Ep. 88 - #MeToo Ends： Not With A Bang, But A Whimper
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Summary
On this episode of The Michael Knowles Show, Michael talks about how he got to where he is today, why he moved to LA, and why he bought a $27.5 million home. Plus, Movement Watches, the company that makes the most iconic timepieces in the world.
Transcript
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This is the way Me Too ends. This is the way Me Too ends. This is the way hashtag Me Too ends.
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Not with a bang, but a whimper. We will discuss hollow men, sodden women, and the neo-Victorian
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morality. Then, this day in history, I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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There is so much to get to. This is one of the most interesting cultural stories
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that we've seen in a year or more. Before we get to that, a little bit of bookkeeping. In case you
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missed it yesterday or you might be interested in seeing it, Ben and I went over to our friend
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Ty Lopez's house last night. Ty Lope, you might know him. He had one of the biggest ads on YouTube
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ever, I think. This is Ty. Just bought this new Lamborghini here. Fun to drive up here in the
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Hollywood Hills. But you know what I like a lot more than materialistic things? Knowledge. In fact,
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I'm a lot more proud of these seven new bookshelves that I had to get installed to hold 2,000 new books
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that I bought. It's like the billionaire Warren Buffett says, the more you learn, the more you
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earn. I love that ad. That's the guy. I'm here in my garage with my Lamborghini and all my books and
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everything. This is a really bizarre coincidence. Two of the first people that I met in LA right when I
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got out here were Ty and Ben. So really totally randomly, I had just come into LA for some
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auditions. A friend of mine that I was staying with said, oh, go to the cigar bar. I have some
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work to do for a couple hours. So I go to this cigar bar down the street. I'm reading a book,
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just smoking a cigar. A guy turns to me. He's reading a book. He says, you're the first guy I've
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seen reading a book in LA. We should be friends. Which is true. The more I've lived here, the more I've
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learned that. And so anyway, it turned out that he was living up at Ty Lopez's house, this internet
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guru, you know, reads a book a day kind of guy. And so he invited me up to a party there a couple
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days later. So my first taste of LA was hanging out with those guys. And obviously, I met Ben
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through Andrew Klavan and Jeremy Boring and the whole Daily Wire crew. So this was a real melding
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of the worlds. Ben did, I think, an hour-long podcast with Ty. Then I came in, I did an hour-long
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podcast with Ty. So if you want to check those out, they're over on all of his social media
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platforms. It's a lot of fun, especially hanging out in his house, which I think is worth a gazillion
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dollars. So it's a nice change of pace from my cardboard box that I live in down in Culver
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City. So anyway, go check it out. It's a lot of fun. Before we get into today's show, we
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have to thank someone because, look, we only have about 45 minutes that we can get into this
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show today at most. And if you're a person, if you want to be able to read a book a day
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and plan out your life and get a $27 gazillion home, you got to make sure you get your appointments
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up on time, that you keep a schedule. How are you going to do that? Right there, baby.
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Movement Watches. Movement Watches was founded on the belief that style shouldn't break the
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bank. The watchmaker's goal is to change the way consumers think about fashion by offering
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high-quality, minimalist products at revolutionary prices. So I love watches. I have a bunch of
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watches, but I refuse to pay thousands of dollars for a really high-end timepiece. I won't even pay
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hundreds of dollars. If you go into a department store and you want to get a watch that looks like
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this and is the same quality as this, you're going to be looking at $300, $400, maybe $500.
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Movement Watches has circumvented all of that by going straight to the consumer. So they've sold
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over a million watches that way to customers in 160-plus countries around the world. And Movement
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has solidified itself as the fastest-growing watch company in the world. So, you know, I use this
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one. I really like this. This is one of the Chrono watches. It's a little, you know, it sits a little
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bulkier on the wrist. It's a more solid watch. It has some of the, you know, stopwatches and those
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kind of things. I really like this. A little sportier, but they have a ton of great stuff.
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I really love the Revolver Collection. That one is a little bit more on the dressier side, a little more
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throwback, a little less sporty. Really, whatever kind of watch you want, you can get it there. And
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you get it at a fraction of the cost of watches in department stores so you can get more than one.
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And every man should wear a watch. Women should wear watches too. It just shows that you have places to
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go, people to see. You're not always checking your cell phone like you're a little toddler or
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something. You can't always have to pull it out of your pocket. That's a hassle. Be an adult.
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Wear a watch. You know, they start at just $95. So that's an unbelievable price point. Under $100,
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you can get one of these watches. It's because selling online, they can cut out the middleman
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and all of that retail markup so you get the best possible price directly to you. It's got a classic
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design, quality construction, and styled minimalism. So, now I know that I said that they
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cost, they start at $95. You can get 15% off today. So it'll be even cheaper. And you can get free
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shipping and you can get free returns. There's no risk whatsoever. So you go to movement.com.
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That's MVMT.com. Because we don't have time for vowels. This is the modern world, baby. We got to
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get moving. MVMT.com slash Covfefe. C-O-V-F-E-F-E. MVMT.com slash Covfefe. What is it,
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Marshall? MVMT.com slash Covfefe. C-O-V-F-E-F-E. This watch has a really clean design.
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It's really nice. You know, everyone around here wears them and we get a lot of compliments.
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They're really cool watches. So come on, step up your watch game. This is 2018. New year,
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new you. Get a movement watch. MVMT.com slash Covfefe. C-O-V-F-E-F-E. Join the movement.
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All right, let's get into this. Let's get into the main story. The Me Too campaign,
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the hashtag Me Too campaign about sexual assault and harassment has officially jumped the shark.
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We talked about this a little bit at the end yesterday with Alicia, but the fallout from this
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piece is even more interesting really than the piece itself. The feminist website, babe.com,
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gotta love it. They ran a piece yesterday titled, I went on a date with Aziz Ansari.
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It turned into the worst night of my life. The worst night of her life. Wow. Clearly,
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this is going to be a Weinstein-esque tale of abuse, rape, intimidation, blacklisting enormity,
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right? These accusations are so bad, the accuser chose to remain anonymous, going only by the
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emotionally evocative pseudonym, grace. So what does the accuser allege happened? She alleges that
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she hit on Aziz Ansari, the left-wing comedian at an Emmys after party. He ignored her, but
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nevertheless, she persisted. They exchanged numbers. That was that. She heads back across the country to
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New York. He leaves her a voicemail and they chat via text for about a week. Now that part seems
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minimal, but we'll get to why that's a key aspect of the problem here a little bit later.
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So they set a date. Grace agonizes with her friends over what to wear, these jeans, yada, yada,
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blah, blah, blah. She arrives at his apartment and here's where things go horribly, horribly wrong.
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Did he attack her? No. Did he take her captive? No. No, no. Instead, he offered her white wine
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instead of red. I'm serious. Babe.com writes, quote, after arriving at his apartment in Manhattan on
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Monday evening, they exchanged small talk and drank wine. It was white, she said. I didn't get
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to choose, but I prefer red, but it was white wine. Then Ansari walked her to Grand Banks, an oyster bar
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on board a historic wooden schooner on the Hudson River just a few blocks away. I actually used to
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live right around that area. Can you imagine the horror? Her host, her date, offered her the type
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of wine preferred by virtually every woman on earth without even taking one moment to become a
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psychic and read her mind and understand that she likes the other kind of wine before buying her
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dinner at an expensive oyster bar. Lock him up. Lock him up. Call the police. Marshall, can you get the
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police on the line? This is outrageous. So they had dinner and then Ansari asked for the check.
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So Babe writes, Grace says she sensed Ansari was eager for them to leave. When the waiter came over,
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he quickly asked for the check and he said, like, let's get off this boat. She recalls there was
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still wine in her glass and even more left in the bottle he ordered. The abruptness surprised her.
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Like, he got the check and then it was bada boom, bada bing, we're out of there. That's right.
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That's right. You heard that correctly. Ansari was too quick to pay for their expensive dinner.
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The classic faux pas. You're at a dinner and your date pays the bill too quickly. Isn't that,
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it's a tale as old as time? Just terrible. So anyway, they go back to his apartment. They flirt
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for a little bit. They get naked and they make out. As Babe tells it, she remembers feeling
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uncomfortable at how quickly things escalated. Note the wording here. Grace doesn't remember
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expressing her discomfort in any way. She doesn't remember telling him that they should keep their
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clothes on or not to kiss her. She just felt it. Yeah, just felt it. Now things get really crazy.
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Aziz Ansari allegedly tried to have sex with the naked lady in his apartment.
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And they almost did. Can you believe it? They both made it to third base, as it were. And then
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she finally told him firmly she didn't want to have sex. So they stopped and sat on the couch.
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Then she started, um, how do I say this on a family-friendly show? She gave him another triple.
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They kissed some more. Now keep in mind, they're still completely naked at this point.
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Then she changed her mind again and said she didn't want to have sex. And she put her clothes
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back on. And she said, you guys are all the same. You guys are all the effing same. Truer words,
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by the way, have never been spoken. And that is a major aspect of this. But we'll get back to that
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in a second. So she calls a cab and she leaves. Here's the most important line. Grace explains.
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It took a really long time for me to validate this as sexual assault. I was debating if this was an
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awkward sexual experience or sexual assault. As a rule, if you have to ask, it's the former,
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not the latter. If you have to debate it, it's the former. It's not sexual assault.
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At no point in this entire encounter did Aziz Ansari commit sexual assault. And that pains me to say,
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because I don't really like Aziz Ansari at all. I don't find him funny. I think his political
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preening is like nails on a chalkboard. And the character he plays on stage is an all-around soy boy.
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But this is a classic case of regret, not assault. And that doesn't mean the girl doesn't have a
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right to be sad or hurt or angry. She felt used because she was being used. Why did the girl
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stick around at all? After the awful wine episode at the beginning, why did she stick around?
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Because she liked Ansari and she wanted him to like her for more than her body,
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for more than just a one or two night stand, for more than just sex. Now Ansari may have liked her.
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He may have just wanted to score. I don't know. But like all men,
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and especially famous men, and especially rich famous men, and especially rich influential famous
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men, most especially of all, like rich influential famous men in a hookup culture that treats sex
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like a handshake, he wanted sex and he expected it to come easy because that's our culture.
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That's the ubiquitous culture surrounding sex that we live in. But why did she stick around?
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If she felt uncomfortable, why did she strip naked and keep engaging in sex acts? Why did
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she repeatedly let him make it so far around the bases? We have an answer from sexpert April
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Mazzini. Yes, sexpert. That's a thing. Sexpert. Sexpert April Mazzini of askapril.com explains,
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I hear from women who have sex on the first date and then try to leverage that act into love.
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They impute their feelings about the sex on a first date onto the other person,
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and those who feel that sex on a first date means interest are often hurt if a second date doesn't
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evolve. A tale as old as time, but a trick not always so pervasive and relied upon. 46% of people
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who use the dating website OkCupid say they'd sleep with someone on the first date, a high percentage
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that just keeps rising in recent years. And OkCupid is a pretty good source here because online dating
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sites and mobile apps like Tinder or Bumble or whatever. You know, in my single days, I always
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used Grindr, but I never met the right lady. They always had these huge Adam's apples, which is
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neither here nor there. The use of online dating sites and mobile apps among young people nearly
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tripled just between 2013 and 2015, according to Pew Research. And there isn't a ton of research
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available for how that trend has evolved even over the past three years. But I can tell you from
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personal interactions, and you know it yourselves, every single young person in the country is on
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these apps. I have multiple friends who even met their future wives on these apps. I'm going to go
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to two weddings this spring, as a matter of fact, for friends who met on apps like Tinder. Still,
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marriage is the exception, not the rule when it comes to all of these apps and these websites.
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The trouble with these apps is that they incentivize a swipe right culture where the next better hookup is
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always a click away. Why stick with the person you've got, the person sitting across from you or
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in the bar or at the party or whatever, when your phone is buzzing with an endless stream of new
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digital hotties? Buzz, buzz, buzz. That gets back to one of the earliest aspects of Aziz and this girl's
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encounter, one that everybody's missing in their coverage. They met at a party. She hits on him.
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He's not that interested. They chat a little bit. They exchange numbers. Then what happens?
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They don't grab coffee or drink. They don't even talk on the phone. They text. And texts can be a
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deceptive experience. We know that she's interested in him. Were the texts flirty? Yeah, presumably.
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What did they say? What did she say to him? How did he respond? Texts are a virtual fantasy land.
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There's no phone to hear the tone or the tenor or the hesitations in someone's voice. There's no face
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staring you down to seduce or to embarrass or to shame or to amuse or do anything. Texts are a
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blunt object. But increasingly, they're the only way that single millennials communicate.
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A 2014 Gallup poll, and now we're talking four years ago, a full 68% of 18 to 29-year-olds
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reported that they had texted, quote, a lot the previous day. That number plunges to 47% among 30
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to 49-year-olds and down to 26% of 50 to 64-year-olds and 0% of me because I hate texting.
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I hate, I hate, I really, you know it, Marshall. I do not text. I despise it. I find it, here's the
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reason. I find it so rude when you're having a conversation with somebody to look down and
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check your phone and start talking to somebody else. You say, hey, hold on a second. No, I know we're
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having a conversation, but literally anything else on planet Earth is more interesting than what you're
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saying to me. So let me pull out my phone, spin the roulette wheel, and assume whatever is on that
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screen is more important than you. I hate it. I don't do it. And then I don't later on. So I don't
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do it in the moment. And I don't even do it later on when I stop talking to somebody. Aside from that
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digression, everybody texts and texting dehumanizes the person on the other end. It abstracts that
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person. It removes every single sense of another person other than seeing a formalized abstraction of
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their thought in the form of words on a screen. And maybe a weird picture or two. That's it.
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It's not even like writing a letter, a long letter, where you get a sense of their feelings. It's just
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three words, this, that, this, the other thing. It's very shallow. So even heading into the date,
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Aziz and this woman head in with necessarily different perceptions and likely different
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expectations. And then we equate Harvey Weinstein's violently raping women and ruining their careers and
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blackmailing them with an awkward date and consensual sexual encounter that left a woman
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upset because a man wanted to have sex. In a culture where sex on the first date is common
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and basically expected. In a culture that tells you men and women are exactly the same. The sexes are
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indiscernible. They want exactly the same things professionally, personally, and sexually. A culture
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where two people could enter an encounter in good faith with exactly the same premises. And yet one
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leaves hurt and one leaves confused. What's the problem? I'm a feminist. I'm a feminist. I'm a
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feminist. Wow, you said it, Aziz. You said it. That's a great point. Joshi Herman, the editor of
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babe.com said, we would publish this again tomorrow. The piece about this awful encounter with the wine
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and whatever. It's newsworthy because of who he is and what he has said in his standup, what he has
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written in his book, what he has proclaimed on late night TV. Her account is pointing out a striking
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tension between those things and the way she says Aziz treated her in private.
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Now, this is actually sort of a decent point. Why is it?
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I'm a feminist. I'm a feminist. I'm a feminist.
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Oh yeah, right again, Aziz. Good job. But that's, it's not just that the things he's spouting in
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public contradict the things he does in private. It's that the things he's spouting in public
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contradict the things that everybody does in private because feminism presents an incorrect
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view of the world. That men and women are exactly the same and that hurts everybody involved.
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Perhaps the craziest thing about this whole episode, this pathetic end to the Me Too movement,
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is that it's got me agreeing with the Atlantic and the New York Times. That's awful. Caitlin
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Flanagan writes in the Atlantic, quote, she tells us that she wanted something from Ansari and that she
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was trying to figure out how to get it. She wanted affection, kindness, attention. Perhaps she hoped
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to maybe even become the famous man's girlfriend. He wasn't interested. What she felt afterward,
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rejected yet another time by yet another man, was regret. And what she and the writer who told her
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story created was 3,000 words of revenge porn. I thought it would take a little longer for the
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hit squad of privileged young white women to open fire on brown-skinned men. I had assumed that on the
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basis of intersectionality and all that, they'd stay laser-focused on college-educated white men for
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another few months. But we're at warp speed now, and the revolution, in many ways so good and so
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important, is starting to sweep up all sorts of people into its conflagration. The monstrous,
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the cruel, and the simply unlucky. Apparently there is a whole country full of young women
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who don't know how to call a cab and who have spent a lot of time picking out pretty outfits for
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dates they hoped would be nights to remember. They're angry and temporarily powerful, and last night
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they destroyed a man who didn't deserve it. Wow. Absolutely right. Caitlin Flanagan is probably the best
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writer in The Atlantic, and she's one of the reasons I still subscribe to The Atlantic. And by bizarre
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coincidence, I actually found out just the other day she's Andrew Klavan's sister-in-law. She's
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Drew's wife's sister. And I suppose that isn't coincidental that I would enjoy the writing of
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Drew's sister-in-law, but still, very small world. She's exactly correct. She's brutally correct.
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I am a proud feminist, and this is what I thought while reading Grace's story. If you're hanging out
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naked with a man, it's safe to assume he's going to try to have sex with you. If the inability to
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choose a Pinot Noir over a Pinot Grigio offends you, you can leave right then and there. If you
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don't like the way your date hustles through paying the check, you can say, I've had a lovely evening
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and I'm going home now. If you go home with him and discover he's a terrible kisser, say, I'm out.
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If you start to hook up and don't like the way he smells or the way he talks or doesn't talk,
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end it. If he pressures you to do something you don't want to do, use a four-letter word,
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stand up on your two legs and walk out the door. Aziz Ansari sounds like he was aggressive and
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selfish and obnoxious that night. Isn't it heartbreaking and depressing that men, especially
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ones who present themselves publicly as feminists, often act this way in private? Shouldn't we try to
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change our broken sexual culture? Proud feminist, huh? Is that feminism? Weiss is saying men and women
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want different things from sex. It's perfectly fine for men to pick up the check at dinner. It's not
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disrespectful or patriarchal. It's perfectly reasonable for men to choose a wine and pour
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their day to glass of it, though of course she may refuse it. She's right that there's a broken
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sexual culture, but the sexual culture is feminist. You can't simultaneously say that the sexual culture
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begun 60 years ago by feminism and sexual liberation is broken, and that's why we need more feminism and
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sexual liberation. We're headed toward a neo-Victorian era. You can see it all around you.
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You see it on college campuses, which are now hiring deans and deputy deans and deputy assistant
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deputy deans to regulate and monitor sexual activity. The sort of campus sexual regulation
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we haven't seen since men and women had to sign back into their single-sex dorm rooms at night,
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however many decades ago. The era of original Victorian morality began after the post-Cromwell
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restoration of the monarchy in England and led to a period of free living and all-around debauchery
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modeled after the French, of course. A more libertine people, you know, have never graced this earth.
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So Queen Victoria's uncle, George IV, was popularly seen as a pleasure-seeking playboy.
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Scandal abounded. National leaders were regularly seen as decadent playboys. The culture was freewheeling
00:20:56.280
and fun. Does that sound familiar? Now what followed was a period of strict morals, personal restraint,
00:21:01.420
and cultural ascendance. We may be headed there now, but Victorian values were based in traditional
00:21:06.960
Victorian, in traditional Christian values until Charles Darwin and the crisis of faith
00:21:12.120
began eating away at them. The quality of the new Victorianism we're heading toward will be decided
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by precisely which moral system, which view of the world we grounded in. So you better start praying.
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We do? No, we can't because we have to sign off. Marshall, you tyrant, you monster. I'm sorry. If
00:21:29.860
you're on Facebook and YouTube, you've got to go to dailywire.com. If you are already there and a
00:21:34.660
subscriber, thank you. You help us keep the lights on and covfefe in my cup and subscriptions to the
00:21:39.960
Atlantic for the one good article it has a year. If not, please go to dailywire.com right now. Why?
00:21:45.560
Why would you do it? Well, you'll get me. You'll get the Andrew Klavan show. You get the Ben Shapiro show.
00:21:49.640
No ads on the website, blah, blah, blah. The conversation, you can ask different questions.
00:21:53.820
I think Drew's conversation is today actually at 2.15. Is it Marshall?
00:21:59.540
Yeah, we can hear him setting up in the room next door. So actually subscribe right this second
00:22:03.380
and you'll be able to ask Andrew Klavan questions today for the conversation. It's going to be really
00:22:07.920
good. But the most important thing, forget all that, the leftist tears tumbler. This is going to be a
00:22:16.160
big one, folks. The Me Too movement is completely over now. It's ended with a, with a bang, not with
00:22:21.240
a bang, but a whimper. Feminism is being brought into question because of our new cultural moment
00:22:27.580
and our new neo-Victorianism. You've got Hollywood falling apart because of this issue. Get it or
00:22:32.620
you're going to drown. Don't be stupid. You're going to drown on salty, salty, delicious leftist
00:22:37.920
tears. You can only drink so many. You can only gorge yourself on so many. You have to store them in a
00:22:42.320
proper vessel like this. Make the right decision for you and your family and save yourselves.
00:22:47.080
Go to dailywire.com right now. We'll be right back.
00:23:06.280
This is a big one. On this day in history, the Roman Empire officially began. Now, I'm not going
00:23:11.800
to go through the entirety of the Roman Empire in our last, you know, few minutes here. So let's
00:23:16.820
focus on one incredible historical coincidence at the outset of the Roman Empire that might shed some
00:23:22.300
light on the nature of the world, of the physical world and the metaphysical world. The Roman Empire
00:23:28.300
began when Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, Octavian as it is frequently called, heir to the assassinated
00:23:38.300
Julius Caesar, was granted the title Augustus by the Roman Senate. So Augustus ruled from January 16th,
00:23:45.980
27 BC until his death in AD 14. After the demise of the second triumvirate, which was formed by himself,
00:23:55.260
Mark Anthony and Marcus Lepidus to defeat the assassins of Julius Caesar, Augustus restored the
00:24:02.160
semblance of the Roman Republic. There was the Senate and the legislatures and all that, the semblance of it.
00:24:07.180
In reality, he retained firm rule all for himself. There's much to note about Augustus, but consider
00:24:13.200
just this one fact. Augustus was not actually the son of Caesar. He was his adopted son. He was regularly
00:24:20.040
referred to as Divi Filius, son of a god, because upon Julius Caesar's death, a comet known as Caesar's
00:24:27.140
comet appeared above the earth. It was the brightest comet in recorded history, having even a negative
00:24:32.940
absolute magnitude. It could be seen even by daylight and was taken as a sign that Caesar had been
00:24:38.580
deified, turned into a god upon his death. And so the son of a god reigned on a throne in Rome and
00:24:44.660
initiated the Pax Augusti, the Peace of Augustine, the Peace of Rome, of so much of the civilized world
00:24:50.700
that blanketed the land. It was so named by Seneca the Younger and considered a miracle because of the
00:24:56.080
widespread war, which had wreaked havoc for so many centuries prior. At that same time, during that
00:25:03.320
same reign, another bright light appeared in the sky over Bethlehem to signal precisely the coming of
00:25:08.320
another king, a king whose kingdom is not of this world, a king who would be called not Filius Divi,
00:25:14.060
but Filius Dei, not son of a god or the divinity, but son of the one true god himself, and a king who would
00:25:21.640
bring not just peace for a time and a space, but for all time and space into eternity. A coincidence
00:25:27.100
so incredible, an example of God's whimsy so undeniable, and yet it's almost never taught in
00:25:33.000
history class or physics class or astronomy class. Alexander Pope put it well, all nature is but art
00:25:39.140
unknown to thee, all chance, direction, which thou canst not see. That's our show today. I'm Michael
00:25:45.540
Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. We are not going to be here tomorrow. I've got a film shoot that
00:25:49.780
I've got to be at tomorrow, because shockingly and incredibly, occasionally I still get hired as an
00:25:55.300
actor in this town, but I assume that'll be the last time, so don't worry about it again. So we're
00:25:59.400
going to do a show on Friday instead. We're still going to do the mailbag on Thursday, so get your
00:26:03.180
questions in ASAP, and until Thursday, I'm Michael Knowles, and I'll see you then.
00:26:13.820
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson, executive producer Jeremy Boring,
00:26:18.860
senior producer Jonathan Hay, supervising producer Mathis Glover. Our technical producer is Austin
00:26:24.700
Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is by Jesua
00:26:30.900
Olvera. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production, copyright Forward