16.420 Meanwhile, Rachel Nichols is woke and leftist herself. At this point, you couldn't possibly
00:37:22.060 work at ESPN if you're not. And, uh, you know, she supports BLM and all that kind of stuff.
00:37:29.660 And this is what she gets for her trouble. That's the way it always goes, but these people
00:37:35.440 will never learn. Um, I said that was the final thing, but I, I, I can't forget about this. There
00:37:41.580 is one thing more important than anything else we've talked about so far today. Um, you know,
00:37:46.500 the, we we've heard a lot of, uh, there's been a lot of effort to get people vaccinated, all the
00:37:52.160 holdouts. Joe Biden is going to be going door to door, but a big part of the effort has been all
00:37:56.980 these songs that we've heard. And, uh, the rapper juvenile back from the nineties, you may, you may
00:38:02.380 remember him if you're a nineties kid, he did a remix of his, uh, back that ass up or rather back that
00:38:07.960 thing up the radio edit. And, uh, only now it's vax that thing up. And I just thought we should play
00:38:14.380 that for you because it's pretty great. Here it is.
00:38:44.380 Thank you.
00:39:14.380 I think we got the point here. I think we basically hit the idea. Use a handsome young
00:39:25.020 brother. Why don't you vax that thing up? That's not creepy at all. I'm just wondering,
00:39:31.180 is there anyone who wasn't convinced so far about vaccinations and, and, but will be convinced
00:39:40.500 by this? Who are we even trying to, to, to convince at this point with these sorts of things?
00:39:49.740 Who is the person at this point? The vaccine's been out for months, readily available for months.
00:39:57.720 Everyone knows that it's there. They know where they can get it. They know all, they know the whole
00:40:01.380 spiel. And yet there are plenty of people who for one reason or another said, I don't, I don't want it.
00:40:07.720 Not interested. Thank you. Thanks, but no thanks. So is there anyone who has held that position for
00:40:15.080 months now and is now going to say, well, after seeing that, they're going to say, well, you know,
00:40:21.620 your raise is a good point. Perhaps I should indeed vax that thing up. I don't know who that person,
00:40:29.520 maybe they call calls his wife up. Hey honey, I know we said we weren't doing the vaccine, but, uh,
00:40:34.020 listen, I just heard this song and he, and he, and he was bringing up the point that we need to vax that
00:40:38.060 thing up. And I'm starting to think maybe we really should. Somehow I doubt that that conversation
00:40:44.880 is happening, but I could be wrong. Let's go down to reading the YouTube comments. Um, Dylan says,
00:40:51.240 Matt, do you know what kind of car Ben drives? I've always imagined him in something classy like a BMW.
00:40:56.380 Oh, and please spare me. I already know that you drive a minivan, AKA the dad wagon. I don't know what
00:41:00.880 kind of car Ben drives, but, um, please don't stereotype me. I don't drive a minivan. In fact,
00:41:06.340 I have nothing against minivans there. This is the struggle that everyone goes through when they
00:41:11.800 get into like middle age and they're, they're having kids, you know, and once you get to like
00:41:17.220 three or four kids, um, you, you start to realize that you got to make the minivan move.
00:41:24.680 And, but, but a lot of people don't want to do that. They have some prejudice against minivans that I
00:41:29.860 don't understand. My wife is in that category. She absolutely refused. We have four kids
00:41:33.440 and we cram them into SUVs. She refuses to get a minivan. I don't understand why they're practical.
00:41:43.060 They're handsome vehicles. What's the problem? Um, Ashley says pre-K is unnecessary and kindergarten
00:41:51.280 probably is as well. Then if you homeschool, you could move through the grades quicker and get your
00:41:55.900 GED at a younger age. Honestly, 12 years is too much. Yeah. We were expanding public education to
00:42:01.120 14 years, 16 years. Uh, we got to get the kids in younger and younger. Really it should be less.
00:42:05.400 And that's true. And this, this is something that people, when they start homeschooling,
00:42:08.560 I hear this all the time from homeschool parents, that they're shocked by, by, especially if they
00:42:15.200 went to public school themselves, or if they had their kids in public school and they pulled them out,
00:42:18.960 they're shocked when they realized just how much time is wasted in public school.
00:42:23.240 Because you have your curriculum and especially when your kids are younger, you know, they're in
00:42:30.520 first, second grade in that elementary school age, you can, you can give them a full days of,
00:42:36.140 full day of education in a couple of hours. You give, you can give them the same amount of education
00:42:42.340 that they will get if they were in, in a public school building or more, only you could do it in
00:42:47.800 two hours or less as opposed to seven. And why is that? Because there's just so much time
00:42:55.000 wasted in these classrooms on subjects that are irrelevant. They're watching movies. They're,
00:43:02.280 you know, they got to go from classroom to classroom in the hallways. They got lunch,
00:43:04.960 they got gym, they got this and that. Um, just a lot, a lot of busy work. You cut all that out
00:43:13.200 and you realize that, that, that right now there's kids are in school for longer than they need to be
00:43:21.220 a lot longer. And yeah, pre-K is just daycare. A three or four year old kid, there's, there's no
00:43:29.620 kind of formal sit down education that you're going to give to a four year old. Um, at that age,
00:43:38.900 at that age, you know how kids learn, they learn through playing. You, you learn education is
00:43:44.840 through, through just being kids and playing games. That's how they learn. And no, you don't
00:43:50.820 need to be in a, in a classroom setting in order to do that. Um, T Loco says, Matt, got to say,
00:43:58.400 I lost a ton of respect for you with your comments on the peacock story. Killing a bird because it's
00:44:03.180 doing what it naturally does. There's no reason to kill it. Would you want to live next to neighbors 0.99
00:44:06.940 like that? Hope they hang the bastards who killed it and paid for the contract? Really? Really? 1.00
00:44:12.500 T Loco? The person who killed a peacock, you want to hang them. You think they should be killed? 1.00
00:44:19.140 But eye for eye here, blood for blood, a peacock for a human life. That's what you think? 1.00
00:44:25.740 Yeah. I got a lot of backlash for my position on the peacock story. There was a peacock that had
00:44:31.040 been terrorized. You didn't watch the show. You'll say there's a peacock that had been terrorizing
00:44:33.840 this neighborhood. Um, and peacocks, yeah, they have pretty beautiful flat feathers, but they also
00:44:38.340 make a really loud, annoying sound and they don't shut up. And so this peacock had been visiting this
00:44:43.120 neighborhood for six years, tormenting people at all hours of the day. And finally, someone put an
00:44:47.800 ad out on Craigslist and said, Hey, you know, I'm looking for someone who could just kill this peacock, 0.99
00:44:52.040 hired a peacock assassin. And next thing you know, the peacock was taken care of. And I fully support that. 0.97
00:44:57.520 I, I support your right to kill annoying peacocks. I do. And listen, T Loco, you, like I said yesterday, 0.99
00:45:06.480 I know damn well. And so do you that if this was a vulture or a crow, you know, if there was some
00:45:15.440 crow that had been going through people's garbage or, or, or even a wild Turkey, some ugly animal that
00:45:24.060 doesn't have the pretty feathers, you wouldn't care that anyone shot it. You would say, Oh, that's a
00:45:29.020 pest. We have some animals that are pests and some animals that are not. And if you kill the pest,
00:45:36.180 it's okay. But if you kill the animals that aren't pests, it's bad. How do we determine the pest from 0.91
00:45:40.480 the non-pest? Mostly it's just whichever one we think is cute. So a lot of backlash for that. I, I'm,
00:45:47.840 I am unwavering though, in my, my stance on this and my support for, um, for murdering peacocks,
00:45:53.800 only the annoying ones. I'm not saying if someone has a peacock farm, I'm not saying you just, 0.63
00:45:57.860 you can go there and just start, start firing away. I'm just saying
00:46:01.640 the ones who are pests, I support that. And then, um, in fact, uh, our producers, McKenna and Sean put a,
00:46:11.620 so I thought that I was in the minority, but they put a poll up under the comments there.
00:46:15.440 And I guess, what was it? Was it a 25 to 21 in favor of killing the peacock? That's what I was
00:46:20.120 told. Okay. 25 to 21. So I'm not fully in the minority like I thought I was. Um, and then finally,
00:46:28.560 Aaron says, my siblings have used peacock calls to get each other's attention for years. Very distinct
00:46:33.600 sound. Wait, my siblings have used peacock calls to get each other's attention. Are your siblings
00:46:42.440 peacocks? Are they humans? Why not just use each other's names? What? How do you put that in the
00:46:48.820 comments? Like it's a normal thing with, with no explanation, no context. Oh yeah. My, my siblings
00:46:54.820 always use peacock calls. What are they adults? So you're at Thanksgiving dinner and you're, and you're
00:47:01.440 using peacock calls to each other across the table. Do you have names? What kind of bizarre thing is that?
00:47:10.480 All right. Well, thanks for watching anyway, Aaron. Oh, one other thing. Um, I also wanted
00:47:16.400 to mention this, this is pretty exciting. So this was presented to me yesterday. You know, that, uh,
00:47:21.540 that we recently decided if you're a fan of this show, you are a member of the sweet baby gang.
00:47:26.600 That's the name, whether you like it or not, if you're, if you're in the audience, you're part of
00:47:30.840 the sweet baby gang. Uh, how did we come up with that name? It's it's, you have to be there. It's an
00:47:35.200 inside joke. I'm not going to get into it. I don't even remember where this came from,
00:47:38.440 but it's a sweet baby gang. That's what we are. And, uh, there have been people in the comments
00:47:42.240 for, for weeks now, uh, begging for sweet baby gang merchandise. And this was presented to me
00:47:49.620 yesterday and we finally have it sort of, um, I guess I'll show that here's the bicep cam and I
00:47:54.820 think maybe you could probably see better. So that's a sweet baby gang shirt. It says sweet baby
00:48:00.020 gang. And then I was shown this shirt and, uh, I, it's a beautiful shirt and it's also viscerally
00:48:05.420 deeply disturbing at the same time because there is me with a diaper on crawling on the
00:48:12.220 ground. So I, I, I'm disturbed by it. I'm horrified. Um, but I also like it at the same
00:48:17.820 time. So now this is not for sale though. This is just for me. We haven't actually put
00:48:24.340 these on sale. So this is merchandise just for me. If, but if you want sweet baby gang,
00:48:28.820 if you want that shirt, then you have to just, you have to let us know, cry out for it in the
00:48:35.780 comments. And, uh, maybe I can convince them to actually put this. I don't know if the, if the
00:48:39.620 company would be too embarrassed to sell this or it's just too weird. I'm not sure, but we'll, uh,
00:48:45.100 we'll see. You know, if you're the do it yourself or type, especially when it comes to cars,
00:48:49.100 then, uh, then, you know, you, you might find yourself needing auto parts. Where do you get them?
00:48:54.300 Other than what most people do is they just get in the car and they go to an auto parts store.
00:48:57.300 But the problem, as I'm always telling you, is that you go there, you're wasting time,
00:49:00.980 you're wasting money because the stuff's going to be more expensive than it otherwise should be.
00:49:04.740 And they're also probably not going to have what you need in stock. They're not going to have the
00:49:07.240 kind of selection that they do at rockauto.com, which you can access anytime, um, just on your
00:49:13.200 phone, on your laptop. It's as easy as that. Just go to rockauto.com. They always offer the lowest
00:49:17.620 prices possible. If you find it at rockauto.com, you don't need to keep a window shopping because you
00:49:22.940 know that you found the best price possible. They're also a family business. They've been
00:49:26.980 serving auto parts customers online for 20 years. You can go to rockauto.com to shop for auto and
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00:49:50.460 available for your car or truck, right? Walsh in there. How did you hear about us box? So they know
00:49:54.900 that we sent you. Here's something else you could do after you go to rockauto.com.
00:49:59.400 Pick up Michael Knowles' new book, which you may have heard him mentioned a time or two. It's now
00:50:03.260 out, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. And this is all about, you know, we hear
00:50:08.240 about political correctness. Most people say that they're against it, but with Speechless,
00:50:14.560 Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, if you haven't picked up a copy, now's the time to do it. The book
00:50:17.860 takes you through the origins of political correctness and why it's absolutely essential that we
00:50:22.440 stand up and fight its insidious spread into every public institution in America. Because if we don't,
00:50:28.360 the consequences are waiting for us and our children in the not too distant future. If you
00:50:33.080 don't know where to start, don't worry, because in the book, Michael Knowles gives you the tools you
00:50:37.660 need to understand and spot political correctness in order to stop it. It's a great book, a lot of great
00:50:42.740 insight. And so pick up a copy now, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available
00:50:47.780 everywhere right now. If you don't want to make a trip to the bookstore, you can always pick it up
00:50:50.700 on Amazon in hardcover and Kindle edition right now. Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
00:50:59.560 Today we cancel Scarlett Johansson. She's doing the media rounds to promote her new superhero movie,
00:51:05.240 which is, I believe, the 94th film in the Marvel Extended Universe. Interestingly enough, even though
00:51:10.480 it has produced so many movies, it turns out that this universe is quite small because all of the
00:51:14.980 movies are exactly the same. They all have the same basic plot and action sequences and message.
00:51:21.040 Not to spoil anything, but the message for all of these movies to summarize is, bad guy is bad.
00:51:28.300 Punch bad guy. Kick bad guy. Good guy win. The end. Now buy the merchandise. That's basically the 0.99
00:51:35.600 message and the point of all these movies. Now, I may be selling Marvel a little short here because
00:51:39.940 sometimes the movies do have a deeper message, which brings us to Scarlett Johansson and her
00:51:44.160 interview with Glamour Magazine. She was asked about the deeper themes and messages of her new film,
00:51:48.880 Black Widow, which is a movie about an attractive woman in a leather jumpsuit kicking people.
00:51:54.500 At least that's what it's about on the surface. But what is the film really saying? What is it truly
00:52:00.420 trying to convey about the nature of kicking and jumpsuits and hot blonde chicks? Here's Johansson 0.98
00:52:07.760 trying to explain.
00:52:08.720 Well, I do think the film is inherently female, partly because of Kate Shortland directing it. It
00:52:18.180 definitely has, you know, it sheds light on, it sheds light on a, you know, on an imbalance,
00:52:32.420 I think, that women feel like inherently because of how our society is, has been forever, thousands 1.00
00:52:42.180 and thousands of years. And, you know, the movie is about the subjugation of women and, you know,
00:52:51.260 the trauma that we have to help one another out of.
00:52:57.420 Oh, okay. Now, to be fair to Scarlett here, the actual question she was asked verbatim,
00:53:03.600 this was a question. How important is it to push the conversation around gendered superheroes? 1.00
00:53:08.280 That question doesn't mean anything. She was apparently being interviewed by a random
00:53:13.020 progressive buzzword generator. So she did her best to take the discussion to someplace that was
00:53:17.940 moderately intelligible. But she was hobbled again by the fact that the movie she's promoting is
00:53:22.700 incredibly bad and stupid and exists almost entirely as a vehicle to sell toys and promote 1.00
00:53:28.000 the brand. That's all Marvel. Marvel movies are made by algorithms, not people. I would respect her 1.00
00:53:34.220 if she just said that, but she can't. So instead, she reaches for some kind of socially
00:53:37.860 conscious message. And she kept reaching in response to the next question, which was again,
00:53:43.060 verbatim, what have you been your own? When have you been your own ally the most?
00:53:49.200 That was the question. When have you been your own ally the most? So once again, the question makes
00:53:55.320 no sense, but here's what she said. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I think you have to be all that as a woman, 1.00
00:54:02.000 you have to be all the time. You know, because we are undermined and underserved and underappreciated
00:54:12.540 and underpaid. And you have to be your own ally. You know, my mom instilled that in me from when I was
00:54:18.980 really, really young. Um, because of course she'd experienced it even more severely than I,
00:54:25.680 than I did. And, you know, equal pay is a huge part of, of that fight. Um, when I, even when I was
00:54:33.700 a teenager in the industry or a young woman, I should say, my mom, you know, would have those
00:54:40.540 conversations. Like what, why is she not getting, you know, it had never had anything to do.
00:54:46.040 There was always these, these, like these little key terms, like, um, you know, bankability and,
00:54:55.180 you know, box office draw. And those are all, uh, way, those are all terms that are basically
00:55:01.260 masquerading as sexism. Okay. Um, undermined, underserved, underappreciated, underpaid.
00:55:11.540 This poor woman, I might have to start another GoFundMe, I'm thinking. She can barely make ends 1.00
00:55:18.360 meet. She's on the verge of starvation. Nobody appreciates her or serves her or pays her. 1.00
00:55:23.400 This is a real problem. I saw Scarlett Johansson out on a street corner just the other day,
00:55:26.840 huddled under a blanket with a jar full of coins. Uh, you know, it, it, it, or I think it was Scarlett
00:55:31.920 Johansson. Might've been, might've been just a drunk guy. I don't know, but consider this and get ready
00:55:37.420 to burst into tears when you hear this. Scarlett Johansson only makes about $50 million a year. 1.00
00:55:45.420 At least that's what she earned in 2019. Only $50 million. This is a real life handmaid's tale.
00:55:52.860 This is the patriarchy plain as day. We are living in a country where a woman can only make $50 million 1.00
00:55:59.040 in a calendar year. Now you might say that $50 million is quite a lot of money. You might say
00:56:04.280 that Scarlett Johansson, rich, beautiful, famous, beloved, not beloved by me, especially, but by
00:56:09.360 other people. Um, you might say that she should simply be happy and grateful because life has
00:56:14.060 granted her all of the material blessings a person can ever hope to be given. But the problem for
00:56:20.120 Johansson is that although she has so much, still other people have more. Yes, she makes a ton of money
00:56:26.860 off of her Marvel films, but male action heroes, male action stars make two tons of money. They make 1.00
00:56:33.920 even more. And it must be because of sexism, she says. Yes, it must. Or maybe women in Hollywood 1.00
00:56:41.440 generally get paid less, still a lot, but less because the movies that make all the money are
00:56:48.920 action movies, especially superhero movies. And those kinds of movies are more successful. That is more
00:56:54.940 people watch them. They sell more tickets. They get more downloads on streaming when they star men.
00:57:00.700 In other words, male stars get paid more because they're worth more in terms of pure dollars and
00:57:05.100 cents. The Daily Wire article reporting on this story gives the example of the two most recent films
00:57:10.280 starring new superheroes in the Marvel cinematic universe, Black Panther and Captain Marvel.
00:57:15.580 Um, the former earned $700 million domestically while the latter earned $427 million.
00:57:20.340 The former was led by a man, the latter by a woman. And these are, that's generally how these things 0.96
00:57:25.920 go. Why? Well, I think it's because audiences in general mostly prefer to see men in these kinds
00:57:35.900 of roles. Most members of the audience would never say that because they can't say that, but the box
00:57:43.280 office speaks for itself. Um, generally that's what the audience wants. The studios and Hollywood,
00:57:52.260 that's not what they want. That's not what they want us to want as an audience, but it is what the
00:57:57.520 audience wants. Part of that is because the studios, why are the female action movies and superhero 1.00
00:58:03.980 movies less popular? Part of that is because the studios can't help but inject a bunch of cringy girl 1.00
00:58:08.740 power stuff into the female action movies. And so audiences are turned off by that while the male 0.94
00:58:14.540 action movies will just be action movies. But also part of it is that men most of the time from the
00:58:21.280 audience's perspective, make more compelling and convincing action heroes. Perhaps it's mentally
00:58:28.880 exhausting for the audience to watch a 112 pound blonde woman in this kind of role because you have 1.00
00:58:33.940 to strain a bit to take the movie seriously when she's beating up like 14 armed thugs at once. 1.00
00:58:39.960 You don't have to strain quite as much watching like The Rock do the same, even though it's fiction
00:58:45.240 in both cases. I'm just speculating here. Whatever the reason, the fact is that these sorts of movies,
00:58:51.780 when there is a man in the starring role, tend to perform better. Audiences tend to be more interested.
00:58:57.120 So those stars get paid a little more. It's not sexism, it's economics.
00:59:01.120 And that's why I must say to Scarlett Johansson, not because she's a woman, 0.99
00:59:06.460 but just because she's a whiny, entitled narcissist, you are canceled. 1.00
00:59:13.540 Scarlett Johansson is canceled. Grad students are canceled. But you know who is not canceled? 0.99
00:59:21.120 The sweet baby gang. Thanks for watching as always. Thanks for listening. Have a great day. Godspeed.
00:59:31.120 Well, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the word,
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00:59:45.400 the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, Michael Knowles Show,
00:59:48.700 The Andrew Klavan Show. Thanks for listening.
00:59:51.160 The Matt Walsh Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer Jeremy Boring. Our supervising
00:59:56.000 producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling. Our technical director is Austin Stevens. Production
01:00:01.080 manager, Pavel Vadosky. The show is edited by Sasha Tolmachov. Our audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
01:00:07.240 Hair and makeup is done by Mika Geneva. And our production coordinator is McKenna Waters.
01:00:11.860 The Matt Walsh Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2021.
01:00:15.180 Hey, everybody. This is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. You know,
01:00:19.520 some people are depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching,
01:00:23.840 and the moon's turned to blood. But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.
01:00:28.760 So come on over to The Andrew Klavan Show and laugh your way through the fall of the republic with me,
01:00:33.320 Andrew Klavan.