Matt Walsh Reviews The Wokest ＂Big Game＂ Moments
Episode Stats
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Summary
The He Gets Us Super Bowl ad that depicts a black guy washing the feet of a white cop is widely criticized for being anti-racist and anti-Christian. What does Jesus have to do with it? And why does He Get Us have to be white?
Transcript
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Unfortunately, I cannot give a full analysis of the Super Bowl or the Super Bowl ads if for
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whatever reason anyone actually wanted me to do that. I watched the game rather half-heartedly,
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paying only vague attention because I was bitter that my Baltimore Ravens weren't playing in it.
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I'll admit that. I was bitter. And in protest against this injustice, I boycotted the event.
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I mean, I still watched it, but I watched it unenthusiastically. So it was a heroic form of
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activism on my part, you must admit. But in any case, I did happen to glance up during an early
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commercial break when we saw what would prove to be one of the most viral ads of the night. It was
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another Super Bowl commercial for the He Gets Us campaign. The campaign, first run by a group
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called the Servant Foundation and now run by a group called Come Near Incorporated, both funded
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by mostly anonymous, but we can assume extremely wealthy donors, is ostensibly meant to evangelize
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and promote Christianity. Indeed, they're spending tens of millions of dollars to run
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these ads during the Super Bowl. There are many very credible and biblically grounded Christian
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groups in the world that would love to have the resources to run a commercial during the most
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watched television event of the year, but most of them wouldn't have those kinds of funds if they
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fundraised and saved for a decade. The people that are behind He Gets Us do have that money,
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which means they have a unique chance that few Christians will ever have.
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They're able to present a message to 100 million people all at the same time. In fact, this Super
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Bowl is certain to be among the most watched events of all time, making this an unprecedented or nearly
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unprecedented at least opportunity. So what will they do with it? What message will they send out
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to those 100 million souls? How will they use the millions upon millions of dollars that these 60
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seconds of add time will cost them? Will they call the world to repentance, to humility, to obedience,
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to virtue? No, no, no, and no. Instead, they did this. Watch.
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Don't ask me what you know is true. Don't have to tell you. I love your precious heart. I, I was standing,
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you were there. You were there. Two worlds collided. And they could never tear us apart.
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The ad is very careful to make sure that it doesn't depict a white person getting his feet
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washed by a non-white person. So we see every combination of feet washing going on, except for
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that one. Apparently, Jesus calls us to wash feet unless you're black and the other person is white
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because that would be racist. And this already tells you everything you need to know about the
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campaign and the people funding it. The ad strictly follows and respects the left-wing victim hierarchy
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and dutifully make sure to not depict any image that would run afoul of the rules of intersectionality.
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If they had reversed the roles in any of these scenarios, then the ad would have been, to at
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least some small degree, culturally subversive. Okay, what if it was a black guy washing the feet
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of the cop? But you would never see that. Okay, even though, and people defend the ad to say,
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well, are you saying we shouldn't love each other? Okay, then, okay, well, then why don't we have the
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black guy wash the cop's feet? Shouldn't he love cops? If you saw that, well, that's not, that sends the
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wrong message. We can't have that. But, you know, at least that would have offered the viewer something
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that they don't already see. It would have given them something to think about. It would have challenged
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the viewer. But they made sure not to do that. So what's the problem here? Aside from the political
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correctness with the racial dynamics, what's the problem? Well, to begin with, we should say Jesus did
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not go around washing everyone's feet. Okay? There is precisely one story in the New Testament
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of Jesus washing feet, and it was at the Passover meal before his passion and death. In that case,
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he washed the feet of his disciples, the people closest to him, his disciples, people that have
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been following him, literally, throughout his whole ministry. And now that did include, of course,
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the disciple who was about to betray him. But the point is that these were his disciples.
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Like, he wasn't out in the street washing the feet of every unbeliever and unrepentant sinner
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who walked by. And we often do this these days. Like, we take singular moments in Jesus's ministry,
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and we extrapolate them, making them out to be regular occurrences. But that's not a fair or
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accurate assumption. So when we say, Jesus didn't hate, he washed feet, it makes it sound like it was
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like a standard form of greeting. He just went around and watched. There's one story of that happening
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in a very specific circumstance for a specific group of people. Did he ever go out in the public
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and wash feet? Well, we don't know. Like, we don't, there's no reason to assume he did. There's
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no mention of it. But we do know that out in public, whether or not he ever washed feet, we don't know.
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But we do know that his fundamental message was this, repent and believe. I have not come to call
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the righteous, but sinners to repentance, as he says in the Gospel of Luke. This was his message,
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not stop hating, okay? There was never that. It was repent and believe. And yet neither one of those
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points were mentioned in the ad, curiously enough. So is this a good entry point, though? You know,
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maybe that's the argument. Well, yeah, it's not really the Gospel, but it gets people in the door
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with the feet washing stuff. Well, no, it's probably not a good entry point. It probably
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won't get them in the door. And even if it does get them in the door, they'll be coming through the
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door for the wrong reason. When you say to unrepentant sinners, come and get your feet
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washed, you are reaffirming them in their sin. You're feeding into their pride and ego.
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Okay, for the disciples, this is another key difference. For the disciples, getting their feet
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washed by Christ was a humbling experience for them. They felt uncomfortable at first. They
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tried to stop him, okay? They knew they were unworthy. But, and that, again, a major point here
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was humbling for them. But if somebody sits down and says, yeah, come wash my feet. I deserve this
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treatment. Come cater to my every whim. Then the very last thing you should do for that person is
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actually wash their feet, whether literally and metaphorically. You are not saving anybody's soul by
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feeding their ego. Yes, we should be inviting sinners into the fold. We're all sinners after
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all, but we're inviting them to repentance, to strive for virtue, to live holy lives, or at least
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to try. The problem with modern Christianity, in many cases, is that it offers the invitation,
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right? But it forgets what the invitation is for. Google put out, I think they went,
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they probably won the trophy. Los Angeles, they won the trophy for winning the Super Bowl. But the
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trophy for wokest ad, I think, has to go to Google because they put out an ad
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advertising their new phone, I guess, which has great camera technology, which is fine because
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everybody wants, I guess the cameras on the phones are never good enough. I think that's like what we
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have now is probably enough. It kind of, it captures the scene well enough. We got to keep
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improving the cameras. So they put out an ad that advertises that. But in the context of the ad,
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they basically accused cameras, other cameras, cameras before this one, of being racist. So let's,
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I'll probably have to narrate some of this because it's mostly visual, but let's, let's play this.
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So it's historically, camera technology hasn't accurately represented dark skin tones.
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Having good lighting. Every single yearbook photo of mine has been terribly shot since I was a kid.
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I think that's, is that Lizzo in the background singing there? I think it is.
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You know, we talk about Lizzo too much on the show and I can actually identify one of her songs.
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And a lot of, and then we see pictures, a lot of non-white people and they're nice.
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Everyone deserves to be seen as they truly are.
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So the point is that, that previous to this cameras were systemically racist and you were
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not able to take a picture of a non-white person.
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All the picture look, pictures look bad and Google is fixing that now.
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If in the past cameras, you know, the lighting with, with the camera technology wasn't good
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or that you could just advertise that you could, you could make that point in your ad
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and it would be fine, but everything has to be framed in a racial context if it can be.
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And it turns out that everything can be, they'll find a way to do it.
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And so even this ad for a camera is, uh, is, is framed in a racial context, which by the
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way, if there's some idea that there's like white privilege when it comes to cameras and
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I look like a ghost in every picture that's ever been taken of me.
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I look like I've been dead and in the ground for five days and every single picture taken
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of me, which you might point out, I look like that in real life, but, but I look, I look
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So if you're white, then you end up looking kind of more pale in pictures.
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Oftentimes, I guess if you're black, oftentimes you end up looking darker in pictures.
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So I think that just has to do with lighting and you could probably solve a lot of those
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problems just by positioning your camera differently and making sure the lighting is better.
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The NFL continued last night its alleged efforts to fight racism in the United States.
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Efforts that for the past several seasons, up to and including the game last night,
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has included writing the phrase, end racism, in huge letters directly on the field.
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And many people expected that this would be enough.
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We imagined that all the people of the world would see the phrase, end racism, written
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in the end zone, and they would all say, wow, the NFL is right.
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And then racism would be ended, and global peace and harmony would commence.
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After all, racism only exists in the world because no one has ever suggested that it shouldn't exist.
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So we simply needed the NFL to go, hey, what if we cut out that racism stuff?
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And everyone would respond, oh, so we shouldn't be racist?
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But somehow this strategy has proven insufficient.
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And so it has added, the NFL has added another prong to their anti-racist battle plan.
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And yet again last night, the Super Bowl began with the performance of two national anthems.
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There's the regular national anthem, the one written by Francis Scott Key after he watched
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British ships lay siege to Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812.
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And then the so-called black national anthem called Lift Every Voice and Sing.
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This was the third year in a row where the most watched sporting event of the year featured
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a special national anthem for one special racial group.
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It's the third time the broadcast has featured the song, yet it's the first time that the song
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was performed on the field, which is significant because that's, of course, how they also performed
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Now, all of this is, of course, totally grotesque and outrageous and the kind of gratuitous display
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that no country outside of the Western world would ever be stupid enough to allow.
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And yes, I use the word allow here intentionally.
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You'll notice that nowhere else do they permit individual racial groups to come up with their
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own national anthems that are then performed before major events.
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That's the sort of thing that can only happen here.
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Now, there are, as always, some people looking to defend the indefensible and minimize even
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There are even conservatives who enjoy participating in this pastime.
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There are many conservatives who love doing this.
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And from those people who we've heard that, well, the Lift Every Voice and Sing, it's a
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They didn't call it the Black National Anthem during the broadcast, after all.
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They didn't specifically say that during the broadcast.
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For example, a guy named Ross Schumann, who identifies himself as a conservative, made this
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He tweeted, quote, at no point in time was Lift Every Voice and Sing called a national anthem on
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the broadcast, why do you take the left's bait?
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Well, except that the NAACP has billed the song as the Black National Anthem since 1917.
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Not to mention, the woman who performed the song at the game, Cheryl Lee Ralph, said that
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She posted, quote, it is no coincidence that I'll be singing the Black National Anthem, Lift
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Every Voice and Sing, at the Super Bowl on the same day it was first publicly performed
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So everyone, including the performer herself, knows what the song is and why it's being performed.
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There's a reason they had her sing it on the field, with the audience in the stadium standing
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in solemn reverence, just as they do for the real national anthem.
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There's a reason why every media report has hailed the inspirational rendition of the,
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The media, the NFL, the left, they're not celebrating the performance of a gospel hymn.
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That may be the focus of the lyrics in the song, but that's not why it's included in the
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And that's not the intention behind its performance.
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The intention is to do the only thing a racialized national anthem can do, which is to divide
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Americans along racial lines, elevate some races above others.
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You know, some races are special and they get two national anthems, while the rest of us
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have to settle for just one, while diminishing our most cherished national traditions.
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Because the message of the Black National Anthem is that the actual national anthem isn't enough.
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Like, nobody disagrees that Black people should have a national anthem.
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No one is saying that, oh, there's no, no one is looking at Black people and saying,
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No, the point is that the national anthem is everyone's national anthem.
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So if you're a Black person, that's a national anthem.
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If you're a white person, that's your national anthem.
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If you're a Native American, that's your national anthem.
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But the other message, the other idea behind this, which is just as false and just as insidious,
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is that the situation, this is what they're trying to claim, this is why they're doing it,
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that the situation hasn't improved much for Black people since the song was declared,
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It was a rallying cry during the civil rights battle.
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Well, bringing it back now, not just bringing it back, but elevating it to a status equal
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to or even surpassing the real national anthem, is meant to send the message that Black people
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still do not have their rights, that the civil rights battle of 100 years ago is still ongoing,
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And we see yet again that those supposedly fighting against racism are in fact determined
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to create racial divides, deepen them where they already existed, open new wounds and reopen
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old ones, and keep the resentments of the past forever at the forefront of our minds.
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The whole point of performing the national anthem, the real national anthem, is to, first of all,
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show our respect and gratitude for this country and for the traditions in our country and for the
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people who have, you know, made all this possible for us. It's also to show our unity and to celebrate
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our national identity under one flag and one God. That's the point.
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But the powers that be don't share that goal. Their goal is exactly the opposite.
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And that's what the Black National Anthem is really all about.