The Megyn Kelly Show - Heather Mac Donald on COVID Fear and Power, Embracing Balance, and The Demonization of Men ｜ Ep. 145

00:00:00.000 When I found out my friend got a great deal

00:00:02.160 on a wool coat from Winners,

00:00:03.760 I started wondering,

00:00:05.440 is every fabulous item I see from Winners?

00:00:08.560 Like that woman over there with the designer jeans. 1.00

00:00:11.260 Are those from Winners?

00:00:12.780 Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings.

00:00:15.260 Did she pay full price?

00:00:16.600 Or that leather tote?

00:00:17.600 Or that cashmere sweater?

00:00:18.500 Or those knee-high boots?

00:00:20.300 That dress?

00:00:21.080 That jacket?

00:00:21.740 Those shoes?

00:00:22.780 Is anyone paying full price for anything?

00:00:25.800 Stop wondering.

00:00:26.980 Start winning.

00:00:27.920 Winners.

00:00:28.500 Find fabulous for less.

00:00:30.620 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:32.520 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.200 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:43.880 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.560 Today, Heather MacDonald.

00:00:48.180 Oh, I don't know if you've read Heather MacDonald,

00:00:50.820 but if you haven't, you must.

00:00:53.020 The woman's got facts. 0.93

00:00:54.920 She has done her homework and her research.

00:00:58.420 And you look at her academic history, that explains it.

00:01:02.080 That's, I guess, how one gets into Yale for one's BA and Cambridge for one's master's and Stanford for one's JD.

00:01:10.540 She's a lawyer, too.

00:01:11.900 So very, very smart woman.

00:01:14.000 What's interesting about her is she just, yes, she has data.

00:01:17.440 But B, she comes from things from just a new perspective.

00:01:22.360 You'll hear it in this interview.

00:01:23.260 Like, she's going to come at things from areas where you didn't expect her to come from.

00:01:27.700 And you learn from Heather.

00:01:29.000 You hear a different point of view, right?

00:01:31.160 One that you don't hear from every talking point or talking head on cable news or, you know, the normal journals you go to.

00:01:37.940 Anyway, so loved this discussion.

00:01:40.340 I was planning on doing this whole thing with her on cops.

00:01:42.420 We didn't even get to cops.

00:01:43.540 We didn't even get to it because we had so much to go over.

00:01:46.600 Anyway, I know you're going to find that interview fascinating and Heather fascinating.

00:01:50.500 She's the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

00:01:53.460 She writes for City Journal, which, you know, I love, among other places.

00:01:56.360 And she's written several amazing, amazing books, including The Diversity Delusion from 2018, which I recommend.

00:02:03.040 The War on Cops 2016, also recommend.

00:02:05.860 Are Cops Racists 2010.

00:02:07.600 Can you believe we didn't get to cops?

00:02:08.980 So much to go over, but it's a whole other show.

00:02:11.800 We did get to so much else going on in the news, and we'll start it in 60 seconds.

00:02:21.580 Heather McDonald, I haven't been this excited since Douglas Murray came on.

00:02:25.360 Oh, man.

00:02:26.800 Well, that's a little scary.

00:02:28.560 We'll put Douglas Murray out of our minds for now.

00:02:32.500 But thank you so much for having me on.

00:02:34.640 Let's start here.

00:02:35.600 I read a really great piece by Wilford Riley in Tablet Magazine yesterday, and he called it the assault on empiricism.

00:02:44.640 And this is a subtitle.

00:02:45.560 From crime to climate change, the hostility of movements to data is making it impossible to address real world problems.

00:02:53.340 He's talking about how we're living in a post-truth world and how it's really affecting our ability to make important decisions, have important discussions on things that matter.

00:03:02.040 From COVID to crime, you've been railing about this, too.

00:03:06.720 There are actual data that we can consult to solve a lot of our problems.

00:03:09.920 When it doesn't line up with, quote, the narrative, we ignore it.

00:03:14.200 So let's start there and on COVID, because even though you're a conservative and you write a lot of stuff that conservatives love, you're taking on both sides in their refusal to not get hysterical when it comes to COVID disinformation.

00:03:31.000 Can you explain?

00:03:32.360 For a while, it seemed like progressives had cornered the market on hysterical, anti-rational policymaking.

00:03:40.200 For the majority of the COVID period, we have seen the biggest failure of policymaking in American history.

00:03:48.760 Our leaders have refused to balance costs and benefits.

00:03:51.880 They have focused monomaniacally on one kind of risk, which is the risk from COVID, ignoring the costs of lockdowns on much more serious aspects of human life, such as child development, the very possibility of economic activity and the creation of economic and human capital.

00:04:13.860 They've told us, you know, they've kept us focused on rising case counts, ignoring the fact that deaths still are not comparable, really, to cancer deaths or heart disease.

00:04:25.540 And so we were given again and again phony data and hysterical rhetoric from the media and, indeed, the public health establishment to really keep the population in fear.

00:04:40.820 And sadly, it was a very docile population.

00:04:44.960 My biggest obsession is the idea of wearing masks outdoors, which has zero scientific basis for it.

00:04:52.200 You simply cannot get infected outdoors.

00:04:56.340 Infection requires a concentrated viral dose.

00:04:59.500 And yet you still see people, at least here in Irvine, California, jogging by themselves with nobody for the next square mile wearing outdoor masks.

00:05:08.160 And I despair.

00:05:08.940 I despair at the at the ignorance of the populace and their willingness to engage in this safetyism ideology.

00:05:17.620 But recently, to my dismay, some of my fellow conservatives have engaged in the same sort of irrational innumeracy in trying to present the vaccine as a threat greater than COVID, which it clearly is not.

00:05:42.040 The people that are vaccinated have a virtually zero risk of dying from COVID.

00:05:50.660 They have a minimal risk of even getting infected by COVID.

00:05:54.880 And yet the anti-vaccine movement is is refusing to balance those risks and and has reversed itself.

00:06:07.500 It rightly conservatives were rightly celebratory at Trump's rapid development operation warp speed of the vaccine.

00:06:17.920 That was a medical miracle.

00:06:19.920 And they and they accused they even accused the drug companies of putting off their application for emergency authorization authorization until after the election, because at that point, conservatives thought that developing a vaccine was a good thing that would help Trump.

00:06:38.220 And rightly so now they're portraying the vaccine as this globalist conspiracy to kill millions of people because it's being administered under Biden.

00:06:50.900 So both sides now, I think, have basically lost their minds and and and are taking us in a direction that is not science based.

00:07:01.920 I think anecdotally that there's a faction on the right that's doing that.

00:07:06.640 I think most Republicans would say, OK, you know, the vaccines work.

00:07:10.900 It's not it's not a small number that's that's doubtful and skeptical about the vaccines, though.

00:07:15.360 It's not.

00:07:15.820 Whereas I will say when it comes to masking on the left, there's just I think they've captured most of the left, you know, sort of maybe some center lefties are are more on the side of reason when it comes to the indoctrination in schools and the masking and the obsession with vaccines for children under the age of 12.

00:07:33.460 Even now that they're really pushing for.

00:07:35.720 I don't know.

00:07:36.500 I just feel like the hysteria on the left is still louder when it comes to covid.

00:07:40.320 Well, that's true.

00:08:10.300 Again, I generally believe, Megan, in taking people at their words and not going to a second level of moving into sort of conspiracy theory explanations that are more abstract than the stated reasons.

00:08:22.460 The stated reasons in this case for the lockdowns are an excessive obsession with one particular type of risk.

00:08:32.860 It's it's safety ism.

00:08:34.000 It's it's as the late and unlamented Governor Cuomo said at the beginning of the pandemic.

00:08:39.980 If we save just one life from these lockdowns, they will have been worth it.

00:08:44.600 Well, that is, of course, an absurd calculation because there's lots of activities that we undertake, such as driving on highways that we know will generate about 40,000 deaths a year.

00:08:56.920 If we wanted to save just one life from highway deaths, we would shut down highways.

00:09:02.040 We go forward because we have balanced the risks and the costs.

00:09:07.000 But at this point, the the left seems prepared to do this indefinitely without any kind of balancing of risk and cost.

00:09:18.520 It is it is it is quite astounding to me and the costs in the long term are going to be very, very high.

00:09:25.160 They already are. What I'm most concerned about, Megan, is the widening of the academic skills gap.

00:09:31.140 We know that black and Hispanic children have been the less least involved in education.

00:09:39.000 They have not had the learning pods that more affluent parents have created for their kids.

00:09:45.600 And the wider that the academic skills gap grows, the bigger the excuse that we're going to give to the left to claim that any economic and socioeconomic disparities are due to racism rather than that academic skills gap and behavioral differences that they that they helped create by by these lockdowns, these interminable lockdowns.

00:10:08.900 I mean, the thing that's sticking in my craw is when they reopened public schools in New York and it took forever.

00:10:14.820 I mean, I have lots of friends who have kids in the public school system in New York who are just at their wits end with the nonstop closures.

00:10:22.180 And by the end of the year, my one friend, my one friend's kid was going to school four hours a week, four hours.

00:10:29.840 And still these teachers were out there protesting, Heather, with caskets saying, you know, if you force us to go back in there, we're going to be in caskets.

00:10:37.500 And then it turns out 40 percent of those teachers have refused to get vaccinated.

00:10:43.140 Forty percent of the ones with the little caskets are like, I'm not going to take it.

00:10:47.840 Let's see. We'll we'll bargain. We'll bargain over it, said Randy Weingarten.

00:10:51.580 They want money.

00:10:53.600 Well, let's not forget the health care workers. 1.00

00:10:55.240 I frankly was nauseated from day one at the at the outbreaks of horn blowing and and and and gong pounding that happened every night at 7 p.m.

00:11:05.580 in New York that lasted for months and months.

00:11:08.660 And health care workers are just as vaccine resistant as teachers.

00:11:12.120 You know, I've I've often thought that conservatives are too quick to demonize teachers.

00:11:16.600 I think in many cases we don't want to talk about the challenges they face with kids that are completely unsocialized thanks to the breakdown of the family.

00:11:28.560 And we blame the teachers unions for things that may be beyond their fix sometimes because America turns its eyes away from the breakdown in black inner cities. 0.95

00:11:41.540 But I have to say that the reaction of teachers unions to this pandemic and their complete self-involvement, as you say, Megan, has really sort of pulled the veils away from my eyes.

00:11:55.720 And I would think would discredit them completely in the eyes of the public across the board.

00:12:02.060 I'm not sure that's happened, but it certainly should happen because they are acting with just, again, scientifically ungrounded self-interest and showing themselves not at all interested in the development and education of children.

00:12:21.020 Yeah. And it doesn't matter now.

00:12:22.640 It's almost it's almost across the board.

00:12:24.880 You've got governors like DeSantis and Abbott in Florida and Texas pushing back on some of this.

00:12:29.860 But even in the South, in the legit South, we're seeing them go along with these mandatory masks for children.

00:12:37.180 And you would think that they would be a little bit more right leaning.

00:12:39.860 No, Clay Travis was in the news this week.

00:12:42.480 He's taken over.

00:12:43.880 He and Buck Sexton for Rush Limbaugh, most of Rush's markets.

00:12:47.440 And he stood up and said, we don't want mandatory masking for our kids.

00:12:50.740 Well, the school board voted seven to three against him.

00:12:53.560 Mandatory mask coming back to Tennessee and where he is.

00:12:57.300 And then we saw this is in Oklahoma, Oklahoma, the school board, because the school boards, they seem just as leftist as as Biden and his administration.

00:13:07.380 When I whenever I hear a school board, I'm always stunned at who gets on there and the right needs to start fighting back.

00:13:13.280 The people who are on the side of reason forget left or right.

00:13:15.920 Listen to this school board member.

00:13:17.640 Her name is Linda Sexton, who is very upset that there might be some parents who want to send their kids to school without a mask. 0.98

00:13:27.040 I want to pursue the legal avenues that we have to defy Governor Stitt because it's just not OK for kids to commit murder by coming to school without a mask.

00:13:37.200 And when it comes down to it, it's possible.

00:13:42.380 They will they will cause a death of another child because they come to school without a mask.

00:13:48.520 That's not OK.

00:13:50.000 I don't know what we can do about it, but I hope it's something that I think hard.

00:13:53.900 We're going to think fast. 1.00

00:13:55.940 So Linda's an idiot. 1.00

00:13:57.780 Heather, help me. 1.00

00:13:59.060 I mean, we have learned something about the American psyche that is very depressing, Megan.

00:14:05.140 Any shred remaining of rugged individualism and a proper appreciation for risk, for entrepreneurship, for creation, for the drive that makes civilization possible has disappeared from a vast portion of the population.

00:14:22.920 Not everybody.

00:14:23.720 But what I think this shows us is how fast and wide the feminization of our culture has gone.

00:14:34.320 I'm generalizing and I'm not speaking about anybody's daughters in particular who may be just as hard headed and rational as everybody else.

00:14:43.680 But generally, the aversion to risk, the the unwillingness to think rationally about problems and being emotionally driven and and and cautious, susceptible to fear.

00:15:04.220 You know, James Damore, you know, James Damore, this this poor, smart computer scientist at Google was fired in 2017 for writing a fact based 10 page memo suggesting that sexism may not be the reason why there's not 50 50 male female gender ratios in in Google's engineering and computer science departments.

00:15:30.320 This memo apparently made Google's female employees feel so unsafe that he had to be fired.

00:15:38.580 Now, one thing that Damore did in this memo was, quote, something that has been known for decades by psychology, which is that one of the so-called big five traits of human psychology.

00:15:54.660 The personality traits, one of them is known, sadly, the phrase got Damore canceled as neuroticism.

00:16:03.080 That is sort of a a fearful personality, fearful of risk, seeing threats everywhere.

00:16:12.420 And psychiatrists have observed for years that females score much higher on the neuroticism scale than males do.

00:16:21.980 What we've been living through for the last two years is an outbreak of hysterical neuroticism.

00:16:31.160 We have accepted our leaders imposing completely arbitrary limits on economic activity.

00:16:40.720 They would pour numbers out, pull numbers out of the hat.

00:16:43.240 You know, Cuomo, there he was with his tear.

00:16:46.200 They have all come up, they're colored tears with utterly arbitrary numbers that if the, you know, if the infection rate is 5%, then you can't do anything.

00:16:54.740 If it's 10%, you can do nothing.

00:16:56.820 And if it's 20%, you have to dig your ground, dig a hole in the ground and stay there.

00:17:01.200 They were making these things up.

00:17:02.780 And yet the populace went along with it.

00:17:04.900 And we see now people, you know, willing to play this game.

00:17:11.620 And to go back to something I was saying, it's about fear, but it's also about power.

00:17:16.880 That is sort of the second level of a conspiracy type explanation that I'm less willing to undertake, but I can't avoid it at this point.

00:17:26.480 It allows not just authorities power over citizens, but it allows citizens power over each other.

00:17:34.700 You know, we've all been rebuked by the max Nazis. 0.87

00:17:38.300 And that is, that is inebriating.

00:17:40.560 You know, we don't always have power and it's, it's a, it's a rush.

00:17:46.040 It's a thrill to be able to order other people around.

00:17:50.240 And so that's part of it as well is that COVID has deputized everybody to feel justified in, in enforcing mandates that are not just draconian, but utterly irrational.

00:18:06.880 And even Biden, who knows, he knows he has no power to issue a federal mask mandate for the country.

00:18:16.360 And you're a lawyer.

00:18:17.660 I'm a lawyer.

00:18:18.700 We both know that's not possible given our system of federalism.

00:18:22.200 And he, he didn't just come out and say, no, I can't do it.

00:18:25.260 He said, oh, well, you know, it doesn't necessarily look like it's in my wheelhouse, but you know, we're looking at it.

00:18:30.940 We're looking at it.

00:18:31.800 Well, it should be a very short look, sir, because you don't have the power.

00:18:35.220 But to your point, there's almost nothing they look at now and outright rule out.

00:18:41.080 Like, look what he just did on the, on the eviction moratorium.

00:18:44.440 He said, I can't do it.

00:18:45.480 And then he did it.

00:18:46.720 Now we've got the possibility of a federal mask mandate everywhere.

00:18:50.200 Are you kidding?

00:18:50.620 Not just on the federal properties or the TSA or what have you.

00:18:54.320 I mean, there will be a revolt in the country if he tries something like that.

00:18:59.640 Well, I hope so.

00:19:00.700 We haven't seen it yet.

00:19:01.840 Europe is odd because they've had even more insane rules than, than here.

00:19:07.900 The ones I, I find particularly ludicrous are radius rules.

00:19:12.460 You know, that you can't go beyond five kilometers or 10 kilometers of your house, which doesn't make sense.

00:19:19.260 Like, if you think this is a big threat, you would want dispersion.

00:19:22.140 You wouldn't want everybody clustered in, in population centers.

00:19:25.880 But like, is the idea that beyond 20 or 10 kilometers outside of your house, the COVID just becomes really dense.

00:19:31.940 And oh my God, you're going to die.

00:19:33.120 So they've had these really ridiculous rules. 0.97

00:19:35.560 On the other hand, they have had massive protests there.

00:19:39.220 I mean, the pictures are stunning that filling all of Berlin, all of Munich, all of Paris.

00:19:45.160 And except for those first, you know, outbreaks in Michigan, when, when Whitmer was deciding that you could buy lawn fertilizer, but not a lawn chair or vice or paint and not, and not, you know, an oven mitt or something.

00:20:00.720 Anyway, there's been relatively little pushback, I think, maybe because there's sort of, we have more safety valves with the red states being more rational when it comes to this. 0.98

00:20:12.100 So people could feel like they have the exit option from their, from their blue state tyranny.

00:20:17.480 But I, I hope that there will be a revolt because as I say, I'm just sick of this.

00:20:24.420 And I would think everybody would be sick of this, but have they forgotten what normal life was like?

00:20:29.520 But, but the masks are just infuriating, infuriating.

00:20:34.640 And, and I've said from the start that the reason that they want us to wear masks outdoors is because it, it deputizes every American and turns them into a walking billboard of fear.

00:20:47.100 If you see everybody wearing masks outdoors, your natural conclusion is that we are surrounded by death.

00:20:56.740 And, and, and so it's, it's important to, to, to have a visual representation to get back to the Wilford Riley article that you brought up and, and, and us living in kind of a post data world.

00:21:10.720 What I've noticed is we're living in a world of fictional simulations, this hyper reality that is at odds with reality.

00:21:21.360 What was the three months of razor wire around the Capitol, but security theater, it was theater to try and give reality and factual basis to a fiction.

00:21:33.720 The fiction is that white supremacy is the biggest terrorist threat facing this country. 0.85

00:21:40.640 And is it a, is our biggest threat of violence as, as Biden's security agencies have said, that is ludicrous, Megan. 0.97

00:21:49.180 You know it, most people know it. 0.97

00:21:51.100 And yet we had this, this drama, this, this staged piece of theater that the Capitol was engaged in to try to pretend that the idiotic, deplorable, absolutely despicable January 6th riot was not just a one-off. 1.00

00:22:12.660 Of a bunch of idiots that got out of control, completely misunderstood their role of citizens, but represented some ongoing lethal threat, which it does not. 1.00

00:22:24.420 It's the same thing with the idea that it's white supremacists who were going around clubbing Asian, elderly Asian, helpless people. 1.00

00:22:34.640 That's why the press jumped on the Atlanta spa killings, turned them into what they were not, pretended it was about white supremacy when it was about a young man who was sexually tortured by guilt, had nothing to do with race or the Asian nature of his victims.

00:22:54.620 But that too was another piece of security theater to give meaning and, and some kind of physical reality to the lie that America today is defined by white supremacy.

00:23:07.500 Yes. And if you look at, I think that may be one of the things that my memory serves that Wilford looks at in that piece is the, is the attacks on Asians and how that got blamed on white supremacy.

00:23:17.420 And if you look at just the past year, the number of attacks on Asians prior to this past year, it was kind of most, most of the attacks were black on Asian as you break it down by race, but it was about kind of a 27% black, 24% white perpetrators.

00:23:32.160 Let's just acknowledge that that is vastly disproportionate because the black population is 13%, the white population is about 60, 60, 65%.

00:23:42.580 So, you know, I pulled it up here. It is Heather from his article. He says, okay, according to the most recently available national crime data that involves Asian American victims, 27.5% of violent attackers were black.

00:23:55.860 24.1% were white, 24.4% were Latino and other combined and 24.1% were Asian, Asian on Asian crime in a separate data set focused only on the 98 most prominent recent attacks on Asian Americans.

00:24:09.840 He says he found that, uh, 29% of the attackers who are identified in racial terms, uh, 71% were people of color. That's what it was. 71% were people of color.

00:24:20.000 So the numbers go way up when you look at what's happened this past year, but of course that's all white supremacy.

00:24:25.860 Up next, I'm going to ask Heather about AOC's latest statement about how traumatic January 6th was, but she loves to talk about January 6th and her trauma.

00:24:35.080 It's all about her and her trauma. Oh, and white supremacy. What does Heather think of that? Next.

00:24:40.080 Can I just jump back to the January 6th thing with you for a minute? Because it is true that the left and people like AOC and the media love to go back to it.

00:24:54.460 I mean, they cannot get enough of January 6th and the trauma and the report of worth. We're actually seeing news reports on journalists and their ongoing trauma.

00:25:04.900 Some talking about how they, the Capitol building was like their girlfriend and now they have to go back in every day and it's just, it's so triggering and they can barely do it.

00:25:14.340 And then you've got people like AOC who every day wakes up and thinks of another imaginary crime that could have happened to her, even though she wasn't in the relevant building during the attack.

00:25:22.940 And here is her latest offering in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash.

00:25:27.440 I think one of the reasons, while that impact was so doubled that day is because of how, of the misogyny and the racism that is so deeply rooted and animated that attack on the Capitol, you know, white supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in a lot of ways.

00:25:48.900 There's, there's a lot of sexualizing of that violence. And, um, I didn't think that I was just going to be killed. I thought other things were going to happen to me as well.

00:26:02.680 So what sounds like what you're telling me right now is that you didn't only think that you were going to die. You thought you were going to be raped. 0.97

00:26:09.380 Yeah. Yeah. I thought I was. 1.00

00:26:12.340 Are you joking?

00:26:13.600 No, it's just, it's part of a CNN puff piece. It's called like being AOC or something.

00:26:17.840 And they're doing a long like documentary on her. So now Dana Bash does an AOC puff piece involving, I thought I was going to be raped. 0.94

00:26:24.080 I thought I was going to be killed and white supremacists and all the misogyny and you name it. 0.85

00:26:27.900 But wasn't she the one that was not even in the building? It claims she was. 0.94

00:26:31.540 Turns out she was in the, the, the Rayburn office building or something. It's amazing. They're just shameless. 0.99

00:26:39.020 There's that's the biggest set of non sequiturs I have ever heard. It doesn't matter. They can take any event now. 0.89

00:26:45.020 Like I'm buying yogurt at the store. That's about white supremacy. It's just because they are obsessed.

00:26:51.340 They were, they do not want to talk about the actual problems. The biggest problem we have today is the academic skills gap.

00:27:01.080 Every, every, every academic standard, every behavioral standard, every criminal standard has disparate impact.

00:27:06.280 The left does not want to address that problem. And so instead they have made the search for white racism, the dominant activity of the elite establishment, whether it's in academics, whether it's corporations, law firms, banks, big tech, you name it. 0.53

00:27:27.840 Uh, I mean, come on, this, this January six ride had nothing to do with racism, sexism, misogyny.

00:27:35.760 It was a bunch of people who believe that the election was stolen. I happen to not believe that I am not persuaded by any evidence that there was systemic rigging going on.

00:27:46.300 There was mistakes I'm sure made. There was perhaps garden variety fraud, but I don't believe it was rigged, but they seriously believe that.

00:27:55.480 And, and, uh, they believe that the government was illegitimate.

00:28:00.560 Therefore it's, it's a, it's an epistemological problem because those of us who, who criticize that action often do so from the perspective that the rigging narrative was wrong.

00:28:11.660 But if, if you really believe it, I mean, if, if you believe Trump words, then things are very seriously askew.

00:28:18.600 That doesn't give you license to tear the Capitol down.

00:28:21.840 In any case, that's what this is about.

00:28:23.440 It's a disinformation problem. That's your point. It's a disinformation problem.

00:28:26.680 That's how I see it too. They, they got sucked down into YouTube rabbit holes.

00:28:30.560 It's same. That's what's happening with COVID on a lot of the disinformation that's out there.

00:28:34.660 It doesn't mean I think it should be censored, but certainly it's happening.

00:28:37.640 And they started to believe that he really, he really was going to become the president.

00:28:41.780 And all they had to do was show up the Capitol and take their country back and so on, whatever.

00:28:45.440 It doesn't mean that there were no white supremacists there, but it wasn't about white supremacy.

00:28:49.900 They want to turn everything into white supremacy. 0.94

00:28:52.740 What's going on, all you have to do to take down an individual or an institution today, Megan, is use one fatal word, white. 0.98

00:29:02.000 That's it.

00:29:03.280 We are now seeing every accomplishment, every summit of sublimity that Western civilization has given us torn down in the name of fighting phantom white supremacy.

00:29:18.360 I've been following a lot, what's been going on with something that is the dearest thing to my heart, which is classical music.

00:29:26.120 But the logic of the black. 0.69

00:29:27.740 I've been following you on this.

00:29:28.220 This is, this is, as if you needed another reason to read, Heather.

00:29:32.020 The stuff you, because I don't follow this world at all.

00:29:34.200 And the stories coming out of the music world, thanks to you, are shocking.

00:29:38.000 Sorry, go ahead.

00:29:38.580 What's happening to classical music is worthy in its own right, if you love this tradition, but it is also emblematic of the strategy and tactics that are being used to take everything down.

00:29:50.800 The claim is, is that the classical music profession currently is racist, that it's discriminating against black musicians, a claim that is patently ludicrous on his face because every orchestra auditions musicians behind a screen.

00:30:09.260 So nobody, the people choosing the musician do not know that musician's sex or race.

00:30:16.940 So somehow that now has been turned into racism, the fact.

00:30:21.920 Because it's all about outcome.

00:30:23.520 It's they don't care about intent.

00:30:25.340 All they care about is, quote, impact.

00:30:27.500 So if the numbers in the orchestra don't adequately in somebody's random view reflect diversity by necessity under critical race theory, under Ibram X.

00:30:38.060 Kendi's view of the world, it's racist.

00:30:41.060 Right.

00:30:41.180 But, but so those of us that have held on to some shred of respect for evidence know that that's a ludicrous claim because you can't be colorblind and not know somebody's race and still be discriminating against him because of his race.

00:30:55.100 I mean, let's just, let's just assert that, Kendi notwithstanding.

00:30:58.920 But the other claim against classical music is that the composers in that tradition were overwhelmingly white and therefore they all are defined by white supremacy.

00:31:09.720 But anything coming out of Europe, whether it's art history or architecture or science for that matter, because of the demographics of Europe will be overwhelmingly black, white, excuse me. 0.88

00:31:24.900 There simply were no blacks in Europe of any number until the 20th century, the late 20th century.

00:31:33.460 And so that gesture, that rhetorical gesture, though, gives people the power to simply cancel entire traditions.

00:31:42.300 Nobody uses the same logic when it comes to canceling African drum music, which is exclusively black or Indian, East Indian classical music, which was created by and for and with Indians or Chinese classical opera.

00:31:59.080 It's only the demographics of Europe that are used against it.

00:32:03.700 And what is particularly preposterous, Megan, the extraordinary thing about the Western classical tradition, partly because it's notated, it's written, the fact that it's based on written scores allowed for stylistic development over 500 years.

00:32:23.560 That is simply mind-blown, the difference between a Renaissance motet and Stravinsky, or even between a Bach passion and a Chopin nocturne is galaxies away.

00:32:41.440 Each composer is extraordinarily individual in the pathos, the longing, the eros that he has brought to the world, and we are allowed to follow the movement of the human mind through his music.

00:32:57.980 To unite all of these into one thing, which is just whiteness, shows such ignorance, such aesthetic blindness and deafness, it is mind-blowing. 0.79

00:33:13.820 But that is the logic, whatever you love, if it has come out of Europe, it is coming down under that logic.

00:33:22.040 And so we better be prepared, Megan, to stop kowtowing to this and saying, this is not about race, this is about greatness and creation, and we are not going to cancel our culture.

00:33:35.400 Yeah, and the beauty of humanity and the amazing works that have been produced over the years, it's so crazy that we've gone to this place where if there's any racial disparity at all in any industry, the answer is to throw out anything created by a white person.

00:33:50.600 And this manifested itself, well, many times, but you wrote an article on June 10th called Resisting Racial Demagoguery, and I highly recommend it, everybody read it, City Journal.

00:34:01.360 And it's about what happened with the Tulsa Opera and a composer named Daniel Bernard Romain, is that how you pronounce it?

00:34:10.200 I think so.

00:34:10.580 Can you tell the audience what happened with Daniel Romain?

00:34:13.960 Well, Daniel Romain is the epitome of the Black Lives Matter activists in classical music today.

00:34:19.040 His career is based on race baiting.

00:34:22.080 He writes works like, I am a white person who blank black people, meaning, you know, write in who detests them, who oppresses them, who subjugates them.

00:34:33.220 And he has called for orchestras to exclusively program black artists.

00:34:40.480 He wants to write a work for exclusively BIPOC, that's black, indigenous, people of color, members of a orchestra. 0.97

00:34:51.840 In other words, let's put it baldly, Daniel Romain is a racist. 0.92

00:34:56.720 He believes that blacks should take precedence over all things. 0.99

00:35:00.700 So he was invited to participate in a concert that the Tulsa Opera was planning to commemorate the centennial of the 1921 race riots in Tulsa, which were horrific.

00:35:14.460 After a still undetermined incident happened between a black and a white teenager, there was some gunfire that broke out on the part of blacks.

00:35:26.460 And then the white mob rampaged through the Greenwood section of Tulsa, which was then the business, black business and residential section of Tulsa and burning buildings.

00:35:36.420 And the official report found that there was probably about 26 blacks who were dead.

00:35:43.580 The media reports hundreds, you know, who knows what reality.

00:35:46.420 In any case, this was a concert that was going to have eight black singers singing works by 23 living black composers, as well as spirituals, you know, traditional black folk songs.

00:36:01.380 And Romain was given one of the plum commission assignments of four.

00:36:06.500 They were going to commission four new works.

00:36:08.400 He got one of them and he was going to write for Denise Graves, who was one of the great sopranos of the 1990s and 2000s.

00:36:17.260 She made her Met debut as Carmen.

00:36:19.340 That performance, you know, went around the world.

00:36:22.600 She was highly sought after for for many, many years.

00:36:27.000 Any composer would kill to compose something for Denise Graves.

00:36:30.820 So Romain, you know, compatibly with his attitude towards life, wrote a piece called They Still Want to Kill Us, which was all about what he calls the enduring stain of racial hatred in the American white, American psyche. 0.99

00:36:48.500 And it ended with the lines, God bless America, God damn America. 0.90

00:36:53.720 Well, Denise Graves, who is black, said that the final line, as much as she believes in black lives mattering and supporting black artists, did not accord with her personal values. 0.98

00:37:08.100 And so the pianist for the for the planned orchestra concert, who's black himself, Howard Watkins, he's an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera and the head of Tulsa Opera, a composer named Tobias Picker, tried to negotiate with Romain saying, can you change that last line in some way that would make it possible for Denise Graves to sing it?

00:37:33.740 And he remained put his foot down, said no way. And and Graves would not do it because it did not accord with her understanding of America and racial reconciliation.

00:37:45.820 So they canceled the aria. They paid Romain his fee. And he immediately turned around and did what Romain does best, which is play the race card.

00:37:54.520 He actually said that the cancellation of his opera was tantamount to the race riot in Greenwood, that he was the victim of similar white supremacy, never mind the fact that it was Denise Graves, who was black, who refused to sing this.

00:38:14.060 And it was to buy it. It was Howard Watkins, the pianist, who was the go-between. He blamed everything on Tobias Picker.

00:38:21.700 He said, this is what happens when white males run music organizations. They should not do so. 0.82

00:38:29.600 This this is about a white trying to oppress me. This is a completely false narrative.

00:38:35.720 So he then got the work produced, performed on video. I've listened to it.

00:38:43.660 You can see it online. A black soprano, Janae Bridges, who's very involved in the Black Lives Matter in the opera movement, sang it.

00:38:52.260 The lyrics are pathetic. The musical writing is insipid. 0.97

00:38:56.860 A composer suggested to me that one reason why Denise Graves may have balked at singing it was just because it's lousy music. 1.00

00:39:03.020 But the irony is, is that it actually probably helped remain because the concert that did come forward called Greenwood Overcomes was fantastic.

00:39:13.360 The works that were played there by such black artists as Adolphus Hailstroke and Tanya Leon and Quinn Mason were gorgeous.

00:39:24.620 Amazingly, very only one of them even touched on the Tulsa riots and racial animosity.

00:39:32.420 Most of them were songs of love, songs of loss, songs of consolation.

00:39:38.040 And the Remain piece, not just because of its political valence, which is remains right.

00:39:44.100 I mean, that's right. But really, because of its musical mediocrity would have been quite out of place there.

00:39:49.140 The great the ending of this story that that does give one maybe a shred of hope.

00:39:54.760 And I'm not usually an optimist, is that Tulsa opera is still standing.

00:39:58.620 What we're seeing in the classical music world today and in the theater world and in the ballet world is supine subjugation.

00:40:08.000 Every institution is rolling over and playing dead, beating its chest.

00:40:12.140 Oh, we're racist. We're racist. 0.96

00:40:13.500 Every new play on Broadway this season is by a black composer, a black creator. 0.71

00:40:20.800 They may be great plays, but, you know, let's be honest about why they've been commissioned.

00:40:26.320 Tulsa opera did not cave.

00:40:28.560 And it is moving forward as strong as ever.

00:40:32.080 And I wish that more of the guardians and curators of our culture would show similar courage instead of staying silent in the face of these utterly ungrounded, ignorant attacks that, again, are destroying the very thing that makes life worth living, which is the creation of beauty and sublimity.

00:40:53.440 It's unbelievable.

00:40:55.340 The whole story is unbelievable.

00:40:58.240 And in the piece, there was one piece you talked about how in the summer of 2020, this same composer, this guy Romain, he'd been complaining on Facebook and reading from your piece about the lack of racial proportionality in orchestras.

00:41:11.700 And that's when a retired principal violinist from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra offered to tutor minority musicians in audition techniques.

00:41:19.660 Very nice of this guy, right?

00:41:20.880 He's like, OK, I didn't know that was a problem.

00:41:22.920 I'm there.

00:41:24.220 And he said, just, you know, help me secure the introductions.

00:41:26.220 I'm good.

00:41:26.500 But the offer went nowhere, you write.

00:41:29.560 And can you tell us why Romain rejected the offer of this violinist, Alexander Mishnevsky?

00:41:36.080 Yeah, he's Russian.

00:41:37.620 Because he apparently wasn't willing to sort of take the Black Lives Matter line when he was tutoring these musicians.

00:41:45.300 It was just not sufficiently attuned to the Black struggle today.

00:41:50.480 And Mishnevsky, he was the principal violist of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

00:41:54.920 He is a musician with years of experience overseeing auditions.

00:42:02.300 He would have been an invaluable aid to up-and-coming minority string players.

00:42:08.840 And yet Romain didn't want to use him.

00:42:11.120 You know, the culture seems to be going one way, but more and more we see warriors standing up to fight, to become fighters.

00:42:19.900 Remember how Dennis Prager told us, you need to be a fighter or at least a helper?

00:42:23.920 We'll introduce you to one fighter next in a great, great soundbite and get Heather's reaction. 1.00

00:42:28.000 We are starting to see more and more people like the Tulsa Opera push back against some of these bullying attempts.

00:42:40.000 Really?

00:42:40.640 Just in the news yesterday, a little bit, here and there.

00:42:43.340 And I don't know if it's so much corporate America, right?

00:42:45.420 I mean, Chris Rufo, God bless Chris Rufo and his great reporting, but he had a report just yesterday about American Express and its critical race theory training of its employees.

00:42:53.340 And it was just absurd what they're making people do.

00:42:55.580 It's all the stuff that we've heard.

00:42:58.280 It was basically they have to divide themselves into oppressor and oppressed.

00:43:02.620 They've figured out where they are in the racial or sexual disparity scale and oppression scale.

00:43:07.780 And then they have to read certain books or follow certain podcasts that are going to help educate them on white supremacy in America, including one that says something like children are not colorblind.

00:43:19.380 And it's I went and looked at it.

00:43:20.340 It's all about how your baby six months out of the womb is already becoming a racist and needs an intervention.

00:43:27.420 You need a little Robin DiAngelo for babies, I guess. 1.00

00:43:30.040 So anyway, but we are little by little seeing signs of hope, I think.

00:43:33.840 And one of them yesterday came out of Loudoun County, you know, which has been sort of ground zero on teachers and parents trying to push back against critical race theory.

00:43:42.300 We've seen angry clips out of school board meetings, by the way, there they just they just pushed through some approval of transgender or just unisex bathrooms, I guess, allowing that to happen.

00:43:53.900 And so, you know, they it's not all going one way.

00:43:57.920 But there was a Loudoun County teacher who showed up at a board meeting because she'd been told she wasn't allowed to really say how she felt.

00:44:04.360 She says no dissent to the to the CRT training and messaging in the schools is allowed that she was told she's not allowed to even object to it.

00:44:14.780 So this is a young woman.

00:44:16.040 She shows up to speak to the board. 0.91

00:44:18.300 Nobody else is there because given all the troubles there, they they took the covid problems as an excuse to say, oh, no, no one else can come.

00:44:24.380 And she shows up in an empty room with the board sitting there.

00:44:28.540 Somebody filmed it and said in part as follows.

00:44:31.320 Listen, my name is Laura Morris.

00:44:33.500 I have been a teacher in Loudoun County Public Schools for five years.

00:44:37.700 This summer, I have struggled with the idea of returning to school, knowing that I'll be working yet again with a school division that, despite its shiny tech and flashy salary, promotes political ideologies that do not square with who I am as a believer in Christ.

00:44:52.180 Within the last year, I was told in one of my so-called equity trainings that white Christian, able bodied females currently have the power in our schools and that, quote, this has to change. 0.69

00:45:04.600 Clearly, you've made your point.

00:45:06.320 You no longer value me or many other teachers you've employed in this county.

00:45:10.660 School board, I quit.

00:45:12.660 I quit your policies.

00:45:13.980 I quit your trainings.

00:45:15.020 And I quit being a cog in a machine that tells me to push highly politicized agendas on our most vulnerable constituents, the children.

00:45:24.260 Fantastic.

00:45:25.120 Listen, conservative philanthropists, where are you?

00:45:28.400 Find that woman. 0.54

00:45:29.340 Create a school around her. 0.64

00:45:30.540 There's others like her. 0.98

00:45:32.000 We have to create alternative institutions.

00:45:34.940 And, you know, she will be still standing.

00:45:37.760 I'm sure she will be able to get a job. 0.96

00:45:39.520 More people have to step forward and be willing to live through the Twitter mob.

00:45:46.280 You know, in most cases, they can't take it down.

00:45:48.600 On the other hand, you know, let's notice that there have been plenty of people who have been fired.

00:45:53.720 James Bennett, you know, infamously from the New York Times editorial board for running an op-ed by Tom Cotton,

00:46:00.440 calling for a federal response to the riots of 2020 that made black,

00:46:05.000 apparently running that editorial made black employees at the New York Times feel unsafe.

00:46:10.640 So, yes, people have lost their jobs.

00:46:12.540 There's no question about it.

00:46:13.940 But at some point, if enough people stand up, we are going to unmask this ideology.

00:46:20.120 What really has to happen, Megan, though, right now, the only allowable explanation for socioeconomic disparities is bias.

00:46:29.780 That is what's driving everything today in our culture.

00:46:33.520 That's why everything is coming down is because, as you say, there is not 13 percent, 12 percent black representation at Sullivan and Cromwell Law Firm,

00:46:45.020 at at Gibson Dunn Crutcher Law Firm, at Google, at Microsoft,

00:46:49.520 because the average black 12th grader reads at the level of the average white 8th grader.

00:46:56.320 The vast majority of of black 8th graders do not have even partial mastery of math and reading skills, a gap that does not close.

00:47:08.300 There's a standard deviation of accomplishment on virtually every type of colorblind, standardized, objective test.

00:47:17.760 And and and but we're not allowed to talk about those gaps.

00:47:22.580 We're not allowed to talk about the crime gap.

00:47:24.620 Instead, any disparity, as you say, is chalked up to racism.

00:47:29.740 And as as long as that is the only explanation in the public sphere, the left wins, the left will continue destroying meritocratic standards,

00:47:39.920 which you brought up earlier, that every standard is coming down because they all have a disparate impact.

00:47:45.780 That's not because the standards are racist.

00:47:49.520 It's because there are different skills levels that need to be eradicated before we can expect proportional representation.

00:47:59.800 So let's talk about what drives that.

00:48:02.420 What drives it? Because I've heard I mean, I've heard I heard a great debate between Glenn Lowry and I think it was Breonna Joy Gray.

00:48:09.580 And she was accusing him of being too focused on black culture, saying, you know, it's not a bootstrap situation.

00:48:17.160 And she was saying it's it's poverty driven by large part.

00:48:21.180 You know, she was saying, yes, there are definitely some racist structures, but she's not really a BLM type person.

00:48:26.420 She's not like a woke activist, Breonna.

00:48:29.380 And she was saying, if you look at sort of the poverty situation in America and how most black kids are raised and they don't have full bellies when they go to school and that's distracting and so on and so forth.

00:48:38.780 But I mean, she to me, I was like, OK, she's persuading me that this is a real factor.

00:48:43.440 And how do we solve that? I don't know, Heather. I haven't studied it.

00:48:45.780 But what what do you say is causing that disparity?

00:48:50.480 Chinese immigrant children come to this school.

00:48:54.020 You know, there's a book by Ying Ma of I forget what it's called now.

00:48:57.460 Chinese girl in the ghetto or something who came to Oakland.

00:49:00.340 Her parents had nothing.

00:49:02.620 She was in a predominantly black school.

00:49:04.800 She succeeded. Her classmates overall did not.

00:49:08.880 I'm sure there were many exceptions because her parents absolutely oversaw her education.

00:49:15.320 They were fanatically dedicated to academic accomplishment.

00:49:19.800 She was not allowed to hang out on the streets at 2 a.m.

00:49:22.660 She was not involved in drugs.

00:49:24.220 She was not involved in gangs.

00:49:25.620 The idea of poverty, I'm in conversation now with a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District who is not too happy about the race, white privilege training that they've been having to take online.

00:49:40.520 The grading rubrics, which don't allow you to assign F's or penalize somebody for not turning in any homework or doing any tests.

00:49:50.980 And she points out that the schools that she's taught in, the Title I schools that are the poor population, are awash in resources.

00:50:00.640 Whereas there's a charter school in Studio City that has a lot of Hollywood kids there that has no money at all.

00:50:09.960 The parents do all the fundraising.

00:50:11.520 They have no computers.

00:50:13.420 You know, the poor schools have one computer per student.

00:50:17.120 I mean, Heather, so if you became president of the United States next time around, how would you start on something like that?

00:50:24.200 What's issue number one to tackle?

00:50:26.400 I guess I'm not a policy wonk by instinct.

00:50:28.820 I'm not sure that there's a lot of policy that we can do.

00:50:32.700 You know, the policy wonks like to tweak tax credits.

00:50:35.600 And we now have this absurd idea of the government paying families for having children with whether or not they're working or not, which is just returning us to the destructive regime of free welfare for all.

00:50:51.920 I think what has to happen is really a cultural shift.

00:50:54.960 So I guess I would use every bully pulpit I could to say that children need, on average, mothers and fathers, that males are not toxic.

00:51:04.280 I would stop the demonizing of males in our culture.

00:51:07.560 We have been taken over by the feminist ideology that says that strong women can do it all. 1.00

00:51:11.940 We regard fathers as sort of optional appendages to a family.

00:51:17.400 And, you know, the APA, the American Psychology Association, I referred, you know, previously to its work on the big five personality traits and neuroticism.

00:51:28.620 I can guarantee you if they were doing that same study today, they would not come up with that observation, which is true, because now it has gone as left as anything else.

00:51:37.500 And several years ago, it had a whole new sort of diagnostic sickness, which was maleness.

00:51:45.300 You know, the traits of self-reliance and competition are toxic and pathological.

00:51:53.560 I mean, we really are disappearing males from this culture.

00:51:57.200 And male-creating institutions have all been taken over.

00:52:01.360 The idea of putting females in combat units is suicidal, if you care about defense, because you're going to introduce arrows into those combat units. 1.00

00:52:10.480 The only reason we're doing that is in order to qualify more females to be four-star generals. 1.00

00:52:15.360 It has nothing to do with war readiness.

00:52:18.300 You know, the Boy Scouts have gone under.

00:52:20.860 So the traditional institutions that recognize the male virtues of chivalry and risk-taking, exploration, empire building, are being decimated.

00:52:37.400 And I don't think that bodes well for civilization.

00:52:41.300 But you know what, Megan?

00:52:42.280 Being female is not an accomplishment. 1.00

00:52:44.140 It's not even particularly interesting.

00:52:45.720 And the same goes for every other type of identity characteristic.

00:52:50.860 But right now, we have our science bureaucracies that are rife with this meritocracy-destroying identity politics, where we say it's more important that your lab be diverse than that it be the first to develop a final cure for cancer.

00:53:06.180 China, meanwhile, is ruthlessly meritocratic. 0.74

00:53:08.780 It does not look at all at sex or at ethnicity.

00:53:14.840 You get one shot at university.

00:53:17.260 You take an exam.

00:53:18.480 It's colorblind.

00:53:19.320 It's objective.

00:53:20.040 And they live with the results.

00:53:23.240 They are going to speed ahead in science and technology unless we can get them somehow infected with the identity politics gene, which will stop their progress as well.

00:53:34.740 Well, it doesn't.

00:53:35.380 It doesn't.

00:53:35.860 It's like to suggest that we don't have the opportunity, women, to get involved in STEM-related careers now or university educations is totally absurd.

00:53:45.020 We have more opportunity than any place on earth.

00:53:47.740 But, you know, Abigail Schreier was pointing out in her book, her beautiful book, Irreversible Damage, and on this show, too, that here's the truth.

00:53:55.840 A lot of women don't want to do that. 1.00

00:53:58.700 They don't want to go into those fields.

00:54:00.420 And you know what?

00:54:01.480 Here's the second part.

00:54:02.580 That's okay.

00:54:04.800 That's fine.

00:54:05.560 What I object to the fact that now that the opportunity is there, so is the shame on little girls who are like, no, I'm not into that.

00:54:14.340 I don't want to do the science and technology.

00:54:16.320 I want to go read the English literature.

00:54:17.720 Or I want a job that involves people and being around, you know, whatever, using my communication skills, reading and talk, what have you, the opera, let's say.

00:54:28.040 And instead, we look at young girls, the messaging is you're less than unless you're going to be tomorrow's scientist.

00:54:34.280 And the other point she was making, I'd love to get your thoughts on this, Heather, was one of the reasons why, and this is eye-opening for me, too, because I used to lament the fact that there are so few female CEOs at the Fortune 500 and 100 level.

00:54:46.380 And she offered a different way of looking at it.

00:54:50.560 And as soon as I read it, I was like, oh, that's true.

00:54:54.400 And it was, in a lot of cases, women, they're too smart for that. 1.00

00:55:00.360 But they have prioritized their family, their well-being, their friendships, their need to see their friends and the people around them.

00:55:08.180 They are not going to be, they're built differently, and they're not going to be okay with 18-hour days, six days a week, for years and years and years.

00:55:17.100 And that, too, is all right.

00:55:18.200 You know, every time your listeners and viewers, Megan, see another one of these damn strong girls can do it all programs that are being funded by the government or by the private sector, by the Ford Foundation, you know, girls who code, you know, science for females, they should be appalled. 1.00

00:55:39.020 It is a miracle that any boys are even trying anymore because they are a disappeared population. 1.00

00:55:46.080 The idea that philanthropic and government efforts still need to focus on females as if they're in a press class, as you say, is ludicrous.

00:55:56.880 When it comes to just sheer college completion, females dominate. 1.00

00:56:01.460 They're the dominant population in colleges today.

00:56:04.380 Now, at the outer edges of math cluelessness and math brilliance, males predominate.

00:56:13.840 They're the, they've got the worst math skills and they've got the best math skills.

00:56:17.660 At the highest ranges of the math SAT, the male to female ratio is about 2.5 to 1.

00:56:26.240 And so, as Larry Summers acknowledged, and this got him fired from Harvard presidency, there's a different, the curves are different in the distribution of math skills.

00:56:36.460 So, we do not need to focus more on encouraging females.

00:56:41.700 What we need to do is stop telling males that they are toxic.

00:56:45.160 I noticed, however, Megan, that when you were offering a set of alternative pathways for females to the, you know, either being the CEO or being the high, the first engineer at Google,

00:56:58.320 and you were saying rightly, study English literature as I did, as I still view as the, as the highest calling one could have,

00:57:06.320 or, you know, be an opera singer or, or, or, or be in the arts world.

00:57:11.300 How about be a mother?

00:57:12.600 You know, that too should be valorized as a, one of the most important things that you could do.

00:57:18.140 I feel extraordinarily privileged that I had a stay-at-home mother who knew the British children's literature classics, who read to me Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Pooh and, and, you know, Alice in Wonderland and, and E. Nesbitt that filled my imagination with, with fairies and nature and irony and wit that these great children's books had.

00:57:43.580 Being a mother is a calling as much as anything else, but in the career world, you're absolutely right.

00:57:50.940 I've gone around, Megan, collecting what I call natural experiments to test the theory that it is gatekeepers, that it is misogynist gatekeepers who are excluding females from various institutions.

00:58:05.040 And, and, and my hypothesis is that that is a bunch of crock.

00:58:09.560 And here's the best refutation of the gatekeeper, the misogynist gatekeeper hypothesis, Wikipedia.

00:58:17.160 Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia that anybody can contribute to.

00:58:22.600 Anybody can edit.

00:58:24.040 Nobody knows anybody's identity.

00:58:26.540 It is open to all.

00:58:28.500 There are no gatekeepers and it is a new institution.

00:58:32.800 It's not as if we have hundreds of years of misogynist Wikipedia tradition that has just told females, don't even try.

00:58:40.520 Wikipedia is like what, 15 years old, 20 years old.

00:58:43.900 So a rose in a, in a gender equal violence. 0.99

00:58:47.280 Nobody knows who's doing anything.

00:58:49.540 Wikipedia's editors are about 90% male.

00:58:53.460 Nobody is keeping females out. 0.76

00:58:55.220 They can go, they're anonymous.

00:58:56.740 Nobody's going to complain about them.

00:58:58.140 The fact of the matter is, is that males are more interested in public affairs and in data and in their insane, like competitive baseball score, you know, statistics, which I just can't even follow.

00:59:14.560 But, but that, that, you know, and it's the same with letters to the editor, to the newspaper.

00:59:20.300 Nobody's preventing females from sending in letters to the editor, but they run at least two to one male to female.

00:59:28.360 And, and some do.

00:59:29.240 I mean, the point is, you're not saying that there's no woman who wants to edit on Wikipedia or be a scientist or be a CEO.

00:59:35.240 Now, I'm not saying that either.

00:59:36.100 It's just that the disparity cannot be chalked up universally to sexism and a patriarchy, that some women are more masculine in their approach to life and in their makeup, and some women aren't.

00:59:50.640 And we're treating them all like they're these disadvantaged little violets who will never advance in life or be happy in life unless they do what the STEM technology says they must and can do.

01:00:02.460 I will tell you, Heather, I thought I've come, I've come a long ways on this because I was raised in a mostly Democratic family.

01:00:11.680 We were Catholic, so we certainly had some more traditional values.

01:00:15.060 But, you know, politically, I would say my family voted Democrat because our belief was that the Republicans were for the rich and we weren't.

01:00:21.540 We weren't rich.

01:00:23.640 Anyway, I was sort of, I would say younger than my career, I was much more into the, a woman can do it all.

01:00:30.600 I can have it all.

01:00:32.060 I'm, I've got this kick-ass career.

01:00:33.820 I've got a great husband.

01:00:34.960 I've got three kids.

01:00:36.040 I'm banging life out.

01:00:37.400 Like, this is great.

01:00:38.100 I can do it all.

01:00:38.760 Nobody who says otherwise is right.

01:00:40.920 And it took a long time at the height of my career with my three young kids.

01:00:46.640 All right.

01:00:47.200 Now, now they're all here and they're all young and they all need me because I'm the mom and they do need their mom, period. 0.98

01:00:52.960 Um, for me to realize I am, forgive me, fucking miserable. 0.97

01:01:00.180 This isn't good enough. 0.98

01:01:02.180 This isn't okay.

01:01:03.560 I am not okay.

01:01:05.360 I don't care.

01:01:06.260 And a lot of my guy friends, when I said, I'm going to leave the Kelly file and I'm going to go do this morning show. 0.96

01:01:10.460 We're like, are you insane? 0.52

01:01:12.240 You're at the height of power of influence. 0.98

01:01:15.480 People listen to you.

01:01:16.760 You're an authority figure.

01:01:18.420 And all I could say was I'm unhappy and it's not good enough.

01:01:23.200 And I'm not going to miss my children's upbringing.

01:01:26.720 I want to be the one to do it.

01:01:29.240 I knew I didn't want to give up work.

01:01:31.420 I do enjoy working.

01:01:32.660 I love the intellectual stimulation.

01:01:35.060 Um, so I knew that would be an overcorrection to, to just go home and raise them.

01:01:39.420 And nor would I be a good mother if I were with him full time.

01:01:41.620 It's just how I'm made up.

01:01:43.240 Um, but not for one moment, as rocky as my road through NBC was not for one moment.

01:01:49.520 Have I regretted leaving that job and having the past I left in January of 17, you know, having had the past four plus years with them.

01:01:57.020 I can't imagine a different life, Heather.

01:01:59.060 And now I feel a different responsibility to say to other young women, you know, many of whom listen to my earlier messages.

01:02:07.320 There's so much merit in the other way to like, don't be pressured into thinking you must have it all, quote unquote.

01:02:14.760 And don't believe, don't, don't always reject that little voice in the back of your head.

01:02:19.540 That's telling you this, this job thing and being at the apex of power.

01:02:24.460 That's telling you, that's not good enough.

01:02:26.780 That's not good enough.

01:02:27.740 You made three little lives and they need you and you don't get a do over.

01:02:32.180 And once you cry at their high school graduation, you know, your tears of lament won't do anything for them, for you.

01:02:39.400 You know, it's not worth it doing, breaking another news story on the A block of Fox News to miss yet another recital or a moment to tuck them in at night.

01:02:49.200 All of it, you know, so I, I feel like my journey on this has been, I won't say complete, it's ongoing, but it's been eye opening.

01:02:57.080 Well, that is so fantastic to hear, Megan, and I really hope that everyone is listening to you.

01:03:04.880 And I think they are because the feminist movement is, is engaged in a bunch of complete contradictions. 0.99

01:03:13.260 It is illogical, it is, it is unbiological, it is against human nature.

01:03:19.620 The idea that somehow making partner by working, you know, billing those 2,200 hours a year, staying up until 2 a.m., pouring over discovery documents and correcting them for typos is, is more important than, as you say, raising those three unique lives.

01:03:39.620 Is, is for feminists, basically, to adopt male values, you know, it's to accept the male version of the world, which is highly competitive, which is status obsessed. 1.00

01:03:51.360 And it's, it's the values which gave us civilization because they led to exploration and, and conquest, which is often a very good thing.

01:03:59.120 But, you know, what, and yet at the same time, you have feminists claiming that females are different and better from males. 1.00

01:04:10.260 You know, if we all, if we all had female politicians, we wouldn't make war anymore. 1.00

01:04:16.540 Maybe so, maybe not, but, but they, you know, insist that females are better. 1.00

01:04:21.300 And yet, when it comes to recognizing specifically female values, like empathy and the ability to raise children, they, they refuse to acknowledge those. 0.52

01:04:32.680 But, as you say, there are individual differences.

01:04:35.860 There are plenty of fathers that are far more nurturing than mothers.

01:04:39.880 There are mothers who are martinet, you know, draconian, disciplined freaks. 1.00

01:04:45.200 And, and it's to the father that the child comes running for solace, you know, when the mother said, you idiot, you know, you screwed up on your homework again. 1.00

01:04:54.120 But, on average, again, both of us, I'm not talking about anybody's daughter. 0.99

01:04:58.820 I'm not saying your daughter is not going to be the next Nobel Prize winner in physics.

01:05:02.500 I'm talking about averages and distributions.

01:05:05.080 On average, females, mothers have a different connection to their children.

01:05:10.340 And to pretend that connection doesn't exist and that child doesn't need it because you want to make partner or, or be in the C-suite, it's your choice, certainly.

01:05:23.840 But, but don't claim that that is sort of a, a neutral choice that isn't, in fact, all about politics and about trying to prove something.

01:05:35.480 I, I'm amazed, as you said earlier, Megan, the idea that we're discriminated against is ludicrous.

01:05:41.520 I have never, in my life, been discriminated against because I'm female.

01:05:47.820 I have been greeted with open arms.

01:05:50.260 I know, to the contrary, just as the reality of our world today is black privilege, not white privilege, the reality of our world today is female privilege, not white, not male privilege.

01:06:00.400 I have been put, and let's-

01:06:01.460 We can't go by you.

01:06:02.340 You're like one of the most brilliant people alive.

01:06:04.520 You, you can't go by your own experience.

01:06:07.320 That's not okay.

01:06:07.980 We got to pick a more average target.

01:06:09.980 No, what I'm saying is I've been put on panels.

01:06:12.660 I've been chosen to speak because I'm a female, because they want that female. 0.88

01:06:18.060 It's not because of my qualifications.

01:06:20.020 My qualifications are not particularly impressive, but I actually had a producer from Fox invite me onto one of their Fox Nation things that was on like interest rates or something,

01:06:30.640 which I do not know anything beyond what I barely surmise in the newspaper, and this female producer actually admitted to me.

01:06:41.200 I said, it's because I'm a female, and she admitted.

01:06:43.700 That is the case.

01:06:44.960 Females are being advanced. 1.00

01:06:46.540 You know, we have now this phenomenon in science, a stigma against mantles.

01:06:52.480 A mantel is a predominantly male scientific panel, and no less than the head of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, who has been going around for the last year beating his chest about how science is so systemically racist.

01:07:05.920 He also thinks it's systemically misogynist, and he has declared that he will not attend any scientific conference.

01:07:12.340 I don't care if it's got the most cutting-edge researchers on COVID or Alzheimer's or autism if the researchers are predominantly male.

01:07:23.160 And so you know that if there's a conference under the auspices of the NIH and it's 50% female, you have no idea whether those are the most qualified scientists. 0.97

01:07:32.980 You only know that they're there because of their gonads and their sex, and that is the reality in our world today.

01:07:40.020 That is undermining, too.

01:07:40.960 Right, exactly.

01:07:41.660 That's the same problem with it.

01:07:43.200 We've talked about it with other guests, too, on Affirmative Action, right?

01:07:45.560 It's like a lot of Black scholars resent it because they get tarred with this, you-check-the-box sort of judgment that may or may not be fair at all, and even kids who did check the box get it, and you're sort of up against it right from the start, right?

01:08:00.600 That you're seen as sort of maybe not equal, not as good as, that you're less than, you didn't belong there.

01:08:06.020 It raises all sorts of issues that are ongoing for those kids when they actually get into the schools.

01:08:12.480 Don't leave me now.

01:08:13.420 We've got more coming up in 60 seconds.

01:08:15.040 This is a good time to probably inject some of the Me Too conversation, which I know you and I, too, have been critical of.

01:08:26.860 Yeah.

01:08:26.980 But without using the label Me Too, right, because that brings up so much, I maintain that the heart of that movement, you know, that in a way I was a part of, was good.

01:08:39.920 You know, putting a stop or at least empowering women to feel like they had a safe way of objecting to their bosses, pawing them physically. 1.00

01:08:47.680 I mean, committing crimes, really, in exchange for professional advancement or just the maintenance of one's job, was a good thing.

01:08:56.680 It had been going on for a long time, and it needed an avenue out for women that was meaningful, as opposed to just you've got to suck it up and let them grab your boob if you want to get that, if you want to keep your job. 1.00

01:09:07.160 And that's why it's a case-by-case situation, right?

01:09:09.980 You've got to look at each one and say, I don't believe her.

01:09:12.060 I do believe her.

01:09:12.760 And that's totally fine.

01:09:14.500 But that's why I was happy to see Andrew Cuomo go down this week.

01:09:18.620 I thought he should have gone down over the nursing home scandal, but no one seemed to want to pay any attention to that because they just wanted to run cover for him.

01:09:26.140 And when the women started coming forward, I was glad to see it because I wanted him to go down.

01:09:30.700 I was open about my bias.

01:09:32.200 My closest friend is Janice Dean, who's been sort of leading the way.

01:09:37.020 But I also read their accounts, and I thought, this guy should not be sitting in the governor's mansion.

01:09:41.300 You don't grab your assistant's breast and her bottom and shove your tongue down her throat and grab the belly of a state trooper who's protecting it, all the stuff he allegedly did, and keep that post. 0.98

01:09:52.920 This is gross. 0.96

01:09:54.060 But I'd love to know what your thoughts are as somebody who's been skeptical of the movement.

01:09:58.260 Yes, and I respect your viewpoint enormously, Megan.

01:10:02.580 I've mostly been a solo worker, so I've not been in that type of office environment and have not experienced that kind of behavior.

01:10:10.560 And I would never purport to question your experience with that kind of oppression.

01:10:17.160 But I will say, you know, I'm glad, too, that Cuomo has had his downfall just listening to his—I put myself through the torture of listening to his COVID conferences at the start of the pandemic in March and April, and they were simply unbearable.

01:10:36.460 The man is such a narcissist, and he was so wallowing in this unjustly granted celebrity and whatnot, and obviously thinks that every word out of his mouth is brilliant.

01:10:49.380 And we were subjected to little tales of his Italian grandma that got recycled multiple times and his children, and, oh, it was unbearable.

01:10:57.500 Nevertheless, I will say I do differ with you on Me Too and politics, I'll have to say, which is that I think that human life is in different domains.

01:11:11.400 I think there's the domain of eros, male-female relations, and then there's the public realm of politics, of leadership, and I don't think that one is relevant to the other.

01:11:23.680 Let me put another thought experiment to you.

01:11:26.580 If it turned out that, you know, some of our greatest founding fathers—I'm just pulling a name out of the hat, James Madison.

01:11:33.740 And again, believe me, this is a hypothetical.

01:11:36.700 It is not based in reality.

01:11:38.180 I'm just positing a thought experiment.

01:11:41.560 What if it turned out that James Madison was a skirt chaser and, you know, he pawed his wife's maid?

01:11:49.700 Would we think that it would have been better for the country that he be ejected from a leadership position in drafting the Federalist Papers, in drafting the Constitution,

01:12:03.500 in creating the most unique at that time architecture for public life, for government life, because when it came to the private realm of eros, he acted like an entitled male and, you know, gave in to his sexual lust?

01:12:22.340 I don't think that's a fair trade-off.

01:12:25.080 I think that it is a—

01:12:26.340 Well, I don't disagree with that, but what if you took it further and said he was a rapist? 0.98

01:12:32.200 You know, let's take that to a greater extreme and say he was running around raping women, hurting—severely hurting women. 0.99

01:12:39.180 Then I'd say, yeah, he's got to go. 0.99

01:12:40.620 We could find somebody else just like him.

01:12:41.860 There were a lot of great guys back then.

01:12:43.080 Yeah, and I guess I would say there that I would not have a special category for crimes against women.

01:12:50.380 I would say criminals.

01:12:51.560 I just—I'm sick of the, you know, the idea that females are a particular category that should have, you know, hate crimes around them or be treated specially. 1.00

01:13:03.220 So, yeah, if he's a serial criminal, then he's not a good person to be involved in the creation of a government.

01:13:11.800 But short of that, short of somebody going around and criminally raping people, and I would stick really much to a traditional definition of rape.

01:13:21.980 I think a lot of—I certainly do not think that what's going on on campuses fits that definition.

01:13:26.980 These are acquaintances.

01:13:28.500 And I recommend that chapter of your book, The Diversity Delusion to People, because it does call out—I mean, we can be honest about crimes and power dynamics without classifying everything as a sexual assault.

01:13:40.040 I mean, we can, you know, and it's like, look, women are now—they classify so much on college campuses as an assault. 1.00

01:13:48.100 It can be—it can literally be a man just touching your arm when you don't want him to.

01:13:53.420 And it's ruinous for the men who get accused, and especially with no due process, thanks to Obama.

01:13:59.080 And now, once again, Biden's trying to be—bring it back.

01:14:01.680 I see all that.

01:14:02.340 But I do think the character of a person does matter.

01:14:06.860 And I don't know.

01:14:07.480 I mean, like, JFK cheating on his wife, that's not really something I have much interest in.

01:14:11.920 You know, even Bill Clinton cheating on his wife, I don't know if I have much interest in it.

01:14:15.440 I mean, it's salacious, so I'm interested as a human, but I don't know that I would have wanted him bounced out of office had I been one of the—a senator at the time.

01:14:23.740 Um, but I think when it—when it shows a pattern of abuse, and certainly when job advancement is conditioned on submission, that's such an abuse of power that he's got to go.

01:14:36.940 He's got to go.

01:14:38.860 Yeah, I—I—and I'm not sure that this is a real distinction.

01:14:43.260 I'm making it in my mind, and it may—it may be completely collapsed, but I would say there's a difference between employment relations and then political accomplishment.

01:14:55.600 And my point is really mixing—I think it is a—it's a narcissistic gesture on the part of feminists to say that the—what I think is sort of more the personal realm of—of—of sexual ambiguity between males and females,

01:15:11.960 of the—of the constant sort of probing, seeing what—what is their reciprocal interest, even if there's not reciprocal interest.

01:15:18.600 I mean, look at—I know that the just obnoxious self-involvement of—of males who, like, can be the most unattractive people in the world, and they keep pushing.

01:15:30.860 It's like, are you kidding me?

01:15:32.060 Look at you, guy.

01:15:32.980 You know, you—you really think this isn't going to get you anywhere you're attracted?

01:15:36.780 But—but to take that realm and to take down male politicians, because, as I say, the ability to negotiate, the ability to maybe be a great diplomat, to be over, you know, dealing with Cold War politics, to understand leverage, to be able to figure out solutions, compromises among warring parties, that is a different skill.

01:16:01.180 And it's a male skill. It's also a female skill. I'm not saying it's exclusively male, but traditionally it has been predominantly male.

01:16:09.260 I—I just think that the fact that somebody, when he's back in the office, is eyeing somebody's butt, is just not relevant to his ability to lead this country out of perhaps, you know, tortuous geopolitical situation or domestic situation.

01:16:28.320 But how can they leave him—let's say we accept the allegations of all these women against Cuomo.

01:16:33.260 This is interesting to me. I like this discussion.

01:16:35.620 Let's say we accept—because he's both, right?

01:16:37.880 He's a politician who's doing things in the political world, but then back, the women he allegedly harassed, many of them, are employees, right?

01:16:45.180 That is the employment situation.

01:16:46.620 So the number one, accuser number one, was his executive assistant, you know, a young woman who says he grabbed her breast underneath her blouse, grabbed her behind, among other things.

01:16:58.700 And it's not like he can't do his job as governor, having done those things, but you can't—he has two hats.

01:17:07.000 And as somebody who's at the top of the government and the staff in the government, how could we knowingly leave him there to keep doing that to woman after woman when we know how difficult it makes the—it is for the women, what spot it puts them in, you know, that it's not legal.

01:17:24.720 It's not lawful for him to do it. So you can't just say, oh, well, he's really good at the, you know, the other stuff, and we're going to ignore this other lane.

01:17:32.860 No, you're absolutely right. I mean, it's very, very complicated.

01:17:35.280 And so were they to bring an employment complaint, you know, that may be the counterpart to impeachment.

01:17:42.220 I don't know. So I'm sort of dealing with just sort of the abstract categories here.

01:17:46.720 You're getting rightly so into the complexities of trying to deal with the situation as it is.

01:17:53.340 I'm just stating as a general principle, I don't think that we should say that somebody's political career should be decimated because he doesn't always keep his hands for himself.

01:18:10.020 And you've also posited, which is absolutely right to do so, saying let's assume arguendo that all of these allegations are absolutely accurate.

01:18:19.040 We know darn well that that is a risky assumption to make, but I'm changing the slant here.

01:18:26.460 But, you know, at one point, I think it's undisputed that one female says to him, you know, during one of these encounters, well, you'll get us in trouble.

01:18:35.320 To me, that kind of line sounds like somebody who's complicit.

01:18:39.900 And, you know, he claims that there was flirtatiousness on the other side.

01:18:44.560 And again, let's be realistic.

01:18:47.400 The power dynamics work both ways.

01:18:50.760 And females know very well how to play their sexual attractiveness for advancement and for favors or favoritism on the part of males. 1.00

01:19:04.660 So I just I'm not I'm not 100 percent convinced that it is as cut and dried.

01:19:10.320 And and, you know, I think we should be very, very wary, given what we've seen with the campus rape allegations and and Kavanaugh and whatnot.

01:19:18.100 But but you're you're perfectly within your rights to say, let's posit that they're all correct.

01:19:24.200 Then what do you do?

01:19:25.300 And and but I would also then insist that and I'm not accusing you of not doing this, that let's imagine that Cuomo was a politician who understood the beauty of commerce,

01:19:40.100 who understood the grandeur of individual enterprise and entrepreneurship, who was not willing to subject the struggling small restaurants in in New York City and state to completely arbitrary shutdown orders,

01:19:57.840 who was willing to speak about opportunity and the fact that students and of personal responsibility,

01:20:07.740 you know, would we still say that he should go because he was too handsy?

01:20:13.900 And I felt the same thing. 0.94

01:20:14.780 You know, I thought the effort against Biden was ridiculous. 0.96

01:20:17.260 I think that that really was a case of an old school politician who was handsy. 0.87

01:20:22.060 And I was disappointed to see conservatives jumping on that and blowing out of proportion.

01:20:27.800 I mean, I remember pictures at the time that that that conservative websites and and and even, you know,

01:20:34.440 anchors at Fox News were showing Biden with two 80 year old women with his hands around them.

01:20:40.460 And they were saying that was an instance of sexual harassment.

01:20:43.380 But there is a creepy strain to him, Heather.

01:20:45.260 Come on.

01:20:45.740 I'm sorry.

01:20:46.220 There's something weird with him sniffing the hair, making the weird comments about the young girls.

01:20:50.080 I'm telling you, if I were in a room with Biden, I would let him meet my daughter, but I would not necessarily leave her alone in the room.

01:20:55.560 It's not like I just think he's a little creepy.

01:20:58.940 Well, let's be a little bit more taller.

01:21:01.260 I mean, that's another sort of feminist trait. 1.00

01:21:03.940 And I'm not saying it's yours, but a little brittle.

01:21:06.580 We're brittle towards human frailty and the variety of human experience.

01:21:12.420 I guess it's creepy, but there are different ways.

01:21:16.220 There's spectrums of people that are are more physical with others.

01:21:19.760 And these are politicians that feel like if it's me, that's one thing I can handle myself and always have.

01:21:27.040 If it's my 10 year old daughter, it's a different story.

01:21:29.880 She when she gets old enough, she she'll learn.

01:21:31.880 She'll trust me.

01:21:32.520 She'll be at the place where she can handle him just fine.

01:21:34.500 And guys like.

01:21:35.600 But I agree with you.

01:21:36.160 Listen, I, I, I am all about shoring up strong, young women. 0.91

01:21:42.280 And I am.

01:21:43.040 I hate when women and men, but really it's a woman thing for the large part, resort to playing the victim, you know, and that's and even in even though I have been sexually harassed, I don't use that term victim. 0.92

01:21:54.960 I'm not a victim.

01:21:56.020 I wasn't anybody's victim.

01:21:56.980 I was the target of a guy who was behaving inappropriately.

01:22:00.580 And, you know, I got I got through it like most women do and wasn't prepared to make a federal case about it ever, you know, came up many years later because the question was then asked, does he ever do this?

01:22:10.980 And I was in the position of having to say, well, you know, if we're if we're really putting this to the test, I do have information on it.

01:22:18.440 But that's not to say I want my daughter to be put in the position where she has to handle it. 0.99

01:22:22.960 And I certainly think when you're dealing with a boss, you shouldn't have to deal with this bullshit. 0.98

01:22:26.060 And I would tell my sons, if you're in a position of power, you got to you got to check that. 0.99

01:22:31.660 Is it the ethos?

01:22:32.620 I didn't I went to Syracuse.

01:22:35.620 Is it you got to check that?

01:22:37.320 Don't you don't don't fish off the company pier because it's totally fraught.

01:22:41.360 And there are power differentials that especially in today's day and age can get you in trouble.

01:22:45.120 So, you know, you could find yourself a nice girl at the bar or a church or at, you know, the mixers. 0.74

01:22:50.760 But whatever, I sound like I'm 200, but not not at the office unless it's somebody who's equal to you.

01:22:59.020 Well, I'm going to suggest something, Megan, that I hope you won't mind.

01:23:03.000 But as long as you're still talking about shoring up strong young women, you're giving ground far too much to the left.

01:23:11.680 I would say you should cancel that as a as a life project entirely and recognize the fact that it is not females who are struggling, gender dysphoria notwithstanding and the herd instinct of changing. 0.85

01:23:28.200 It is males who need support.

01:23:30.240 And we should be about shoring up strong men because they are really at the they are society's scapegoats at this point.

01:23:39.680 But but I will agree with you.

01:23:41.980 And I will agree with you in the case to males. 0.88

01:23:45.700 You know, I I'm frankly not all that sympathetic to the males that get caught up on campuses with these ridiculous me to sexual assault campus rape charges because they're on notice.

01:24:01.640 You know, they're on notice that they get drunk and their their partner gets drunk and they get in bed. 0.68

01:24:09.340 They are very likely to be charged with rape, even though they did not tie the girl down and pour drinks down her throat.

01:24:16.700 She got herself drunk and she was involved in the prelude to intercourse. 0.99

01:24:23.520 They are assuming risk.

01:24:25.920 And so when they get when the hammer falls on them, they were perfectly forewarned and they have allowed themselves to be carried away by their hormones.

01:24:35.640 And it frankly serves them right. 0.85

01:24:37.640 So all sides, I say to hell with them here.

01:24:41.440 But but you're right to warn your boys. 0.91

01:24:43.680 I mean, they should be selfish.

01:24:45.260 All these boys should take an oath of celibacy until marriage.

01:24:49.860 I mean, I've said before, if my kids decided to wait until marriage, I'd be just fine with that.

01:24:54.800 But I I confess I don't I don't know that it's realistic.

01:24:57.580 And I know you're not religious.

01:24:59.780 I mean, you're an atheist.

01:25:00.820 I'm not an atheist, but I'm I'm not particularly religious.

01:25:04.200 So I don't really have that sort of club to hit them with, you know, like God can see you.

01:25:08.840 God.

01:25:10.160 But I'd be fine with it.

01:25:12.200 But I don't think it's going to happen.

01:25:13.640 And I do think you can you can navigate this world by, you know, not I've said before to, you know, to to women out there.

01:25:20.820 But it's also true for men.

01:25:21.940 Don't be a ho like keep it in your pants, like fall into a loving relationship, something that's meaningful before you take that that big step. 1.00

01:25:30.400 And that's probably the best way of protecting yourself, because someone who loves you is not going to basically turn around and accuse you of rape unless she is insane.

01:25:39.760 And ideally, you won't fall in love with an insane person if you've taken the time to figure out who this person is.

01:25:45.280 That's the best prophylactic against finding yourself in that kind of situation.

01:25:49.540 Now, I can't believe that we are at an hour and a half, Heather, and I haven't asked you one damn question about the cops, something I've been so fired up about, something you've been amused to me on.

01:26:00.000 I've read your books.

01:26:01.060 I've listened to everything.

01:26:02.040 And yet I can't I can't ask you to continue staying here and talking about the cops.

01:26:07.340 So can I at least ask you to come back and we will do a show on cops because you're you are like the for the foremost expert on it.

01:26:15.240 You're the person I want most to hear from about the cops.

01:26:18.600 No, you cannot ask me, Megan.

01:26:19.840 I will not come back on your show.

01:26:21.200 Of course you can. 0.99

01:26:22.280 Are you crazy? 0.72

01:26:23.440 No, I would love to come back.

01:26:24.780 Let's do a part two on law enforcement, crime rates, incarceration, criminal justice and people like Lori Lightfoot in Chicago and what she has to answer for for what's happening there.

01:26:38.520 Sadly, I feel we could put this off for another year.

01:26:41.040 And unless Biden changes his rhetoric and his policies out of the Justice Department, nothing will have gotten better and we will have plenty of material to talk about.

01:26:49.420 But hopefully we'll do that before the next year is out.

01:26:52.600 Absolutely.

01:26:53.200 I'm going to make it happen.

01:26:54.260 I'm going to hound you until it does happen.

01:26:56.160 Heather, what a pleasure.

01:26:57.060 Such an interesting discussion.

01:26:59.200 Thank you so much, Megan.

01:27:00.220 This has been truly great.

01:27:01.480 And it's a it's an honor and privilege to speak with you at such length.

01:27:08.500 Don't miss Monday because we've got Wesley Yang.

01:27:11.260 You know that name?

01:27:12.320 He wrote the big, big bestseller, The Souls of Yellow Folk.

01:27:16.280 But he also more recently was interviewed by Andrew Sullivan and appeared in Andrew's column that, you know, I love.

01:27:23.420 What happened to you and he coined that phrase, the successor ideology.

01:27:28.560 And he's another sort of cultural commentator.

01:27:30.860 He's also got his own sub stack who's been able to put into perspective what's happening in our country.

01:27:35.360 Really smart dude and has a way of capturing what's happening on the left right now that I have felt very is very helpful, is personally meaningful.

01:27:46.280 Anyway, he'll be here on Monday.

01:27:47.500 So go ahead and subscribe to the show.

01:27:49.460 Rate the show.

01:27:50.200 Five stars, please.

01:27:51.520 And give us a review while you're there on Apple Podcast Reviews, will you?

01:27:54.960 It'll help us out and it'll give me the chance to see how you guys feel about the show.

01:27:59.140 And I look forward to reading it all.

01:28:01.500 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:28:03.760 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:28:08.320 The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

01:28:12.680 We'll see you next time.

The Megyn Kelly Show - August 13, 2021

Heather Mac Donald on COVID Fear and Power, Embracing Balance, and The Demonization of Men ｜ Ep. 145

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