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

Harmful content

Misogyny

18

sentences flagged

Hate speech

29

sentences flagged


Summary

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

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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 1.00
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.
00:01:35.520 I'm on the road at the moment, and when I'm on the road, I miss certain things. I miss my wife,
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00:01:53.100 They're just great, okay? They are, I, I love my pillow because it's a good conservative company.
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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 0.99
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. 0.92
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 1.00
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 1.00
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 1.00
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 0.60
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 0.98
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 1.00
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 0.97
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 1.00
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 0.72
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, 0.99
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 0.99
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 0.56
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, 0.87
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. 1.00
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 0.99
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 1.00
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 1.00
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 0.78
00:25:25.460 on CNN. She's liberal enough that she still gets invited on CNN. And she called out that liberal ruling 1.00
00:25:32.700 class for the corruption and the coercion that it involves. And she did this specifically with 0.99
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 1.00
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 0.72
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 0.96
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 0.88
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 1.00
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. 1.00
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. 0.51
00:32:53.360 He knows how to do that better than the Americans, better than the Soviets, better than the British, 0.98
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 1.00
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 1.00
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 0.74
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. 1.00
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 0.98
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 0.99
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 0.98
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 0.89
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 0.55
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. 1.00
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.