The Michael Knowles Show - October 19, 2021


Ep. 867 - The Great Hooters Debate


Episode Stats

Length

48 minutes

Words per Minute

178.92949

Word Count

8,638

Sentence Count

649

Misogynist Sentences

18

Hate Speech Sentences

29


Summary

A new report casts doubt on the effectiveness of the $89 million worth of state lotteries that were supposed to increase vaccination rates. Plus, the mayor of New York holds up a Shake Shack cheeseburger and says, "Get a vaccine and you can get a free cheeseburger."


Transcript

00:00:00.000 States spent at least $89 million on vaccine lotteries trying to induce lots of Americans
00:00:08.980 to get an experimental drug to go get the COVID vaccine. And they would have the opportunity to
00:00:15.740 win cash as a result of that. Now, although initial reports suggested that the vaccine
00:00:20.880 lotteries were successful, there's a new report out of the Journal of the American Medical
00:00:25.320 Association that shows that absolutely none of the state lotteries increased vaccination rates in
00:00:32.960 any way. They were just a complete waste of a lot of money. It turns out, actually, that people are
00:00:41.680 not just economic animals that are to be lured and prodded with lucre and slop. It turns out that
00:00:48.940 people actually can think for themselves and make their own medical decisions. Who would have thunk
00:00:53.260 it? I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. My favorite
00:01:03.940 comment yesterday is from Stephen, who says that if inflation is the mark of a good economy,
00:01:10.980 then Zimbabwe must be the pinnacle of civilization. That's absolutely right. But no, it's good. It
00:01:17.780 works. When your dollar doesn't go anywhere and gas costs $75 a gallon, that's the sign that
00:01:23.100 there is a lot of demand, according to the White House. You know, the rising inflation, the economic
00:01:29.300 turmoil, the political craziness is enough to keep you up at night, but not if you sleep on my pillow.
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00:02:45.860 The deals won't last forever, so head on over there now. Do you remember, I guess it was
00:02:50.180 coming up on a year ago now, that the vaccine lotteries started to be floated. And it wasn't
00:02:56.120 just the vaccine lotteries. There was something even more offensive than telling people, you know,
00:03:02.020 take this experimental drug and maybe you'll win a million dollars. Oh, gimme, gimme, right?
00:03:06.780 The thing that was even more offensive, I remember the image clearly, I can't get it out of my mind,
00:03:12.000 was Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, holding up a Shake Shack cheeseburger and just stuffing it
00:03:20.480 in his face. This disgusting thing. He says, mm, vaccination. Get a vaccine and you can get a free
00:03:28.380 cheeseburger, pigs. He didn't call us pigs, but he was insinuating that we were pigs. Um, yum,
00:03:32.800 yum. Oh, eat it. Eat your slop bucket, pig. Look at the French fries too. Um, um, um. And it was so
00:03:38.540 gross. Physically, it was gross, but also psychologically, this idea that people were
00:03:46.280 making their own prudential decision about their risk from the coronavirus, which for most people
00:03:50.340 wasn't particularly high and the long-term data on the vaccine, which did not exist because it was a
00:03:56.280 brand new vaccine. And oh, but a cheeseburger. Oh, shoot me up, captain. Thank you. Thank you so much.
00:04:01.520 No, that isn't how it works. And I'm not surprised that the states wasted $89 million
00:04:08.060 you know, when, when a state only wastes $89 million, that's a good day actually compared to
00:04:13.580 the other sort of money that they just incinerate. But I am really pleased that they didn't work
00:04:18.160 because we're not just animals. We're not, we're human beings. We have a rational will. We actually
00:04:24.680 can think about these things and say, no, no, I know my, I know my odds of dying from COVID. I know
00:04:30.480 my odds of certain risks from the vaccines and I know my odds of winning the lottery. Okay. And,
00:04:35.960 none of them actually are particularly high. But this brings us to Colin Powell. Colin Powell died
00:04:44.460 yesterday. He had a very distinguished career. He's been a prominent American political figure
00:04:49.820 since the 80s, since the Reagan administration. He was a Republican. He served in the George W. Bush
00:04:56.040 administration. He was first black secretary of state. He kind of, his career kind of fell apart
00:05:03.180 when he sold the Iraq war to the United Nations and later came very much to regret that decision.
00:05:08.520 And toward the latter part of his career, he was much more of a Democrat and he would vote for
00:05:13.360 Democrats and endorse Democrats. And every time he would do that, the media would hold him out and
00:05:18.460 say, lifelong Republican Colin Powell endorses a Democrat, just like he did last time and the time
00:05:23.960 before that and the time before that. So it, I know that a lot of Republicans don't have,
00:05:28.300 you know, a great deal of political admiration for Colin Powell, even if they have a great deal of
00:05:33.820 sort of professional admiration. We're obviously grateful for his service to the country.
00:05:39.100 My point in discussing Colin Powell is not to assess his career. You know, he dedicated his career to
00:05:44.020 the public service of the United States. We salute him. You know, we wish his family well and can keep
00:05:49.120 them in our thoughts and prayers. The reason I bring it up is to focus on how he died. Colin Powell died
00:05:55.600 of complications of the coronavirus and Colin Powell was very, very vaccinated. So he, he took the
00:06:04.460 vaccine. He was fully vaccinated, but he was 84 years old and he contracted the coronavirus and he,
00:06:10.460 he died of it anyway. And this happens to people. He was in a risk group and that's very sad. And I just
00:06:19.740 want to compare the coverage of Colin Powell's death with the coverage of Herman Cain's death.
00:06:25.500 Do you remember Herman Cain? Herman Cain was CEO of Godfather Pizza. He ran for president in 2012. He
00:06:32.080 was a sort of colorful figure, had the 999 plan, if some of you recall that. And he did not get the
00:06:39.120 vaccine and he didn't, I think he may have died even before the vaccine really came out. But he
00:06:44.900 didn't worry that much about the coronavirus and he didn't wear 17 masks and he didn't lock himself
00:06:49.140 in a bubble for a year and a half. And he went to Trump rallies and he got the virus and he died.
00:06:53.740 And the media made fun of him and they said, ha ha ha. Herman Cain, that dumb idiot, that rube,
00:06:58.160 serves you right. This, this is what you get when you don't live in fear and do everything Fauci says.
00:07:03.520 You, you play stupid games, win stupid prizes. You got the coronavirus as you well deserve. That was
00:07:09.060 what they all but said. That was the tone of the reporting. And Colin Powell now followed all the
00:07:16.900 rules and took the vaccines and he, he died as well. And the reality is here.
00:07:24.740 It's not that, that you die if you don't get the vaccine or you die if you do get the vaccine or
00:07:30.300 it's directly attributable to this, this, this mask or this vaccine. The reality is that old people get
00:07:35.380 sick and die. Okay. And, and sometimes young people get sick and die too, though it's rarer. And that's
00:07:41.260 a reality that we used to understand. We used to be aware of our own mortality. And we used to know
00:07:47.440 that death comes for us all and no one, no man or demigod or great exalted figure, even the likes of
00:07:54.580 Dr. Fauci is going to stop that. And we used to not live in such a neurotic fear of sickness and death.
00:08:01.420 And I suspect with the decline of religion and the rise of secularism and the rise of the cult of
00:08:08.480 health and, and its associated pathologies, that now we can't really accept that. So we're always
00:08:14.560 looking for some kind of explanation and we're always looking to spike the football. Well, he didn't
00:08:19.040 follow the rules, so he deserved to die. No, we all die. Frankly, we all deserve to die because of
00:08:23.380 original sin. And there are certain things we can do to reduce those risks, but death is going to come
00:08:28.720 for us all. And I think that ought to give us a healthier view of life when we come to accept that
00:08:34.720 sort of thing. But a lot of people won't do that, which is why they have a very unhealthy view of
00:08:39.200 life. And it's why we're giving up our political rights and our, and our way of life here in the
00:08:43.100 United States. But it's a fool's errand because it can come for us all and it will come for us all.
00:08:48.740 What is harming us is, is not mortality so much as the obsession over health. What is harming us
00:08:57.380 is the political power grab that is represented by the lockdowns and by the vaccines. You see this
00:09:05.280 right now at ESPN. Alison Williams, who is, or rather was an ESPN reporter, is leaving ESPN
00:09:12.940 after being denied a waiver for the COVID vaccine. Take a listen to her explanation.
00:09:19.780 I have been denied my request for accommodation by ESPN and the Walt Disney Company and effective
00:09:27.040 next week, I will be separated from the company. A lot of people have brought up the moral obligation
00:09:32.560 receiving the vaccine is to being a good citizen. And I weighed that and I thought about the
00:09:39.980 implications. We all want to be good neighbors. We all want to end this pandemic, but ultimately an
00:09:44.080 injection that does not stop transmission and spread for me did not weigh in morally, but I also
00:09:50.420 want people to know who support these mandates that I fight for you. Because if this is the direction
00:09:59.640 we take our country, there will come a time when the government or corporations mandate you to get
00:10:06.720 something that does not align with your values. Power given is seldom returned. And when that day
00:10:14.340 comes, I want you to at least know that we fought and we tried. Power given is seldom returned. That's
00:10:23.200 a very powerful statement from this woman who is actually sacrificing something for her beliefs.
00:10:30.540 Beyond her beliefs about the vaccine, for her beliefs about politics and the legitimate limits
00:10:36.680 of power. Okay, she's losing money. She's losing her career. Power given is seldom returned.
00:10:46.560 We've talked about on this show, there are, I think, compelling arguments to get the vaccine for some
00:10:52.060 people. And I think there are compelling arguments not to get the vaccine. If you have moral objections
00:10:57.880 to the fact that they were developed and in some cases produced with fetal stem cells. If you look at
00:11:03.280 the possibility of blood clotting or of nerve damage or of myocarditis or pericarditis, if you have
00:11:10.360 questions about the long-term effects, obviously there are no long-term data on the vaccine because
00:11:14.420 the vaccine was just invented. If you think that your risk of COVID is very low, then you might say,
00:11:20.960 well, there's no reason to get a vaccine at all. No particularly compelling reason. Okay. And that's all
00:11:26.340 academic until it comes down to the question of, are you going to keep your job or not? And people
00:11:32.740 can make prudential decisions about that. But she's taking a stand here. And I think, as she says,
00:11:38.340 the people who admire her here are not just the ones who are a little skeptical of the vaccine or
00:11:41.660 skeptical of Fauci. The people who should be admiring her here are the people who cherish our former
00:11:48.380 American way of life and who want to hold the government to account and keep the limits on power
00:11:54.960 that we had in this country until very, very recently. You know, it's hard to see these things
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00:13:27.680 later. I want to turn to a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Hooters. You know Hooters? It's
00:13:34.800 the chicken place where you get wings and beer and the women have kind of short shorts on and tight
00:13:39.440 little t-shirts. And it's, it's not the most politically correct place and it's not the most
00:13:44.720 feminist place, but it is a place where people often go on their bachelor parties. So Hooters, and the
00:13:50.160 reason they go is because they have great chicken. It's like when people say, I read Playboy for the,
00:13:54.140 for the articles. You go to Hooters for the chicken wings. They are actually excellent chicken wings. So Hooters
00:13:59.580 has, Hooters has a new uniform and the uniforms were already a little risque. And starting this
00:14:08.380 month, all Hooters girls are required to wear these new shorts, which are even less modest than the old
00:14:16.080 shorts. And they kind of display a little bit more in the way of the tights and the curves and the things
00:14:21.980 that a lot of people go to Hooters to, to see. So they say the old shorts should not be worn.
00:14:28.340 And some women are upset about this. I doubt that really any of the Hooters staff members are upset
00:14:35.580 about this, right? They're working at Hooters. They know what they're signing up for. Okay. This
00:14:39.660 is not, you know, some Victorian bed and breakfast or something. This is a place where you are there
00:14:44.800 to cater to guys who want to see women wearing skimpy little outfits. But some people are offended
00:14:51.440 on behalf of the people who are at Hooters and they're saying this is awful and terrible and
00:14:55.620 patriarchal and sexist and whatever. I find myself a little bit torn here because I don't,
00:15:03.820 I don't think that we ought to encourage more licentiousness in the culture. I think we've
00:15:07.960 got plenty of that. And I'm not of the opinion of the libertines, you know, or sometimes the
00:15:13.380 libertarians who trend a little libertine to say, yeah, woohoo, do whatever you want, you know,
00:15:18.020 fulfill any base desires that you have. Just don't make me pay for it or something like that.
00:15:21.700 I think it's good to orient our public policy toward virtue and away from vice. But I think
00:15:27.900 there's a pretty conservative argument for Hooters, okay? And it's a distinction that increasingly in
00:15:34.880 our culture, the left especially, but even the right kind of fails to understand. And that is
00:15:39.700 the difference between something that is suggestive and something that is obscene. On the grand scope of
00:15:46.960 our culture, Hooters is actually pretty wholesome, okay? We live in a culture that is saturated in
00:15:53.080 porn. So obviously there's hardcore porn all over the internet. We live in a culture where you can
00:15:57.880 barely turn on a TV show without seeing all sorts of crazy sex stuff and all crazy sorts of violence
00:16:03.940 and really bizarre sorts of things. You can barely look at a billboard. I was in New York. I was on the
00:16:10.780 subway in New York. They've got advertisements all over the subway car. And it was for one of the dating
00:16:15.720 apps. And it's all sorts of people licking each other and in all sorts of crazy positions. And
00:16:21.340 it's a guy and a girl and two dudes and two chicks and like a guy and a girl and a goat. And I don't
00:16:25.400 know, it's all weird stuff, okay? And you think compared to that, Hooters is fine, you know? It's
00:16:32.280 not, Hooters is actually in a way kind of modest. The women are totally clothed, all right? And they're
00:16:37.620 not, it's not a brothel. It's not a strip club. It's a chicken restaurant. It reminds me of the
00:16:43.560 perennial debate, the non-traversy over baby, it's cold outside. You know, it's a baby,
00:16:49.320 it's cold outside. Well, I really can't stay. Baby, it's cold outside. And the libs listen to
00:16:55.080 the lyrics, which are of a guy inviting this woman in to have a cup of cocoa or to have maybe
00:17:01.160 something a little stronger than that. And the woman says, no, no, I really can't. No,
00:17:04.220 I really shouldn't. He says, no, baby, come on, come on. It's cold out there. You don't want to go
00:17:07.320 back out there. No, I should go home. No, really? Come on, come on in, right? And the libs say,
00:17:11.780 well, this is a song about rape. It's rapey. He's trying to rape her because the libs don't
00:17:18.800 understand the difference between rape and coercion and seduction, right? The whole point
00:17:28.560 of baby, it's cold outside is that the woman actually does want to stay. It's not that she's
00:17:33.580 fleeing the man. It's like, no, get me out of here. Call the cops, right? She is attracted to the man.
00:17:38.000 The man is attracted to her. And in the traditional way of doing things until about
00:17:42.260 five minutes ago, the man would pursue the woman. And the woman would be modest and resist in a way
00:17:48.960 and then acquiesce if she liked the guy or not acquiesce if she didn't like the guy.
00:17:53.440 And now we pretend that men and women are exactly the same and men need to take six months of paternity
00:17:57.720 leave or whatever to chest feed or something. I don't know. There's a lot of jargon now.
00:18:01.220 But men and women actually are different. And maybe it's cold outside, even though it's a song
00:18:06.080 about a guy wanting to sleep with a girl and a girl wanting to sleep with the guy.
00:18:10.160 In a way, it's sort of wholesome as well, okay? There's something
00:18:13.900 perfectly normal about recognizing that men are attracted to women, women are attracted to men,
00:18:20.380 and we need to constrain those desires in a certain way and limit them and not just have everybody
00:18:25.240 running around naked, putting all sorts of things in all sorts of places, but actually need to restrain
00:18:29.360 them, even if it is just with a skimpy Hooters outfit. Speaking of triggering things, if you turn
00:18:35.700 to another den of licentiousness and obscenity, Yale University, the administrators of Yale Law School
00:18:43.220 are clamping down on free speech and students' rights. They are demanding that a student apologize
00:18:50.860 for sending a triggering email. The student is a Native American student. So on the hierarchy of
00:19:01.120 victimhood, Native Americans are pretty much at the very tippy top, okay? If this student were,
00:19:09.260 I don't know, also a lesbian or also, I don't know, you could add some little, you know, accents on this
00:19:17.100 victimhood. But to be a Native American, basically, you can claim any sort of victimhood you want and
00:19:21.360 have deference at liberal places like Yale. But this student made a big error. This student is
00:19:27.180 conservative. So that gets rid of all of his victimhood. This student sent an email about
00:19:35.080 the Federalist Society. He said, we will soon be christening our very own world-renowned
00:19:41.440 NALSA Trap House, NALSA meaning the Native American Law Students Association, by throwing
00:19:48.160 a Constitution Day bash in collaboration with the Federalist Society, which is a conservative law
00:19:52.440 society. And the mixer would have American-themed snacks like Popeye's chicken, which is, there's a
00:19:57.780 very famous Popeye's chicken on Yale University's campus. It's very delicious. There are sometimes
00:20:02.560 shootings there, but it's great chicken, all right? There's kind of a fried chicken theme going
00:20:06.020 through today's show. And in addition to fried chicken, apple pie and other sorts of American
00:20:10.880 snacks for the Constitution Day. So less than a day after the email was sent, the student was called
00:20:16.760 into a meeting with the associate dean and the school's diversity director and was told to apologize,
00:20:24.520 to recant, not because he's inviting people over to the Native American house, not because he's throwing
00:20:31.060 a party, but because he's doing that with those evil, rotten conservatives in the Federalist Society.
00:20:36.960 So this student, I'm pleased to say, recorded the meeting. It's a very long recording. You should go
00:20:41.920 check out the whole thing because it's spooky and Orwellian. Take a listen to just a little bit.
00:20:45.920 I should be quite frank that like as a man of color, you know, there probably isn't as much of a scrutiny
00:20:52.860 of you as there might be a sort of a white person in the same position. And I just want to
00:20:58.200 acknowledge that there's a complexity to that too. I think the email association with FedZOC was very
00:21:06.700 triggering for students that already feel like FedZOC. It belongs to political affiliations that are
00:21:16.360 oppressive to certain communities through policies, right? That, of course, obviously includes
00:21:23.540 the LGBTQIA community and black communities and immigrant communities. Several people said they
00:21:29.880 didn't even know if you were, but they were just concerned about the rhetoric. So I think,
00:21:34.300 I think what you've seen saying makes sense of like, you know, look, you guys don't know me from a
00:21:39.160 hole in the wall, but I didn't intend to offend anybody when I wrote this. And now, you know,
00:21:43.140 I understand. Yeah. This isn't a conversation about whether you did anything wrong. It's about
00:21:48.780 language that was used, that was triggering. And you're just trying to like, take responsibility
00:21:56.320 for managing through some of the tension related to that. I just got to chill up my spine listening
00:22:03.820 to these ghouls, these two, the diversity director and the dean of this school saying, you know, look,
00:22:10.480 thankfully, oh, thankfully, you're not a white guy. If you were a white guy, you'd have a lot more
00:22:14.440 scrutiny. You'd, you'd be out. I think that's the insinuation. Thankfully, you're a person of color.
00:22:20.160 So you get a free pass, but oh, the Federalist Society, you can't, oh, that's triggering. Some
00:22:26.000 students didn't even know what that was, but they didn't like it. They knew they didn't like it. And
00:22:29.120 by the way, the Federalist Society is about as milquetoast as it gets. Okay. I guess it's
00:22:34.680 conservative, but barely, you know, but no, that's too much for Yale Law School. And so look,
00:22:39.140 it's not about you doing anything wrong. It's just that things were said. Okay. And responsibility
00:22:45.280 should be taken because of the students. And you got to listen. I mean, it goes on and on and on
00:22:49.980 where this dean and this diversity director, these ghouls say, you know, might not be great in your
00:22:56.260 career if this, maybe you're going to want to apologize. Apologize. Hey, we'll help you draft
00:23:01.560 the letter, but hey, let's do it. Let's just draft a letter, a little apology. Yeah, let's just,
00:23:05.500 okay. And you'll sign it and you'll sign it and you'll, at your Stalin show trial,
00:23:10.640 you will flagellate yourself and beg for forgiveness and maybe we'll give it to you,
00:23:15.340 but probably we won't. Okay. There is no free speech protection at Yale. They talk a good game
00:23:21.960 on it and they don't cover it up. And this has been happening for over a decade now. And it really
00:23:26.200 accelerated when that crazy girl on campus screamed at her professor and said, this is not an intellectual
00:23:30.680 space. This is supposed to be a place of comfort and home for me. And she cried and whined and yelled
00:23:35.020 and said all sorts of vulgar things. And it's only gotten worse and worse since that time. And it's
00:23:38.980 a big problem because Yale used to be one of the most, if not the most prestigious university
00:23:43.540 in America. And it has gone the way of the culture. That is to say, to take away people's rights,
00:23:48.620 to create a new social hierarchy, an explicitly racial and ideological hierarchy, whereby if you are
00:23:56.980 in any way a conservative, if you in any way support the traditional American society, the
00:24:03.060 constitution and apple pie, you will be targeted. You will be harassed. Your career could be over
00:24:10.520 even before it begins. I will be back in studio tomorrow. It's great. We've just wrapped up the
00:24:16.100 Verdict live tour. If you didn't catch that, you can catch it all on the YAF YouTube channel or the
00:24:22.540 Verdict YouTube channel. So be sure to go check that out. And then I'll be back in Nashville
00:24:26.680 tomorrow. Also, subscribe to The Morning Wire. It's a great podcast. You can get it on Apple,
00:24:30.460 Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you listen to your podcasts. Leave a five-star review if you like
00:24:34.140 what you hear. We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:24:35.920 Speaking of censorship, you are very likely familiar with Barry Weiss. Barry Weiss is not
00:24:55.740 a conservative. She used to work at the New York Times. Now she just has her own substack and her
00:24:59.320 own podcast. And it's more credible than anything you're seeing in the New York Times. But she's not
00:25:04.920 a conservative. Sometimes conservatives make this mistake where whenever anyone questions the
00:25:09.600 dominant liberal regime in any way, we just take them in and we say, you're one of us. You're one
00:25:14.240 of us. But she is not. She's a liberal who does not go along with the dominant regime. So she was just
00:25:25.460 on CNN. She's liberal enough that she still gets invited on CNN. And she called out that liberal ruling
00:25:32.700 class for the corruption and the coercion that it involves. And she did this specifically with
00:25:40.860 Brian Stelter on the ironically named show, Reliable Sources. Take a listen.
00:25:45.360 You write, there are tens of millions of Americans who aren't on the hard left or the hard right
00:25:49.540 who feel the world has gone mad. So in what ways has the world gone mad?
00:25:54.220 Well, you know, when you have the chief reporter on the beat of COVID for the New York Times talking
00:26:01.740 about how questioning or pursuing the question of the lab leak is racist, the world has gone
00:26:06.860 mad. When you're not able to say out loud and in public that there are differences between
00:26:11.740 men and women, the world has gone mad.
00:26:14.380 You say we're not allowed, we're not able. Who's the people stopping the conversation? Who
00:26:19.220 are they? People that work at networks, frankly, like the one I'm speaking on right now who try
00:26:27.620 and claim that, you know, it was, it was racist to investigate the lab leak theory. It was,
00:26:33.860 I mean, let's just take an example. But I'm just saying that when you say allowed,
00:26:36.980 I just think it's a provocative thing you say. You say, you say, we're not allowed to talk about
00:26:40.200 these things, but they're all over the internet. I can Google them. I can find them everywhere.
00:26:44.460 I've heard about every story you mentioned. So I'm just suggesting, of course, people are allowed
00:26:48.380 to cover whatever they want to cover. Who's shutting down the conversation? Who's, who's not
00:26:53.300 letting people speak? Hold on. Shut up, Barry. Who's not letting, keep your mouth shut. I'm not
00:26:56.880 done talking. You're, who's doing that. You're not, no one's doing that. Okay. I'll give you the
00:27:00.740 last word. Actually, no, I won't shut up. Who's, who's shutting down the, uh, you, you are, Brian.
00:27:06.140 You are literally shutting down the conversation right now. And I, I'm not sure that he really
00:27:12.940 believes what he's saying. What he is saying is that the establishment media do not in any way
00:27:19.720 suppress questions about Dr. Fauci, questions about the COVID origins and the associated public
00:27:28.880 health tyranny, that they do not in any way suppress, I don't know, the distinction between
00:27:33.200 men and women. And that's just preposterous. I could be kicked off of social media for saying that men are
00:27:38.640 not women. And there are specific rules around it, which we try to get around without compromising
00:27:44.200 the truth and the reality of what we're reporting. But we've been dinged on it before on this show
00:27:48.980 at the daily wire at elsewhere. And then what is his argument? He says, look, yeah, maybe we don't
00:27:55.200 cover any of these things on CNN. Maybe we, maybe the New York times doesn't cover these things,
00:27:59.080 but you can Google it. First of all, Google will suppress the search results. But second of all is
00:28:03.640 that that's really your answer. Virtually all the newspapers, virtually all the TV stations,
00:28:08.040 virtually all of the main media outlets, also run by big tech, which are going to suppress certain
00:28:14.200 stories like the Hunter Biden laptop story or anything regarding COVID that doesn't go along
00:28:18.660 with Dr. Fauci. So yeah, all of the power structures are going to suppress those sorts of views. But you
00:28:24.520 know, if you poke around the deep recesses of the internet, maybe you'll find something. So it's the
00:28:28.340 same. It's not being said, what are you talking about, dude? It's really frustrating. Barry Weiss is
00:28:33.520 totally right here. And Brian Stelter is demonstrating how wrong he is. But I think
00:28:39.640 we need to go a little further here, right? Barry Weiss is a good liberal. I like her. I'm glad there
00:28:46.400 are good liberals. I'm glad she's doing what she's doing. She's doing real work. We need to go further
00:28:50.980 though. Okay. A lot of times this trap conservatives fall into is we pretend that good liberalism is the
00:28:58.100 goal. That, you know, open, relatively open-minded liberals like Barry Weiss, those, that's it. That's
00:29:04.180 the gold standard. And that's what we need to aim at. And the conservatives whine about authoritarianism
00:29:09.860 or they whine about illiberalism or they do this both sides kind of thing. And that's just not going
00:29:16.120 to cut it. Okay. And this is why we lose because those words don't really mean very much. Okay.
00:29:23.920 authoritarianism or illiberalism. Go read John Locke. Okay. John Locke, the father of liberalism,
00:29:30.560 reads as much more authoritarian or illiberal or whatever slogan we want to use than anybody who
00:29:38.420 is being accused of those things today. The mealy-mouthed both sides, let's just kind of
00:29:47.740 go back to five minutes ago. Let's just preserve and conserve the culture of 2013. That's not going
00:29:54.980 to work. We need to actually have a view of what is true and what is good and what is beautiful. And
00:30:00.980 we need to be willing to stand by that. I mean, this is the point of my book, Speechless, Controlling
00:30:05.300 Words, Controlling Minds, which thanks to you all became a number one national bestseller. I think it
00:30:09.960 became a number one national bestseller in part because it looked at this thing and said, no,
00:30:14.080 the answer is not just to repeat the same old slogans about keeping an open mind and having
00:30:21.680 free speech absolutism and not telling people what to think, just how to think and authoritarianism or
00:30:29.680 whatever. Liberty entails limits and we need to be willing to set those and stand by those things and
00:30:34.500 say, look, if men and women, to use Barry's example, if men and women really are different, then that
00:30:39.380 entails certain things. And that means that men can't go into the girl's bathroom. And it means
00:30:44.580 that men don't have a right to dress up like women and pretend to be women. And it means that
00:30:48.660 actually marriage has a specific meaning. And it means that, no, maybe the transportation secretary
00:30:53.640 shouldn't take two or three months of paternity leave amid a transportation crisis. And it just
00:30:58.820 implies certain things. And it doesn't just imply that we can do X, Y, and Z. It implies that we can't
00:31:04.800 do certain things as well. It implies limits. Speaking of authoritarianism, the Taliban is back
00:31:12.900 in the news. I guess that would be quite an extreme of authoritarianism. The Taliban are back
00:31:18.260 in the news because as they have now taken power in Afghanistan, some news crews are getting interviews
00:31:25.340 with them. And one news crew is making fun of a Taliban official because they handed him a globe and
00:31:32.360 they said, where is Afghanistan? And this dummy can't point to Afghanistan on a map.
00:31:42.460 You see the guy, he's holding up the globe. They're speaking some barbaric language. I think
00:31:49.920 it's known as French. And he's looking all around. He just can't find it. And they zoom in. This
00:31:58.240 little clip is going viral on TikTok. They zoom in. Taliban official there is, you know, he's
00:32:03.820 struggling. And then the guy walks in and says, there it is. There's Afghanistan. Ha ha ha. What
00:32:10.020 a dumb idiot. Ha ha, that stupid Taliban guy. He doesn't even know where it is. Man, he's so dumb.
00:32:14.440 Ha ha. So the Taliban official can't identify the country on the map. You know what he can do,
00:32:22.440 though? Conquer the country and send the most powerful nation on earth packing within like 11
00:32:29.780 days. That's what he can do. So ha ha ha. He can, he doesn't know how to use maps. Ha ha ha. What
00:32:36.720 it, oh, but you know what he can do? Conquer the nation that we spent 20 years trying to conquer.
00:32:41.720 He, he might not have a whole lot of technical knowledge. He might not have a whole lot of book
00:32:46.140 learning, but he's got a lot of practical knowledge. He knows how to control Afghanistan.
00:32:53.360 He knows how to do that better than the Americans, better than the Soviets, better than the British,
00:33:01.480 better than a whole lot of really highfalutin, fancy, educated people. There is a difference
00:33:06.980 between technical and practical knowledge. All right. Book learning and how to really do stuff.
00:33:12.380 And the ruling class of the United States is really obsessed with technical knowledge. And it's why
00:33:19.080 now we are sending kids to school for many more years than we used to. And we're obsessed with
00:33:25.240 funding pre-K and funding college and funding post-graduate work and funding all sorts of things.
00:33:32.140 And yet people seem to be getting dumber, right? Our ruling class, which has so many degrees,
00:33:37.320 they're so credentialed. They can't keep the supply chain running. They can't keep our money
00:33:43.160 valuable. They can't keep the country running all that well, but they've got degrees.
00:33:49.700 Pete Buttigieg has a very impressive degrees. He doesn't know anything, but he's really, he's got
00:33:53.800 really, really impressive credentials. And I think part of the cause of this is our hubris.
00:33:59.840 And specifically it's the hubris. I don't want to both sides of this. It's the hubris of the ruling
00:34:03.900 class where they say, ha ha, those deplorable, irredeemable rubes, those bitter clinging guns and
00:34:10.060 Bible toting idiots. Ha ha. They didn't even go to Princeton. Ha ha ha ha. Yeah. I bet they can do
00:34:16.680 more things than you can. Okay. They might not know a lot about Foucault or gender theory or
00:34:21.500 something, but I bet they know more about things that actually matter and things that frankly are
00:34:27.640 actually true. Speaking of world leaders, Superman is no longer on our side. I don't think he's on
00:34:36.240 the side of the Taliban yet, but he doesn't seem to be on our side. Superman, who used to stand for
00:34:40.580 truth, justice, and the American way, now stands for truth, justice, and a better tomorrow.
00:34:49.520 Now, I remember years ago, 15 years ago, there was some Superman movie. I can't keep track of the
00:34:54.480 superhero movies, but there was a Superman movie that made waves because it replaced the motto,
00:34:59.540 truth, justice, and the American way, with truth, justice, and all that other stuff.
00:35:03.620 It was kind of like a joke, an aside. Ha ha. We no longer believe in the American way. Oh no,
00:35:07.840 we're just ironic. We recognize that's all a lie, and we're evil Americans, and so we don't,
00:35:13.140 ha ha. It's just all that other stuff. Now they've taken it further, and they've earnestly replaced it
00:35:17.560 with a better tomorrow. The chief creative officer and publisher of DC Comics just announced this.
00:35:24.480 And everyone right now is focusing on cultural Marxism, right? They're saying this is cultural
00:35:31.280 Marxism. It's a cultural revolution to overturn the, I mean, in this case, literally to overturn
00:35:36.260 the American way. And sure, that's true. There's an aspect of that, but I think they're missing out
00:35:41.900 on the bigger problem, which is not the Marxists. It's the liberals. Part of the reason they're making
00:35:49.680 this change in Superman, which reflects broader cultural patterns, is because they hate America,
00:35:54.440 and they actually do think we're the bad guys, and they want to topple statues and tear down the
00:35:58.500 American flag and disrespect it. Part of the reason, though, a more cynical reason is they want to make
00:36:04.520 more money in China. Okay? They want to make more money in global markets where appealing to the
00:36:10.760 American way will not get you the highest return on your investment. Okay? Part of the reason they're
00:36:17.400 doing this is because they have greater loyalty and affection for the almighty dollar than they do
00:36:23.880 for the red, white, and blue, and for their countrymen. It's not just the commies that are the
00:36:29.620 problem. It's the liberals, too. And a lot of right-wingers have given into this. For many years now,
00:36:35.840 a lot of right-wingers have shilled for woke, multinational corporations that hate our country
00:36:43.740 and hate our way of life and hate the American people. And we've said, there is nothing more
00:36:49.600 conservative than building a bunch of sweatshops in China and outsourcing all American manufacturing
00:36:56.900 and taking meals off American tables to go make gizmos in China. And there's nothing more American
00:37:02.540 than selling out our traditional way of life to try to make an extra buck in some far-flung region of
00:37:08.120 the world. No, there is. There is. And there are more important things in life than money.
00:37:14.260 And if anyone should understand that, it's conservatives. What are we conserving? High GDP,
00:37:19.860 is that it? That's not all I want to conserve. I want a robust economy, but I want a country, too.
00:37:25.940 And I want to actively discourage our stewards of our culture and our corporations from undermining
00:37:34.880 our country, okay? And I want to use politics to do that because there has been a privatization
00:37:40.520 on the left and the right over the past 50, 60, 70 years. The left has privatized on the social issues.
00:37:48.500 You know, basically, you can sleep with whoever you want. Just don't make me pay for it. And you've got
00:37:54.460 the right-wingers who have privatized on corporations. You can sell to whoever you want. You can buy from
00:37:59.420 whoever you want. And you can run your company however you want. Just don't make me pay for it,
00:38:03.760 right? And that privatization on both sides has led to a collapse of the American culture. We don't have
00:38:09.600 social cohesion. We don't have national borders. We don't even have a flag, really, anymore. And the one
00:38:14.640 that we do have, we sort of disrespect, right? The libs, the neoliberals, the kind of ruling
00:38:23.400 establishment, uses this language of wokeism to placate the people and to put a little patina
00:38:32.580 and a facade over their obvious cynical quest for money. You're seeing this right now with the NAACP,
00:38:41.860 the NCAA, the college sports organization, is suggesting they need to eliminate the SAT
00:38:47.980 and ACT requirement. So they no longer think that student athletes should be tested on how smart
00:38:55.540 they are and how much they know. And the argument that they're using to justify getting rid of this
00:39:01.400 very basic test of one's intelligence and preparation for college is that they need to do it
00:39:08.260 to promote racial equity. So that's the line. We need to get rid of all these standards to promote
00:39:16.920 racial equity. So the NAACP, I keep confusing these things. That's because we're talking about race.
00:39:25.440 The NCAA task force has recommended that high school students who are looking to play D1 or D2 sports
00:39:31.500 should not have to submit their SAT or ACT scores as part of the recruiting process. The Daily Caller
00:39:38.040 is reporting that they made these recommendations on Friday to promote racial equity. This is a prime
00:39:44.900 example of neoliberalism using woke language to chase the almighty dollar. Because first of all, what
00:39:51.920 they're saying here is that black people are dumb, right? That is when you get past all the woke jargon and
00:39:56.700 language, what the NCAA is saying is black people are dumb and they don't do well on tests. And so if you
00:40:01.840 want black people to go to college, they need to not be tested because if they are tested, they won't get in.
00:40:06.320 Right? I think that's offensive. I don't think that's a nice thing to say. I don't think that is
00:40:11.900 particularly racially equitable. I don't think that promotes racial equity. But that is what the NCAA is
00:40:17.340 saying. Now, why are they doing this? Because they, I don't think it's to promote the education of their
00:40:25.640 students. I don't think it's to promote the racial equity among their student athletes. I think it's
00:40:30.420 because they want their student athletes to only be focused on sports. And I don't think they want
00:40:36.620 their student athletes to ever be thinking about history or literature or math. I bet the NCAA doesn't
00:40:43.220 want their students pretty much ever to step foot inside a classroom. They want them to be dribbling
00:40:47.580 and shooting and weightlifting and practicing their sports so that the NCAA can make more money.
00:40:54.300 And because these student athletes are not paid, they're not paid anything, you know, comparable
00:41:00.240 to professional athletes, but they bring in a ton of money, the NCAA is going to try to wring every
00:41:07.060 penny out of them that they can. But they're not going to be able to make that argument out in the
00:41:11.280 open. They're not going to be able to say, you know, dressed up like rich uncle penny bags saying,
00:41:15.540 yeah, let us make even more money on these athletes. Yeah. They don't need to learn anything in
00:41:19.400 school. What? Oh, they're not going to have a career afterwards. Who gives a damn? We're going to make some
00:41:23.160 more money for those years that they're in college. No, what they're going to say is, no, it's actually,
00:41:26.640 it's, it's for rate race, just equity, diversity, inclusion. That's why our students shouldn't
00:41:34.320 learn anything. And the libs are going to go along with it. The libs are going to go along. We've
00:41:40.800 always viewed in this country, or at least the line from the left is that the Republicans are the
00:41:46.340 party of the rich and the ruling class and the Democrats are the party of the poor and oppressed
00:41:50.880 masses. No, there is a ruling party in America. It's the democratic party. Some Republicans kind
00:41:55.820 of go along with it. The squishes, the court jester conservatives, but they're the junior partner
00:41:59.960 in that relationship. And the Democrats use the language of wokeness to push for the same cynical
00:42:08.360 dollar chasing ends that any ruling class or any oligarchy might. Speaking of sports going woke,
00:42:15.220 last Wednesday, EA Sports announced that they will be removing John Gruden from their Madden NFL 22
00:42:24.300 video game. So Gruden, you'll remember, is that LA or Las Vegas rather Raiders coach who a dozen years
00:42:33.300 ago made some politically incorrect jokes in his private email and has now lost his career and is
00:42:40.720 being erased from everyone's memory before our very eyes. He's now being erased from a video game
00:42:46.680 that's already out. So the video game's already done. He's going to be released after the fact.
00:42:52.600 He will be replaced. This is so creepy. We are taking steps to remove him from Madden NFL 22. We will
00:42:58.760 replace him with a generic likeness via a title update in the coming weeks. John Gruden is being
00:43:05.700 unpersoned in a manner reminiscent of Stalin and evocative of George Orwell. And the totalitarian
00:43:13.380 ideology here is not Soviet communism and it's not English socialism in Orwell's book. It is diversity,
00:43:23.100 inclusion, and equity, which spells die for those of you who pay attention. But it's diversity,
00:43:29.200 inclusion, and equity. That's what's going on at Yale. Why does Yale have a dean of diversity? What does
00:43:33.220 that even mean? Because that is the new chaplain of the new seminaries. The seminaries of wokeness
00:43:40.140 have a chaplain and the chaplain is the dean of diversity and inclusion and equity. And they are
00:43:45.740 going to enforce the new moral order. And the new moral order is radical leftism. The new moral order
00:43:51.600 is wokeness. At Harvard, they just announced that they have an atheist chaplain there and everyone was
00:43:56.420 up in arms. I'm not surprised at all. Harvard started as a seminary. It's still a seminary. It used to
00:44:01.040 promote Christianity. Now it churns out clerics of wokeism. So of course their chaplain is an
00:44:05.680 atheist. The religion of Harvard and of our country, the official religion, is secularism and
00:44:13.960 atheism. And it's the ideology of diversity, inclusion, and equity. And diversity, inclusion,
00:44:22.080 and equity, it is a jealous God. When traditional religion goes away, it doesn't leave a vacuum.
00:44:29.000 What replaces religion is ideology. And that's been true for several centuries now. And we're
00:44:34.300 seeing that play out before our very eyes. And a lot of Republicans don't know how to push back
00:44:39.760 against this sort of thing. Okay? I'm thinking of the shill, you know, the guys like Asa Hutchinson,
00:44:47.580 who's the governor in Arkansas, the Liz Cheney types, the Adam Kinzinger types. They don't know how to
00:44:54.000 push back against this sort of thing. And actually, before we go, I want to turn to the United Kingdom
00:44:58.960 because there's a story that's not getting a ton of play in America, but it shows you what's going
00:45:02.420 on here. There was a conservative member of parliament who was just killed in a Muslim terror
00:45:07.880 attack. His name's David Ames. I may be mispronouncing that. He died on Friday. He was
00:45:13.360 stabbed multiple times. He was 69 years old. And he was holding a meet and greet with his constituents.
00:45:19.420 He was first elected to parliament in 1983. He's been there for a very long time. He's survived by
00:45:24.520 his wife and his five kids. He was a devout Catholic. And he was killed by a radical Muslim.
00:45:30.040 And so the circumstances of his death are being covered up by the PC police. But even more
00:45:35.320 concerning, the man was a devout Catholic. When he died, or as he was dying, a priest heard about
00:45:41.620 this, ran to the scene to administer last rites. This is a very important thing in the Catholic faith.
00:45:45.400 And the priest was not allowed on the scene. The cops said, no, sorry, it's a crime scene and
00:45:50.640 you're not allowed here. The cops just didn't get it. Traditionally, priests are allowed to go to
00:45:55.740 these crime scenes to administer last rites. This is very important. If I am dying, if it's not going
00:46:00.340 to turn out well for me, it is much more important that a priest show up to give me last rites than
00:46:05.540 that a doctor show up or than that a cop show up. It's much more important for my soul. But even though
00:46:12.820 we understood this for centuries and millennia in our culture, that has been wiped away. We don't
00:46:17.180 even understand it anymore. But there are more important things in life than money. Actually,
00:46:23.100 the raw pursuit of money or pleasure or the pleasures of the flesh, that is not the be-all
00:46:30.000 and end-all. And actually, the dominant ideology of diversity, inclusion, and equity, or wokeness,
00:46:34.620 or call it whatever you want, that is not the true moral order. It certainly doesn't represent my
00:46:39.600 views, and it doesn't represent reality either. But we are forgetting that. We have lost our
00:46:44.200 principles in the UK, in the United States, throughout the West broadly. And if we do not
00:46:49.920 hold them back, if we do not stand up for our principles right now, like that lady at ESPN or
00:46:54.680 anyone else, some of the heroic people that you see crop up every so often, if we do not stand up for
00:47:00.220 them now, they will be lost. And like that cop who wouldn't let the priest come give last rites,
00:47:05.100 we won't even know. We won't even remember what it is that we have lost. I'm Michael Knowles. This
00:47:10.840 The Michael Knowles Show. I'll see you tomorrow.
00:47:35.100 Including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
00:47:39.420 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
00:47:44.000 Our technical director is Austin Stevens. Supervising producer, Mathis Glover. Production
00:47:48.900 manager, Pavel Vidovsky. Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico. Associate producer,
00:47:54.680 Justine Turley. Audio mixer, Mike Coromina. And hair and makeup by Cherokee Heart.
00:48:00.280 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2021.
00:48:03.900 Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, as vaccine mandates hit home, police departments begin firing cops
00:48:09.320 en masse. Plus, the New York City Council removes a statue of Thomas Jefferson. Remember when Trump
00:48:13.480 said they would do it? Well, it was right. That's today on The Ben Shapiro Show. Give it a listen.