Ep. 418 - Hypocrisy Is More Offensive Than Blackface
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
187.56516
Summary
Justin Trudeau has been caught wearing blackface in several photos from the 90s and early 2000s. Right, left, and center, black, white, and brown. No one is actually offended by the photos. The problem is the hypocrisy. We will examine the surprising history of Blackface and how all of us should react. Then, NBC launches a climate change confessional for the left s environmental religion. Of course, Protestant environmentalists are furious about this, preferring instead to confess to the earth directly. Finally, the mailbag.
Transcript
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Canadian Prime Minister and international leftist darling Justin Trudeau
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has been caught wearing blackface in several photos from the 90s and early 2000s.
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Right, left, and center, black, white, and brown.
00:00:56.340
We will examine the surprising history of blackface and how all of us should react.
00:01:01.620
Then, NBC launches a climate change confessional for the left's environmental religion.
00:01:07.740
Of course, Protestant environmentalists are furious about this,
00:01:11.260
preferring instead to confess to the earth directly.
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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I can't wait for even more pictures of Justin Trudeau in blackface to come out.
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So we will get into how to respond, because on the one hand, conservatives say nobody really cares.
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Obviously, nobody's actually upset about it, so maybe we should let it go.
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On the other hand, we say the left uses blackface as a cudgel.
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They would never let this go if this were a conservative.
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And yet, the left gets to play by their own rules, so we need to smack them over the head for it.
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And obviously, you know, I had to get the Wi-Fi.
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It was so hilarious because the photos come out first of him dressed up in what the left
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was calling brown face wearing an Arabian costume.
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You know, the left is so dishonest on blackface.
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When leftists wear blackface, they excuse it and ignore it.
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When conservatives even so much as talk about blackface, they take their careers away from them.
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They wouldn't even say that Trudeau was wearing blackface.
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They called it brownface because they wanted to draw a distinction between blackface and some
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other category, brownface, even though they're exactly the same thing.
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They came up with this logic and said, well, because Trudeau was only appearing as an Arab
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Really what the difference is, is that brownface is blackface worn by leftists.
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Because by their logic, they say, no, no, no, Arabs are brown and black people are black.
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They're not like actual, just like the color black.
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It's all the same, it's all the same thing, but they want to have a distinction without
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a difference because they don't want to admit that a major leftist, darling politician wore
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The Daily Beast right now, the left-wing outlet, the Daily Beast, is referring to this as face
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They couldn't even go into the brownface thing.
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They couldn't go into the brownface thing because the brownface logic fell apart when it
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turned out later that Justin Trudeau had worn blackface as well, meaning he was specifically
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dressing up as black people, one of whom was Harry Belafonte, who's a very famous Jamaican-American
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For comparison, just a reminder, when Megyn Kelly, who, you know, Megyn Kelly was on a right-leaning
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She then went over to a left-leaning news channel.
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The audience never forgave her for working with conservatives.
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So she was on a show on NBC, and she just discussed the question of blackface and wearing
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They took her entire show, they tried to take her entire career away from her.
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Because, truly, you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface
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on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween.
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I mean, like, back when I was a kid, that was okay, as long as you were dressing up as
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There was a controversy on The Real Housewives of New York with Luann, and she dresses Diana
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Ross, and she made her skin look darker than it really is, and people said that that was
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And I don't know, I felt like, who doesn't love Diana Ross?
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I don't know how, like, that got racist on Halloween.
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That comment, which is pretty much as innocuous as it gets, got Megyn Kelly's career taken
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Just for comparison, here is Jimmy Kimmel's blackface performance, not comments about blackface,
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full-on blackface, black body performance that he did a few years before, before he got
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picked to host one of the largest late-night comedy shows on network television in the country.
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Sometime at night, Karl Malone will look up in the sky and say, what the hell going on
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Do UFO live on another planet, phoning home like E.T.?
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Karl Malone will read on TV about white people getting deducted by aliens, sticking all kind
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of hell up their butt, and that's a damn thing.
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Now, Karl Malone never seen no flying saucer himself, but if he do, that's going to be a
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Now, that's why Karl Malone say, government got to step up and give 102% to keeping them
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little green men off this here earth, because the day them dudes stick something up Karl Malone,
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butt, that's going to, well, that ain't going to be no good time for nobody, especially Karl
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By the way, the whole joke, the whole joke he's doing beyond just, uh, coloring his skin
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brown, the joke is that Karl Malone is an idiot and doesn't speak the English language
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What Jimmy Kimmel is doing is much, much closer to a minstrel show, which is the origin of
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But there are a lot of other examples because it isn't just Jimmy Kimmel.
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It's Jimmy Fallon, it's Ted Danson, it's Joni Mitchell, you know, Joni Mitchell, they
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paved paradise, put up, she wore blackface, uh, Billy Crystal, host of the Oscars, Cindy
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Lauper, Sarah Silverman, Fred Armisen from Saturday Night Live, all of them wore blackface.
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All of them, in all of those cases, worked out just fine.
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They didn't lose their careers, nor should they have.
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I don't think Jimmy Kimmel even should lose his career for doing this sketch.
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I don't think any of the other ones should lose their careers for doing their blackface
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Some people have brought up the governor of Virginia, who in a yearbook photo from his
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medical school yearbook was accused of having worn blackface because there was this photo
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of him, a photo of a man in blackface on his page.
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He could have been the other guy in the photo who was wearing a Ku Klux Klan uniform.
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That guy, Ralph Northam, still the governor of Virginia.
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He also said on radio that we should kill babies after they've been born.
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That, that's probably worse than either of the first two.
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So if I, if you, if you were just asking me sitting governor, what's worse?
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He wore blackface 30 years ago, or he wore a Ku Klux Klan costume 30 years ago, obviously
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Or he says that right now, while he has political power, while he is making and enforcing laws
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in Virginia that we should be able to kill babies after they've been born.
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I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that last one is worse.
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I've made this apparently controversial remark before.
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When I said that last time I said that, Media Matters tried to get me fired for saying that
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I'm pretty sure it's worse to kill babies after they've been born than to wear blackface,
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which means according to Media Matters, it's better to kill babies after they've been born
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I guess Media Matters wants us to change the laws in this country, make it legal to kill
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babies after they've been born, but make it illegal to wear blackface.
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We're going to have to change all the punishments.
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Obviously, it is the case that there are some instances of wearing blackface that are not
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Because all those other people wore blackface and all those other people still have their
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careers and all those other people haven't been boycotted and all those other people are
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You know, the last time a blackface story was breaking, I think it actually was the Ralph
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I had just gotten into an Uber with a black driver.
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The story had just broke and I asked what he thought about it.
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Maybe it was on the radio or maybe it had just been all over the news that day.
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He actually brought up the point that I just made, which is the difference between wearing
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And he said, blackface, if it's all in good fun, doesn't bother him at all.
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The Ku Klux Klan hood, it's hard to wear that in good fun.
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So the question is, how should we react to the photos of Trudeau?
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Certainly as conservatives, maybe even centrists or regular old liberals.
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It's the same thing, Matt Walsh tweeted this out today.
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It's the same reason that the left goes after a Republican senator like Larry Craig for trying
00:12:39.760
It's not because the left disagrees with having sex with men in airport bathrooms.
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Larry Craig says that he opposes redefining marriage, for instance, to include gay unions.
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The left talks a big game on blackface, but they don't actually care unless it's politically
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So what we like in this case is to see the liberals hoisted on their own petard.
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I actually think there's a way between just totally letting Trudeau off the hook and between
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And what it has to do is the meaning of blackface itself and the history of blackface itself
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Why is nobody actually offended by the Justin Trudeau blackface?
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It's because no one believes that Justin Trudeau hates black people.
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I don't like Justin Trudeau, but I get a kick out of him, actually.
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I sort of think if he didn't exist, conservatives would have had to build him in a lab somewhere
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because he's such a caricature of a leftist politician.
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Nobody thinks Joni Mitchell hates black people.
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When Billy Crystal put on blackface to do an impression of Sammy Davis Jr., he darkened his skin.
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He couldn't have done the impression otherwise.
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Billy Crystal doesn't look like Sammy Davis Jr.
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When you do impressions and impersonations of people, you've got to make yourself look and appear like them.
00:16:09.320
Fred Armisen isn't black, but he darkened his skin to look like Barack Obama.
00:16:15.500
But he couldn't have done the impression otherwise.
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You can't go and be a white guy and do an impression of Obama.
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Then just don't do the impression because you're not going to look like the person.
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So are we then saying that white people can't imitate anyone else?
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We can't do impersonations unless they have exactly the same skin tone that you do.
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How about when the Waynes brothers whitened their faces to play white chicks?
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I mean, this was like 20 years ago or something that it came out.
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But they look like they whiten their faces and they play white chicks.
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All of a sudden you saw parties start cropping up.
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I went to a number of them where people were wearing, you know, the white tank top and gold
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chains and things that I actually just wear under my clothing every single day of my life.
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But they did it to kind of look like Italian people.
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Sometimes maybe they darken their skin a little or they make their hair look a little more
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They physically made themselves resemble Italian people more.
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The left says, well, black people have been oppressed in America and white people have
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So it's universally always terrible and never acceptable to wear blackface, always offensive.
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But if a black person wears white face or, you know, dresses up like an Italian for a Jersey
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Everybody has experienced some pain and suffering in their life.
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The largest lynching in American history was of Sicilian people in the late 19th century.
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So are you still going to say dressing up like the Jersey Shore is okay?
00:18:10.080
I mean, there were signs on doors that said Irish need not apply for work.
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So when we go out on St. Paddy's Day and wear green suits and go drinking and speak in fake
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Irish brogues, is that, are we allowed to do that?
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Let's say that, okay, you can't, it's okay for some people to do it, but not okay for
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It's okay for, in the victim hierarchy, for the more oppressed class of people to dress
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up like the less oppressed class of people or the oppressor class of people, but it's
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Because we're told by the left that men oppress women and have always oppressed women and only
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now, thanks to feminism, do they not oppress women.
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I take some issue with that history, but let's even indulge the premise.
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Then how on earth are you going to let men dress up like women, put in long hair, paint
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their nails, put makeup on, wear a dress and high heels?
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And it's, it's almost a direct analogy according to the left's premises because you have the,
00:19:20.620
the oppressor group, the men dressing up like the oppressed group, the women.
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Not only are they allowed today, actually, by the way, the left is encouraging that to
00:19:37.680
They're holding whole parades to celebrate men dressing up like women.
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I mean, I was just in New York, which, you know, I was actually down in Greenwich village
00:19:47.720
And in and around the village, there's a drag bar, like every three, three blocks walked
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by Stonewall Inn, the, uh, the very famous gay bar in New York.
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Plenty of people dressing up plenty of crazy ways.
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So this was a form of vaudevillian entertainment in the U S and arguably it's, it's certainly
00:20:20.800
It's arguably the only uniquely American form of theater.
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And in the minstrel show broadly, you have white people dressing up like black people
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and specifically stock characters of black people.
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So one, one criticism of minstrel shows is they portray black people as stupid.
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And this is actually different from what Jimmy Kimmel did when Jimmy Kimmel dressed up like
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Carl Malone, even though they might've said the same things and look the same way.
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Jimmy Kimmel was, was making fun of a single person.
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Whereas in the minstrel shows, you're talking about whole stock stereotypes of people.
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So it's not just one individual, but it's black people generally or slaves generally.
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But what's funny is that the minstrel shows aren't only attacked by,
00:21:09.080
people who support racial equality, for instance, that you weren't even just attacked by,
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by integrationists, for instance, at the time they were attacked by everybody and for opposite
00:21:20.860
So it's, it's funny because they were very, very popular in the 19th century and the very
00:21:25.660
early part of the 20th century, but they still managed to offend everybody.
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So integrationists objected to minstrel shows because they portrayed black people as dumb
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So it almost sort of defending the institution of slavery because it falsely portrayed the
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slaves as really happy and content with the whole thing.
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But the segregationists opposed minstrel shows and objected to them because they portrayed
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the black characters as sympathetic and they humanized the black characters and they exposed
00:21:54.600
white audience, white audiences rather, to some actual black songs.
00:21:58.400
So some of the songs that were sung were just written by white people and they were sort
00:22:05.260
Some of them were actual black songs though, and black spirituals that were then exposing
00:22:09.760
white audiences to some small aspects of black culture.
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I say small aspects because you'd only get that for like one or two acts of the show.
00:22:17.480
The rest of it, there was a sort of vaudevillian format.
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Our society does not object to non-Italians dressing up like Mike the Situation, right?
00:22:27.340
Our society does not object to men dressing up like women.
00:22:33.860
Our society does not really even object to white people darkening their skin for costumes.
00:22:41.120
We know they don't because all those other people have their careers.
00:22:43.840
Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Billy Crystal, all of them.
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Justin Trudeau's Arabian costume is not funny because he was mocking Arab people and saying
00:22:59.780
that he's so much better than Arab people and Arab people are dumb and terrible and racially
00:23:06.980
The reason his Arab costume is funny is because it's so incongruous that it's ridiculous.
00:23:12.680
You have Justin Trudeau who is the whitest Canadianist person that has ever walked the
00:23:19.080
earth and you have him dressing up as an Arabian prince.
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Humor very often comes from incongruity and subverting expectations.
00:23:29.520
Trudeau apparently darkened his skin on another occasion to look like Harry Belafonte.
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This is very funny because Harry Belafonte is a cool, suave Jamaican-American singer who
00:23:39.120
was very popular for a long time and Justin Trudeau is a square, stiff, white as the newly
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For the millennials and Gen Z in the audience who might not recognize Harry Belafonte, Harry
00:23:54.620
Belafonte is the guy who sang Daylight Come and Me Wanna Go Home.
00:24:20.960
Justin Trudeau singing that song is even more ridiculous than me singing that song because
00:24:25.520
Justin Trudeau is whiter and more Canadian than I am.
00:24:28.840
It's funny to compare Justin Trudeau to Harry Belafonte.
00:24:32.560
I don't think he was singing that song to disparage all black people or all Jamaican people.
00:24:38.220
He was wearing it because it's funny, because the comparison is funny.
00:24:40.980
So the question is, how should conservatives react?
00:24:45.820
We'll get to that in one second because I have a different answer than a lot of other
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You know, we don't need to get in their affairs.
00:27:11.540
So the best case scenario here is to get the left to admit in writing and on camera
00:27:16.480
that their attacks on people like Megyn Kelly are completely disingenuous
00:27:24.540
I get a kick out of him and he's kind of funny to read about in the news.
00:27:32.340
If they don't do that, then we need to make Trudeau resign.
00:27:35.740
Some conservatives have trouble holding these two ideas in their head at the same time.
00:27:39.740
The best solution is for the left to admit that they were wrong, that they're vindictive,
00:27:44.700
that they're shallow, that they're small people, and that they're not going to do it again.
00:27:50.120
If they won't do that, we have to make them resign.
00:27:51.900
Because what that would mean is even though Trudeau did not commit some impeachable offense,
00:27:57.160
the left won't respond to reason and mercy and grace.
00:28:00.920
And so then you've got to make them feel the pain and the consequence of their actions.
00:28:04.060
There is news, by the way, from the left that is even more ridiculous than Trudeau wearing blackface.
00:28:18.800
Climate Confessions, even those who care deeply about the planet's future, can slip up now and then.
00:28:23.440
Tell us, where do you fall short in preventing climate change?
00:28:35.620
They don't have the little booths, but they do it all online.
00:28:41.520
I sleep with the air conditioner on year-round and justify it to myself by recycling.
00:28:52.120
My work lunches are the worst, so much disposable everything.
00:28:57.200
The way you do it is you go and you pick a category, then you write down your confession.
00:29:02.920
I said I occasionally read NBC and watch NBC News.
00:29:07.220
That's my confession, and I'm really sorry that I do that.
00:29:09.120
This, obviously, is going to create some sectarian strife among Protestant environmentalists who just want to confess their sins to Mother Earth directly.
00:29:17.980
But, listen, for me, being a little more on the Catholic side of the issue here, I like that NBC is at least creating this secular sacrament.
00:29:25.960
We were just talking yesterday about this, about how climate change is the left's religion.
00:29:34.580
And so, look, we don't need to get into that again.
00:29:39.000
The left ditched real religion, and they had to adopt these false religions because everybody's got to serve somebody.
00:29:44.180
I'm glad to be able to tell you I was completely right, totally called it.
00:29:47.900
I've been saying it for years, and now NBC proves that that is true.
00:29:51.020
I mean, they're even creating these sacraments now, perfectly mimicking the Catholic sacraments, the traditional sacraments of our culture.
00:29:59.560
But there's another aspect here, which we haven't touched on too much, which is environmentalism also fulfills the political usefulness of religion.
00:30:17.160
So conservatives embraced the religious right at least 30, 40 years ago.
00:30:21.020
And that has been very useful to us politically.
00:30:24.160
It gives conservatives the moral high ground, if only because the left has ceded the moral high ground,
00:30:29.580
and they've embraced and flaunted all sorts of inversions and perversions of moral norms.
00:30:36.260
What the left, though, is doing now with the increasingly religious tenor of environmentalism is they're trying to counter that.
00:30:42.740
They realize it's useful politically, and they want it themselves.
00:30:45.360
The clearest example of that is Pete Buttigieg.
00:30:47.780
Pete Buttigieg is, just to compare him talking about climate change to abortion, tells you all you need to know about this.
00:30:55.300
We'll get to it in one second, and then we'll get to the mailbag.
00:30:58.120
But first, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
00:31:00.920
Ten bucks a month, hundred dollars for an annual membership.
00:31:03.000
You get everything, and you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr, and that's the most important thing of all.
00:31:09.480
If people don't make all their climate change confessions, and the world heats up and the ice caps melt, you are going to drown.
00:31:15.580
More likely, the ice caps aren't going to melt, but you're still going to drown because the leftist tears are going to flow everywhere.
00:31:22.860
Pete Buttigieg, my least favorite candidate running in the Democratic field, the biggest jerk out of all of them, has come out.
00:31:40.180
He's been doing this now for weeks and weeks, taking what NBC News is showing us, taking the political usefulness of religion, and most decisively describing this in terms of climate change and environmentalism.
00:31:58.540
Here's Pete Buttigieg using the word sin, using the concept of sin to describe climate change.
00:32:04.180
If you believe that God is watching as poison is being belched into the air of creation, and people are being harmed by it, countries are at risk of vanishing in low-lying areas, we suppose God thinks of that.
00:32:24.360
At least one way of talking about this is that it's a kind of sin.
00:32:28.100
At a certain point, I'm thinking, maybe just in my own faith tradition, but what kind of sin is it to blame God for something you did and something you can do something about while other people are getting hurt?
00:32:40.080
The way I see it, I don't imagine that God's going to let us off the hook for abusing future generations any more than you would be off the hook for harming somebody right next to you.
00:32:52.060
The key word there is imagine, because you notice Pete Buttigieg can't really do a great job quoting scripture or the tradition of the church, because what he is expounding on is heresy.
00:33:04.820
It's a religion that he's saying is Christianity, but it is not Christianity.
00:33:09.080
And so he always just talks about what he imagines, you know.
00:33:11.980
Forget that it's very clear from the book of Genesis, man has dominion over the land and the sea and the beasts and the birds.
00:33:16.940
Now forget about that, in Pete Buttigieg's made up version, fictional, heretical Christianity, we are only here to serve the natural environment.
00:33:26.560
But at least, you know, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.
00:33:29.840
He's at least pretending that he's talking about Christianity.
00:33:34.340
Now listen to the religious terms in which Pete Buttigieg discusses abortion.
00:33:38.720
Now, right now, they hold everybody in line with this one kind of piece of doctrine about abortion, right, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally.
00:33:51.240
Then again, you know, there's a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath.
00:33:57.460
And so even that is something that we can interpret differently and take up me too.
00:34:04.800
But I think no matter where you think about the kind of cosmic question of how life begins, most Americans can get on the board with the idea of, all right, I might draw the line here, you might draw the line there.
00:34:15.780
But the most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision.
00:34:22.860
I mean, all just absolutely demonic and hellish heretical nonsense to defend the slaughter of babies.
00:34:31.280
Father Frank Pavone, the head of Priests for Life, has a wonderful article describing all of the scriptural references where we can see that God knows us from the very beginning when he formed us in our mother's wombs.
00:34:45.040
And what Pete Buttigieg is talking about is really disgusting stuff.
00:34:48.760
But there's a story that just came out of South Bend, an abortion clinic that Buttigieg has supported in the past in South Bend.
00:34:55.240
An abortionist from there was found to have 2,200, more than 2,200 baby body parts found in his home.
00:35:04.460
Like everyone, I find that news out of Illinois extremely disturbing.
00:35:08.180
And I think it's important that that be fully investigated.
00:35:12.620
I also hope that it doesn't get caught up in politics at a time when women need access to health care.
00:35:17.620
But there's no question that what happened is disturbing.
00:35:22.140
He doesn't want it to get caught up in politics.
00:35:24.300
This is Pete Buttigieg, who is specifically making this a political issue, is running in part on this issue.
00:35:30.380
Abortion, of course, is a political issue now, and it has been for at least 50 years.
00:35:33.800
This guy is so in support of abortion, he's trying to twist the Bible for his sick crusade to kill babies.
00:35:49.380
The story that the abortionist has 2,200 baby body parts in his home.
00:35:55.960
What Pete Buttigieg is saying is it's not disturbing to murder little babies and chop them up.
00:36:06.020
When somebody is murdered, the disturbing thing about that is not how the family handles the funeral.
00:36:29.000
It is Christian and biblical to chop up little babies, rip them into different parts, pull them limb from limb, discard them like they're nothing but meat.
00:36:39.960
That's good and wonderful and virtuous and true and biblical.
00:36:49.260
In other words, that's the bizarre moral code, the bizarre logical consequence of the immoral code of these false leftist religions, including environmentalism, which would have us.
00:37:01.660
All you hear about from environmentalism is have fewer babies, live less, thrive less, be less productive.
00:37:12.480
Sacrifice your babies on the altar of the climate.
00:37:16.680
We've got a lot more to get to, but we've got to get to the mailbag, so let's just fly right through it today, and we'll get to some more stories next week.
00:37:23.000
From Dave, dear St. Michael of the Blessed Covfefe, do you have any suggestions about how to improve on speaking more eloquently in day-to-day life?
00:37:32.380
Make a point of not saying, uh, or um, or like, and to a lesser degree, but also importantly, you know.
00:37:51.200
I use those words on occasion, but some people use those words a lot, and you'll notice that you use it a lot more than you think you do.
00:38:00.480
One of the advantages is that you don't sound like a valley girl from the 80s.
00:38:04.060
The other advantage is it will cause you to stop.
00:38:07.440
You will stop speaking for a second, and that will allow you to think, which means that the things that you are saying are going to be more eloquent and better thought out.
00:38:20.060
One way that millennials and Gen Z, and Gen Z less so, I've noticed millennials do this, though, is they'll speak in vocal fry.
00:38:26.620
But vocal fry is like when you talk like this, you know, so there's no real air supporting it, but it's just kind of in the back of the throat, and it sounds really unpleasant and ugly.
00:38:41.140
It will make you feel more confident about your ideas, and it will be more persuasive.
00:38:46.500
Also, read poetry, read good language, read good books, and memorize poetry.
00:38:52.560
Poetry is easy because you can memorize a poem in an hour or two.
00:39:00.820
We have gotten much worse about our memories because we have electronics in front of us all the time, so we don't recall anything.
00:39:08.120
But so much of speaking publicly is about recalling quotes and thoughts and ideas and who said it and citations.
00:39:14.840
So just work on building up your memory, and when you do memorize things, do it with your mouth.
00:39:21.260
Big, exaggerated movements from your mouth and from your vocal cords.
00:39:25.300
This will make it much easier to memorize things, and it will make you a better speaker.
00:39:34.600
With Democrats racing to see who can have the most radical policy by 2020, what hope do you have for true bipartisanship or a renewal of agreement on common values between Republicans and Democrats when some of the most fundamental disagreements we have at this point seem irreconcilable?
00:40:01.880
So bipartisanship is a contradiction in itself, and I don't even think we necessarily want that.
00:40:08.080
I don't want a big liberal consensus in this country.
00:40:10.400
I like that I get to state my point of view, and other people get to state their incorrect points of view, and then I can persuade people to agree with what I think, to put it bluntly.
00:40:28.360
Twitter is a little bit of the problem, though.
00:40:29.820
I was on a Fox News show when I was in New York a couple days ago, and it was Martha McCallum's show, and I was on with Juan Williams.
00:40:36.020
Juan and I disagree on a whole number of things.
00:40:38.720
I'm sure we could easily go back and snipe at each other on Twitter all day long.
00:40:42.200
But when you're in the room looking at somebody face-to-face, you take them more seriously.
00:40:47.960
I think that we could do with a whole lot more respect and reverence in this country, but that's going to come from a place of humility and personal interaction.
00:40:56.820
Unfortunately, we're losing humility because we now have a whole month that celebrates pride, which is the opposite of humility, and we have much less personal interaction because more and more and more, we're just behind our screens, and we're all keyboard warriors with the courage of people who never have to face consequences for what they say.
00:41:11.840
So, in short, I don't think that the future of good civil discourse is looking very bright.
00:41:18.840
And the only way that we can try to create that culture now with all of the technological and social challenges is to embody it and have a little reverence and have a little humility ourselves.
00:41:28.340
Dear Michael, if the 2020 candidates have their way and make college free, do you think we will see a dramatic drop-off in the quality of education?
00:41:37.780
As the federal government has come in and subsidized loans and underwritten college loans, the quality of the education has declined dramatically.
00:41:45.720
As more and more people have gone to college, the quality of the education has declined dramatically.
00:41:49.740
In the 1940s, about 5% of Americans had a bachelor degree.
00:41:53.260
Today, 60% of high school graduates are going to go to college.
00:41:59.120
We have too many people going to college, and we have too much of a one-size-fits-all solution.
00:42:04.000
Some people shouldn't go to get a liberal education.
00:42:06.740
Some people should go and get a trade education.
00:42:08.760
And by trade education, by the way, I mean study business or study accounting or study pre-law or study...
00:42:15.180
Because even law school is really a trade education, though usually you need a liberal education before that.
00:42:20.020
Or you study some aspect of the medical field or, you know, learn how to buff hardwood floors or become an electrician or become a plumber.
00:42:30.760
It involves liberal education, and it involves something else.
00:42:34.400
Education should be tailored to the individuals, and we're losing that.
00:42:39.340
And I think that's just a function of a democratic society which wants to level down and make everybody exactly equal.
00:42:44.960
So that's a process that's already been happening.
00:42:46.440
And once you make college into just 13th grade, you're going to see the colleges...
00:42:50.660
You're going to see happening at the colleges what was already happening in public school education from kindergarten through 12.
00:42:57.180
And that's part of a long process that's been going on.
00:43:00.060
It'll probably continue to happen whether or not Liz Warren gets her free college for everybody plan.
00:43:09.820
I listen to your show, and I appreciate your perspective into all aspects of life.
00:43:13.580
My boyfriend and I have been together for almost four years.
00:43:18.760
Recently, the question of, are we ready to get married, came up again.
00:43:24.020
The, I'm not sure we're ready answer that I eventually received from him is obviously not what I wanted to hear.
00:43:28.840
However, this day and age seems to complicate feelings and futures, and now so many people aren't sure of anything.
00:43:34.900
What sort of insight do you have on this, given that you and your wife had a longer winding courtship,
00:43:39.080
and that dating and marrying for millennials is sort of a train wreck?
00:43:44.320
This is a heartbreaking question to have floating around in my mind, but how do I wait?
00:43:48.140
But do I wait and work on the relationship, or call it quits?
00:43:57.180
I dated sweet little Elisa for so long, in part because we dated when we were little kids.
00:44:00.880
We dated when, you know, we met when we were 9 or 10,
00:44:06.040
And we split for college and then got back together and, in this very millennial way,
00:44:11.280
waited a long time and moved all around the country and those sort of things.
00:44:16.900
And I sort of wish she had told me what I just told you.
00:44:21.340
So my grandmother and grandfather dated for a while, and eventually she gave him that ultimatum as well.
00:44:28.880
That's what you should tell him to do, especially because, I mean, you're younger than he is, it seems.
00:44:43.020
I would make him make a decision and make him act like a man.
00:44:51.760
You can move on with your life if he doesn't want to do it.
00:44:58.440
I'd love to know your opinions on the 26th president of the U.S. of A., Teddy Roosevelt.
00:45:01.800
He was a fascinating and inspirational man in his personal life, but I've heard conflicting views on his politics as president and whether they help the U.S. in the long run or not.
00:45:13.000
Some libertarians don't like him because he liked national parks too much and called himself progressive, even though then that term had certainly a different connotation than it does now.
00:45:27.920
The guy got shot one time, finished giving a speech, and then only then went to a hospital.
00:45:32.900
You know, the guy gets attacked and he attacks the people right back.
00:45:35.760
He goes over to Africa and bags hundreds of large game.
00:45:41.560
John Milius, one of the great filmmakers who's still living today, has a good movie on Teddy Roosevelt, The Wind and the Lion.
00:45:48.820
There's a great speech by the character playing Teddy Roosevelt of how the grizzly bear is America.
00:45:57.500
Whether or not his policies in the early 20th century really matter or don't really matter, whatever.
00:46:02.820
Look, politics is contextual and politics is circumstantial and it changes over time.
00:46:11.280
But as an American character, I think he's just absolutely terrific.
00:46:17.160
What are your favorite last words, either historical or fictional?
00:46:19.680
It is said that Pope Benedict XV, his last words on his deathbed were,
00:46:24.860
la commedia è finita, which is quoting an opera, Pagliacci or something, which is the comedy is finished.
00:46:34.240
And I love these last words because they're funny.
00:46:39.660
The idea that obviously the comedy of his life is coming to an end, but also that it's a comedy.
00:46:45.760
He's not saying it's a comedy like it's an absurd joke, a big cosmic joke.
00:47:00.200
And if I know that my end is coming, I hope I repeat them when my time comes up.
00:47:14.700
If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.
00:47:24.880
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe.
00:47:30.200
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
00:47:35.300
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
00:47:42.380
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkiewicz and directed by Mike Joyner.
00:48:06.960
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
00:48:11.200
Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:48:16.520
Should we care about Justin Trudeau wearing blackface?
00:48:22.600
We'll talk about that and also murder most Democrat.
00:48:25.800
A shocking story out of California on The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:48:34.940
We'll see you next time on The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:48:37.500
Shall we go find you next time on The Andrew Klavan Show?
00:48:42.520
conversations were found on The Andrew Klavan Show
00:48:43.920
and I'll see us next time on The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:48:48.980
We'll see you next time on The Andrew Klavan Show.