Editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle talk to Dana Loesch. She is a talk radio host, author, TV commentator, and longtime Second Amendment advocate. She has a new book Grace Canceled: How Outrage is Destroying Lives, Ending Debate, and Endangering Democracy. Kyle, Ethan, and Dana talk about milkshake ducks, corporate media reporting on cultural divides by taking sides, believing all women except conservative clumps of cells, and searching for Bigfoot. You can also follow Dana on Twitter. Pre-order the new Babylon Bee Best-Of Coffee Table Book coming in 2020! Get a Sneak Peak! Topics Discussed Kyle and Ethan shine a spotlight on all of her evil Dana talks about that CNN "Townhall" on Gun Violence The second amendment, gun control, and cultural issues Cancel culture and milkshake ducks Gun violence being the fault of the National Rifle Association The Second Amendment covers battle tanks and armored combat vehicles. The left attacking her/receiving death threats Society is addicted to outrage and cancelling people Searching for Bigfoot Subscriber Portion (Begins at 00:42:44) The entire interview is available for Babylon Bee subscribers only… Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
I just have to say that I object strenuously to your use of the word hilarious.
Hard-hitting questions.
What do you think about feminism?
Do you like it?
Taking you to the cutting edge of truth.
Yeah, well, Last Jedi is one of the worst movies ever made, and it was very clear that Ryan Johnson doesn't like Star Wars.
Kyle pulls no punches.
I want to ask how you're able to sleep at night.
Ethan brings bone-shattering common sense from the top rope.
If I may, how double dare you?
This is the Babylon Bee Interview Show.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome to the Babylon Bee Interview Show.
Today is incredible.
It's a big day because we're interviewing somebody highly, what's the word, toxic or problematic, problematic, controversial, Nazi-ish?
I want to say what's the adjective for Nazi?
Something Nazi adjacent.
Nazi adjacent, perhaps.
So we just have a few things we need to say before we interview letters and say hi at least.
Should we let her talk, though?
Should we let her talk?
I don't know if.
All right.
Hi.
Let her talk.
There's fine.
She can talk.
Oh, she's talking.
So this is Dana Losh.
Is that from the pronoun?
Did I say it right?
Actually, it's Lash.
I know I saw that.
Non-existent A. Lash.
Because she thought it was because she lashes out when she's presented with facts and logic.
That's right.
I like that.
There you go.
That works.
So we just need to, before we get into this interview, because we are hard-hitting journalists, it's important for us to make sure people realize that we aren't giving you a platform.
We're here to shine a spotlight on your all-your evil.
So we just need to start off by saying a few things.
First of all, how dare you?
Thank you for the thank you for the spotlight and platform.
No, it's not a platform.
We want to be clear on this.
Yeah, it's not a platform.
We're not giving you a platform.
We got a few more things.
How do you sleep at night?
We just need to get that out of the way.
Oh, with my big, giant, fluffy my pillow that Mike Lindell and his gold medallions fly in from the sky and deliver to me.
Is it shaped like Charlton Heston?
Oh my gosh.
Are you?
Charlton Heston?
Body pillow.
You just can't.
That's like an amazing merch opportunity.
Yeah, we got to make that.
That's really interesting because we kind of just want to know who do you think that you are.
Yeah.
yes i am me and how do you me how do you look at yourself in the mirror Usually I say my name three times and I appear.
That's what happens.
When you look in the mirror and you say my name three times, I am there with you also.
Just that.
So if anybody doesn't know who Dana is.
I inspired that movie.
It was first made when I was a child, but I was so evil even back then.
So if anybody doesn't know who Dana is, this might not make any sense.
Yeah, I guess we should set that up.
Although, you know, most.
This evil woman.
Who is this?
Who is this evil person that we're having on?
So Dana's been a longtime advocate for the Second Amendment, which is why we're treating her like this and ostracizing her.
Right.
So we're kind of curious from the pro-gun rights side with this hand sanitizer shortage.
How are you washing the blood off your hands?
That's a great question.
I never worked at Planned Parenthood, so I don't have any.
Wow.
So I've never worked there, but I still do the hand sanitizer.
I still do that.
We will do the owning here.
We will do the owning with facts and logic on this interview.
All right, did we get it all out of the way?
I think we're good.
Are we good?
We've provided enough social distancing between us.
Social.
Nice.
Yeah.
You can't get the evil gun virus.
That's what it is.
That's what it is.
One of the values that we stand by here at the Babylon B is that believe all women.
That's a strong value of ours.
I'm sorry.
And except for we do have, we run into an issue with Dana Lash.
I was going to say, there's an asterisk in there.
Unless it's about Second Amendment issues, believe all women.
But has that ever worked out well for you?
Like, do you get to use that ever?
No, actually, I'm glad that you asked that.
Not really, because it doesn't seem to apply.
It seems that the female copulatory organ is made irrelevant when there is the presence of a limited government ideology or a faith-based belief that so it cancels it out.
Yeah, like pro-life women.
Right.
Pro-life women.
Yeah, they're not women.
They're just pro-life beings at that point.
So they're easier to attack.
They're just a clump of cells at that point.
That's right.
A clump of conservative cells.
Christian conservative cells.
How dare you?
Now we have Dana Lash saying, How dare you?
Yeah, we can use that.
That'll be one of our sound clips we use all the time.
That was for free.
Yeah.
So you have a sizable collection of guns, I assume.
How many AR-14s do you have?
I don't actually have an AR-14.
You don't?
It's actually, no, it's a real rifle, but I don't.
I don't even know if I've ever seen one.
I have a lot of firearms.
I have a lot of them because, you know, I'm an American.
And it's for the same reason why I have five different varieties of thick-cut bacon in my refrigerator right now because I'm an American.
And it's the same reason that I have all these different versions of the Bible and then a study Bible.
And I have whatever else I want to have because I'm an American.
And that's what Americans do.
You know what we need is a really patriotic song about thick-cut bacon.
They'll just in the background while she's saying, oh, yeah, we did it.
When you do it again, I mean, you can be like, because I'm an American.
See?
It's like a commercial.
How many different animals of bacon?
How many different species of bacon do you have in your fridge?
Anything endangered?
No, no, but I do have wild game jerky.
I have had some.
I think I some.
And then for Valentine's Day, I got my husband a heart-shaped box of meat.
I think you're going to say like kind of an animal's heart, like an elk heart or something.
No, but I'm still eating heart of an elk.
It's a sweet bread, basically, wouldn't it?
I mean, it'd be delicious.
Yeah.
Full of vitamins and nutrients.
It's like going to the whole Whole Foods, right?
It's like just skipping Whole Foods and going past the potions aisle and going right into the wilderness and getting your food.
So where should we start here?
I mean, I know you mostly from when NRA, you were a part of the NRA and like you were like the favorite person to attack on Twitter of the people on the left.
I think she still is.
Yeah, are you still you still hold that?
Like, are you still holding that position?
I think it depends on what the news cycle is, but every now and then they show me that they love me.
Or I mean, rather hate me, which I sadly misinterpret as love.
No, I mean, every now and then they kind of remind you, but I think some of it depends on the news cycle.
I don't know.
I don't even know where do we go from here.
Well, that's hard.
We're not professional interviewers.
I don't know if anybody let you know that.
Well, I would say that, you know, ultimately, because when I came out with my last book, Grace Canceled, part of that was kind of inspired by my time with the organization and representing the membership of the organization because of everything that went down with the town hall, the CNN town hall.
And I'm using just so many air quotes on that.
And my kids' reaction to it.
And then also a Norm McDonald interview with Vanity Fair.
So, but that, but I think it was just kind of all a crazy reaction to simply just advocating for a constitutional right.
And I started thinking that, you know, my kids are getting older and, you know, I would hate for it to, for them to grow up in an environment where they think that the only acceptable discourse out there is just total unfettered hatred and the inability to see people as people and just conflate them with issues and therefore making it easier to justify the stuff that you're saying.
I wanted them to see that there was more out there than the stuff that they see their mom get.
And so that kind of started the path to that.
So, I mean, that's that, I guess, you know, my time with the organization contributed, I guess, to this book and then where, and then ultimately, I think kind of my perspective now in that, in that, in that fashion.
Did you have any point of view before you joined up with the NRA that was shifted through that experience?
Well, I've been a strong 2A supporter for years.
And I think there, I think with this and walking out and participating in that, because I'm telling you, there is nothing like walking into an auditorium to a Black Eyed Peace song, which was Let's Get It Started.
And I walked in on the part where the guy was going, or whatever he says there.
I mean, everybody was already screaming like, we hate you so loud.
It was kind of difficult to figure out which part, where we were in the song.
So, but there's nothing like walking into an arena.
And you think that if this was in any other situation, I would have thought I was walking just, you know, I had gone to concessions and I was walking into an arena getting ready to watch like a UFC match.
But that's because that's kind of how it was set up.
It was, it was so bizarre.
But nothing really prepares you for that.
And when you're in it, it's just one of the most bizarre things.
I will never, and I hope to never experience anything like that in my life, but it was just one, it's one of the most bizarre things ever.
You're in an auditorium and there were legitimately people going, burn her, like we were in something.
It was like, is this Monty Python?
I don't know.
But it was, I think that after that, I realized that, you know, really the big thing that I think got me through was prayer and just being chill, which I normally am not.
I'm pretty, I am a super hyper person.
I'm, I have a ton of energy and I'm like a giant toddler.
I'm just, I'm everywhere and I just love doing stuff and I go, I've always been like this.
And that was the chillest and the stillest I have ever been.
And I told a friend of mine, I'm like, if you've ever doubted the existence of God, I want you to go and rewatch that town hall because I've never not fidgeted so much ever.
But it was definitely, yeah.
I mean, I don't think many people can say that they sat in an auditorium and were screamed at.
So was that like by design with CNN running that thing super like, was it something they were trying to get it to be kind of a sensational thing?
Or did you feel like it was just a bunch of crazies showed up to scream at you?
I think it was both.
I think that, well, I know that there were a lot of people who were not from the community who showed up.
And I also know that the network, it was weird because they had a political rally right before the cameras went on.
And they had like Ted Deutsch and a number of, and they were only one political party that they got up on stage and they were electioneering.
And Scott Israel was up on stage and they were giving these campaign speeches.
And it just seemed, I mean, it was confusing.
And I was in a room.
They didn't really have like a backstage area, but I was in a room somewhere in the arena, like, I guess a waiting room and watching on the monitor.
And my husband and I were looking at each other like, this is kind of confusing because this just seems inappropriate.
I mean, if it's a memorial, then have a memorial, but it seems weird to have these guys up there electioneering and talking about voting and all of this other stuff before this town hall is broadcast.
So it began that way.
And then when the cameras rolled and then they played the montage honoring the victims, everybody there was already really amped up.
And I really wanted to be generous in giving the network the benefit of the doubt, not because I was trying to do anything nice for them, but because I wanted to make sure that I was seeing everything in the most basic, uninterpreted terms I could.
And there's no, there was no way that, that, there's no way that I, that I could explain or defend them and that they really were politicizing it as absolutely much as possible.
And they were doing everything that they could to get people amped up to the point where it was already out of control by the time the cameras started.
And Jake Tapper at one point came back and was greeting everybody who was going to be on the stage.
I didn't even know that I was going to be on the stage until I got there.
The night, that was on a Wednesday.
And then the Tuesday, they said I was going.
And then on the flight down there, well, on the flight down there, they said you're going to be on stage.
But I thought it was going to be like all the other town halls that you've seen, right?
Where whether it's CNN or Fox or MSNBC, they have the stage and then all the people are sitting on it, right?
There's not just like a couple of people there.
Everybody's kind of sitting on the stage and the host or whatever is in the middle walking around.
And I thought it was going to be like that.
Well, then after I got there, the producer said, no, you're, you're actually going to be on stage with the, with Scott Israel, who was the sheriff at the time.
And that's when I thought, oh, oh, boy.
So they're going to pit me up against him.
That's the only reason that they're going to have me on with him is they're going to pit me up against him.
So I went and I introduced myself to him.
And his deputies at the time did not even like him.
They, well, they still don't.
They did not like him.
And they made a point, the two deputies that were with him made a point of later breaking off from him and coming to find me and talking with me and saying that, you know, they didn't appreciate what he was doing because he was name checking me in his little political speech before this even started.
And keep in mind, I had only been, I hadn't even been with the organization for a year yet at that point.
So it was weird that he was coming at it from that angle.
And Jake had come into the room and said, yeah, you know, I've lost control of the room already.
Just, you know, I don't have control of this room.
And I went and introduced myself to Scott Israel and I said, you know, Sheriff, where my family and I are praying for your community and praying for your department.
And he shook my hand and then he said, oh, you are the NRA lady.
And he goes, oh, it's nice to meet you.
No hard feelings.
That hands disguise, that's what he said.
And I, and it will never, because it was one of the oddest responses I've ever heard from anybody.
And I thought, my gosh, you're not even being strategic enough to at least hide your cards from me.
This is ridiculous.
So I went back and I told my husband, I said, this is going to be a brawl.
I just want you to know that.
And before we walked out into the arena and it was already kind of crazy, and I told him, I said, no matter what happens, if somebody throws a punch, if somebody spits at me, whatever anybody does, you can't react.
You cannot do anything.
And I know that's like, it's hard for, I know it's hard for a man to, you know, to watch his wife have to take that kind of stuff.
But I told him, I'm like, it's, you know, don't, I, do not be concerned.
I am not.
So just don't react.
And then we went up there.
He ended up, there was an empty seat that was next to him.
One of the guys that we came with who when I was with the organization was someone that I worked with would not even sit down.
He was terrified.
He was so terrified.
He would not even sit down.
So he left this empty seat behind my husband.
And Ted Deutsch, the congressman there in Florida, sat next to my husband.
And he did not know that that was my husband.
And he was saying all kinds of stuff and yelling all kinds of stuff.
But it was, I mean, it was, it was kind of unbelievable.
And I, I, when I, when we left, it was, I don't know how to describe everything was very still.
And I didn't want to run away.
I wanted to look everyone in the eye, not as a sign of intimidation or anything like that.
But, you know, I could see that there were genuinely people who were hurting.
And that is where I wanted to keep my focus because there was a very, I mean, people lost their families, you know?
And I will never forget there was a woman who stood up and was reading something about her daughter off of a piece of paper.
And she was shaking so much.
I could see her shaking from my vantage point on the stage.
And I watched as a camera guy ran up and I'm not getting angry at the camera guy.
I know he was being given a directive from the control room and get in front of her.
And I know he was, he was pointing the camera lens at her face.
And they were, I mean, I'm sure at that point, broadcasting the pain in her face on television as she's reading this thing about her daughter.
And I didn't react to that until the next morning at CPAC.
But that really stayed with me.
And that it made me a little nauseous.
So that was my experience with that.
Yeah, I always think, I mean, I mean, I'm a defender of the Second Amendment, but like the last time that I would want to go up and have to make an argument would be right after a shooting or in the midst of all that passion.
I have respect for anybody who would try that in that time.
It's so hard.
The narrative, it feels like you're not being compassionate.
If there's a shooting or something and you're like, well, yeah, but I just have guns and I don't shoot anybody.
So, you know.
Well, and the thing was, too, is that there were some really serious aspects of the story that, I mean, for people who are, and this I didn't even view as a gun issue.
For people who are concerned about dangerous people being able to obtain firearms, there was some real incompetency here.
And not just in the schools, but in under sheriff, former sheriff Scott Israel and within his department.
And as citizens, you know, I was concerned as a citizen and as a parent with kids in school, I was concerned.
And I wanted to bring those up because, I mean, for instance, if the police under Scott Israel had acted, that dude in question, that murderer in question, he had already pulled a gun to a kid and on a kid, put it to his head.
He had beaten up his adoptive mother and knocked teeth out of her head and all this stuff.
Horrible things.
He's done horrible things.
He was threatening people digitally.
Well, in Florida, I mean, everything that he did was actionable.
And I think under their state statute, it was felonious.
And he could have been arrested before he ever bought a rifle.
And he wasn't because their program in their school was to, they were focusing on reducing criminal reports.
And the way that they did that was literally to not report it.
I'm not even making this up.
Like they, I mean, they, Robert Runcy, who was the superintendent and is still the superintendent of the district, was like, look, I reduced, you know, the criminal activity here by X percent.
And it's because he stopped reporting it.
They literally, I mean, we're talking serious crimes too.
There was a huge report with the Florida Sun Sentinel where they covered this.
And that's so that contributed, I mean, that's there are so many places that where people could have intervened.
And by people, I specifically mean law enforcement in the school where they could have stopped this dude.
And they didn't.
And so, as someone who was representing people who were being wrongly blamed, and also as a parent who wanted to make sure that this wasn't in my kids' school, I wanted to speak out and address that.
Yes.
So what's the logic even of going?
I never even, people are so passionate about this, like coming after the NRA on this.
And I don't even connect that in my head.
Like, how can you sit there and blame the NRA for one insane person's actions?
I mean, is there I guess what it is is that they, and the hard part of this whole thing is if you argue, and they do, the left does this with a lot of things.
They do this with abortion too, or just about anything.
Like, we've created the solution.
If you don't go along with this exact solution, then you hate and want the bad stuff.
You want, you know, you want murder if you don't want gun control and on and on and on.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what we, that's what we hear.
Well, my gosh.
And a great example of that.
And I'm glad that you brought up the abortion aspect of it too.
For instance, in Texas, state of Texas, this is when Wendy Davis was running for office and she got a lot of fame off of this.
Texas was increasing standards of care for abortion clinics that were trying to, they wanted to have the best of both worlds.
They wanted to identify as health clinics, medical clinics.
But then at the same time, they didn't want to have to meet the requirements of a medical clinic.
They did not want to have to have a staff member who was who had admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.
They did not want to have like an actual anesthesiologist there.
They did not, there were a number of things that they just wanted to skirt.
And state law was saying, okay, you can't have all of this.
You can't have, you know, that you have to do one or the other.
And they said, okay, if you want to identify as a medical clinic, we need you to meet these standards of care.
Well, they actually then went to the press and said, can you believe that Texas is trying to shut down all of these clinics?
Which, yes, they should be.
But with, you know, for this argument, it's, that wasn't even what was being proposed.
And they were going on and on about it.
Wendy Davis with her pink Nikes.
That's when she went and she was, you know, had her big, you know, filibuster moment, all this stuff.
And that, that wasn't even what was being stated.
And, but that's how it was presented nationally.
And they went on this whole thing.
Well, to all these, all these men in Texas, you know, because there was no conservative women at all, they are just, they're just wanting to run women's health care down and deny us health care.
I've never just like, you know, full disclosure, I've never gone to the doctor and to be treated and have him tell me, well, if you just rip this baby leg off, you will be cured of whatever, you know, if you, I like I had strep throat last week, right?
We tested, it wasn't a coronavirus, we tested positive for strep throat.
When I went in to see my doctor and he did a swab, he didn't then turn to me and say, you know, if you rip off this baby arm and then and then vacuum this out, you're going to be totally great and no more strep.
That was not, that was not the remedy for that.
So for that to be considered health care, I just, I don't know.
Maybe that doctor was, maybe that doctor was pro-life and therefore unqualified to be a doctor.
Right.
Yeah, the doctors have never recommended abortion for me either.
Yeah, I know.
And see, like, how, so that's sexist.
Yeah, that is sexist.
That's true.
How sexist is that?
You know, I mean, for them not to give you that option.
That's just crazy.
But so that's what to go into your point about how they choose to present stuff.
That's that, and that also happened actually nationally too with one of those, with one of the cases that, and the president was getting involved in that as well.
This is basically the same thing as Texas.
Well, I didn't connect what you, it was the like they didn't want to have the health standards.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it was about the increase.
It was simply about saying if you're going to be, if you're going to be like, you know, a medical clinic, you have to meet the requirements that every other medical clinic does.
You know, that's, that's like me saying that I'm going to operate, you know, a dental practice out of my house.
You know, no, no, degree or anything.
I don't know anything about dentistry.
But if you need teeth pulled, I do have pliers.
And saying I'm going to just have a dental practice and I'm going to just start ripping people's teeth out, but I'm not going to be licensed and I'm not going to meet the requirements that define and regulate other dental practices.
I mean, that's essentially the exact same thing.
It's just a different variable.
And it might be somewhat reductive, but that doesn't make it any less accurate.
Yeah, abortion is healthcare, but we're not going to wash our hands or anything.
There's no laws about that.
Yeah, there's no.
No, we don't have admitting privileges.
What?
If you get just, I don't know, I'll have to just sit here.
Don't know what to tell you.
It's crazy talk.
So at that CNN town hall, was that the one where you were confronted with by one of the victims or what they call one of the kids, the students from the school?
Oh, yeah, the students, the students were, they had questions that were on paper that they would ask.
And then there were a couple, there was a teacher as well.
And then they had, I mean, other individuals in the audience, I think that there were some parents.
I didn't, at that point, I don't think there weren't, I don't remember any parents asking me a question.
I know it was a student and then I believe one of their teachers.
I don't know if it was a history teacher, but it was one of the teachers at the school.
And you didn't know that was coming that night?
Like you didn't know that you were going to be in that position?
No.
Wow.
No.
Not at all.
Yeah, I had, I just was told when we got there that not only are you going to be on stage, but you'll be on stage with Scott Israel.
And then when I and I still had no idea what that setup looked like until it actually started and when I was backstage in the holding room or back in the arena in the holding room, when Marco Rubio went out with Ted DeWitt, that was when I first got a when I first saw how it was going to be set up.
Yeah, I mean, you should have been tipped off when they dropped the big cage down over you guys.
Well, I thought it was weird that there were, you know, there were women there with big cards that were announcing the rounds.
And I just didn't, I thought that's kind of odd for a town hall.
I've never seen that before.
Yeah, what are some of the kind of behind the scenes stuff you don't see on TV at an event like that?
Yeah, I mean, well, for sure.
Well, there was at one point at the end of it when things kind of got out of hand and it all happened really, really quickly.
I had a three-person detail.
And as I was getting up and I said goodbye to Jake Tapper, Scott Israel wanted nothing to do with me.
Like he wouldn't even, I tried to address him and he turned his, he physically turned his back on me.
I'm like, okay, good grief.
Like if I, if I was wearing your uniform, I would have done a thousand times better than you and I can probably shoot better than you too.
But anyway.
And then I thought, okay, well, I'm, you know, I was being polite and just being nice.
And so I went to walk down the stairs that had been pushed up to the edge of the stage.
And they were these metal rolling stairs and they had one rail.
And there were people who were trying to take the stairs away.
And I lost one of the people on my detail because he had to run around to the front.
There was a woman who had hopped over the stage and she apparently had taken a shoe off and was coming at me from behind.
And had I been on the stage, had I not had a detail or had I, you know, had been on the stage for like a couple of seconds longer, that would have been not great.
I mean, for her, it would not have been great.
And the getting off, there was a woman who had grabbed my arm and was, as I was walking down the stairs, because I was holding onto the rail because it's really hard to walk down the stairs, the metal stairs when they're, they're, when people are moving them.
And so I was trying to, to walk down the stairs, and a woman had grabbed my arm.
And my detail, one of the members of my detail kept saying, we need to go.
And I'm like, I physically can't.
And so they, the next thing I knew, they, one of them had wedged himself in between the folks in the crowd and behind me.
And the other was on the side of me.
And they linked arms and they kind of lifted me up and picked me up off of the ground by like a couple of inches to a point where I was at least extricated from the grip of this one woman and put me down.
And I was like, I'm not running.
I'm going to walk slow and I'm going to keep my hut up and I'm going to look at everyone, but I'm not going to run away.
And that's, and then we it was just weird when we got backstage because the producers, one of them is a friend that I haven't actually spoken to since this happened.
And I've known him for, oh my goodness, many years.
I met him first at ABC when he worked on Diane with Diane Sawyer.
And we always had a good relationship.
We would talk every now and then.
And I haven't spoken to him since, but they just did not even know how to react.
I mean, the producers, they just did not even know.
There was nothing that they could say.
And our security was just like, we got to get out of here, get, And the whole arena had erupted at that point.
And we got into the car and then we had to race to the airport because I had to catch a flight to go to DC.
And that was like at 11 o'clock at night.
And I was getting like the last flight out to get to DC for CPAC the next morning.
And I had to be downstairs at CPAC at like six something because the vice president was going to be down speaking.
And so that was a little, that was a little crazy.
And I think I had my adrenaline dump like on CPAC stage the next morning.
So, but it was surreal.
It was very surreal.
But there were a lot of hurting people.
And I always, I felt that, you know, the network was just really cruddy to them.
Well, you had a new book coming out, right?
Yes.
Grace Canceled.
Grace canceled.
It's all about, well, it's how outrage is destroying lives and ending debate and endangering democracy.
So you are you against cancel culture?
Sounds like I'm very much against cancel culture.
Yes.
I don't, I don't like cancel culture because I think that it promotes a refusal of redemption.
It sounds like you're saying you would cancel cancel culture.
Yeah, I don't like cancel culture.
I just don't.
Yeah.
Slightly hypocritical, I'd say.
Wow.
I'm going to cancel the canceling culture.
Cancelization.
Chalk one up for Ethan Nicole.
Logic one.
Logic and Ethan won.
Dana zero.
No, I don't like cancel culture.
It's, it's, it's, it's just, it's awful.
It makes everything stupid.
Yeah, I think the big thing is that it basically says you can never be forgiven.
You're just canceled.
There's no path to redemption for you.
You're just canceled.
That's it.
I mean, that doesn't do anything.
What are some best examples to you of cancel culture?
Because there are many people.
Usually you're on the left if you think cancer culture does not exist.
You see people saying that often.
It's a myth.
It's like Bigfoot.
Yeah, it's totally not a myth.
Not at all.
I have an entire chapter in the book called Milkshake Ducks and Rage Mobs.
And everybody remembers the whole milkshake duck thing.
That was, it was like a tweet from several years ago.
Yeah, milkshake duck.
Like quack, quack duck?
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Milkshake duck.
I remember the vegan coconut milkshakes from Portland, but I don't.
No, I wish it was a real thing because that would be adorable.
But it was a tweet from, and I have it cited in the book.
It was on Twitter and someone was sort of remarking on cancel culture and saying, oh, look, the media's discovered this adorable duck that loves drinking milkshakes.
And then five seconds later, we regret to inform you that the duck is racist.
Because that's milkshake duck.
So that's what it's, it was just such a statement on how everyone, instead of actually having a debate on ideas, everybody decided, you know what?
I'm going to go back 15 years in your Twitter timeline.
And then you're I found this tweet from you 15 years ago, which is crazy that you can have from 15 years ago.
Yeah.
So it, I mean, it was, it kind of went there.
And I have so many examples, including the dude who was, this was in Iowa or no, Nebraska, yeah, Iowa.
The dude who was in Iowa and he was at a college football game.
It was the championships.
And he had a sign that he, he was in the audience and he had a sign that says, I'm out of beer money.
Please Venmo me.
And he had his Venmo account up.
And because, you know, this is the world in which we live, apparently so many people were sending him.
So everybody was sending this guy cash.
And I didn't realize it was so easy to get that.
You just had to go on television and be like, I need this.
Send me money.
And people Venmo you money even for beer.
And he got so much that he actually did something really cool.
He's like, you know, I'm actually going to put this towards a children's hospital.
And when he did that, all these people took notice and even Anheuser-Busch took notice.
And so they partnered with him.
They were going to match it.
And he was doing all this cool stuff.
Well, then some reporter at one of the papers there in Iowa thought, you know what's going to be really what everyone needs to know about this story?
They need to know what this dude tweeted 15 years ago.
Yeah.
In high school.
Yeah, when he was in high school.
And what they found was he had, he had quote tweeted or he had quoted, oh, I can't remember even the comedian.
It wasn't Dane Cook.
I can't remember who.
Tosh, it was the Tosh guy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel Tosh.
He quoted Daniel Tosh, and the reporter attributed Daniel Tosh's quote to this dude and then tried to ruin his life over it.
And so the fallout was Anheuser-Busch ended their partnership and all of this awesome money and the momentum that was going towards children's hospitals.
I mean, doing something really good for people, it all ended.
And this guy, this guy, apparently, everybody was supposed to regard him as this horrible person.
And then he apologized.
He got ahead of it.
And even before the article came out and said, I apologize, heaven forbid, he watched Tosh.0 and quoted Daniel Tosh.
And he apologized for it.
And then the internet does what the internet does.
And they went after this reporter at this paper and found actually some not quotes from people that were pretty problematic.
And then he ended up losing his job.
So the whole thing was a ridiculous, vicious circle.
It was fascinating to watch because I watched that all happen on Twitter.
It's like watching a snake eat itself.
Exactly.
And the important thing is that that journalist didn't learn anything.
Yeah.
Remember his interview when he brought up the lesson he learned.
He's like, this is what, he's like, this is what, what did he say?
This is what women of color, women of color go through.
Yeah, he's like, that's not the lesson.
Like, that's not what, that's not what this is, but no.
Oh, and there, yeah, there are, there are a lot of examples of that in there, the whole cancel culture thing.
I think one of the best ones is that it was the first boycott of Chick-fil-A.
And this was back in like 2009, 2010.
Like, ancient change.
Yeah, I know.
It seems like forever ago now.
And every, so the, the, there were a bunch of, there were LGBTQ activists that were targeting Chick-fil-A because heaven forbid, Dan Kathy thought something differently and believed something differently when he wasn't not physically making chicken sandwiches.
I don't think anybody, anybody believes Dan Kathy actually makes any chicken sandwich, but no, they, he believed something that would, and, and apparently, and he ran his business according to Christian principles, treated his employees good, hired everybody.
But the fact that he existed with a different thought, that was a big, bad, and so people were targeting Chick-fil-A of all places.
And the, the act was they were going to go and ask Chick-fil-A for cups of water.
You know, like if my enemy is thirsty, give him something to drink.
I guess they thought Chick-fil-A was going to run out of water and it was going to bankrupt Chick-fil-A because of water.
I don't know, but that was their strategy.
I'm just, you know, I'm just reporting the facts.
And there was one dude named Adam who off the bat, like when right we see Adam as he's recording himself, we can tell that this guy is super high strung and upset all the time, right?
He was the male Karen, the original male Karen.
And his name is Adam.
Marin, that's right.
And so he's talking into the phone and he's recording himself and he drives up to the Chick-fil-A window where Rachel, who works with Chick-fil-A, this was in Arizona, hands him his water and he begins berating her.
And she is so kind and so sweet throughout and she's really holding the line.
But you could tell that what he was saying was really hurting her.
And she, she just has one of the, has one of those countenances where you, I mean, you could, you can tell.
And she's trying to maintain her smile, but you could see her eyes are getting really shiny and it just wasn't good.
And you felt really bad for her.
And Adam drives away and he's like basically high-fiving himself and he uploads triumphantly his video to YouTube.
And then the internet actually, everybody agreed that he was a big jerk.
And then they decided to go after him.
And he ended up losing his job.
And he ended up on food stamps for a while.
And he did this Mayoculpa video where he apologized, but I don't think that he was fully there in his journey to understanding why what he did was wrong.
And everybody was, and myself included, I was like, well, that's Shot and Freuda.
You know, that's, that's what you get.
And I was totally like that, admittedly.
And then I saw this interview that she gave with Stuart Varney.
And it was so remarkable in that I've never, I've never seen anything quite like this.
She had has never, she only consented to that interview and she has never done another one.
I don't even know what has become of, I mean, she's, you know, in Arizona and I don't know if she's still working for Chick-fil-A or what, but she's super sweet.
And she had her fiancé there with her and she, he was mic'd up too, but he was there for emotional support.
He did not speak at all during the interview.
And Stuart Varney was asking her, you know, this is, you know, you're, you, you handled this so great.
You know, you're, you're so amazing.
And she was genuinely, you could tell uncomfortable by all the praise.
And she said, I'm just a service worker, which I thought was one of just the most amazing things I think I've ever heard because that's, I'm like, just, there's so, there's so much meaning there.
Yeah.
And then he asked her, he said, well, if you could tell the American people anything, what would you say?
And she goes, well, I just hope that people treat him with as much kindness as I did that day.
And I thought, oh my gosh, we just got owned.
We all just got owned because we should have been her.
Instead, we turned into him and we should have been her.
And I thought that was, I wish that story would have gotten more attention.
I wish that the way she had handled it would have gotten more attention than the way that he handled it because she had already forgiven him before he even drove off.
And that was evident.
And I just, I just love the way that she handled it and I love the way she presented herself.
And she didn't compromise any single thing.
And I think a lot of people think grace is complicity or sanction or something, but it's not.
It's complete and unmerited kindness.
And the way that she handled that, I thought was so unbelievably remarkable.
And I wish that that had been bigger than what he had done.
Yeah, I'm often having to catch myself when I all suddenly see something where somebody's getting dogpiled and somebody who I disagree with.
So suddenly it feels okay to like dogpile that person and cancel them.
But if you're anti-cancel culture, I mean, you know, like the yeah, you got to be consistent.
Principles get strength from consistency.
And I think we got to be consistent.
And I actually think there's something to just being consistent is like out of fashion.
So I got to be old-fashioned and consistent with my beliefs so I can stay up for that.
That is interesting.
Yeah, that is how it's kind of seen.
Oh, I'm being old-fashioned and being consistent.
Like, when did that turn into like, it's not anachronistic.
I mean, it's still of the times.
Well, I wonder how much, too, this has been affected by social media, you know?
Totally.
Because some of the I remember the first big like school shooting thing I remember was Columbine.
There wasn't social media and there wasn't that immediate response of dogpiling on people you disagree with.
And then we had that more recent shooting where you ended up doing the town hall.
And I mean, it was just like immediate, like people found this villain and her name was Dana, you know?
Yeah.
Like, and it was, it was somebody.
And they brought the kids out.
That was kind of, that was the big, really media center.
It was very interesting.
The way that they painted it and the way that you saw the immediate response of social media.
A lot of it seemed prepared almost.
Like, I don't know, just watching from a distance.
No, I was.
I would agree.
I would agree with that.
I think social media intensifies it.
I think it, and it, social media can be used for some really awesome things that it can be so bad too.
I think people get addicted to the attention and the there's it's like a smaller arena, a smaller and more inconsequential arena for modern day gladiatorism for the lack of a better way to put it.
That's what it kind of seems like.
Yeah.
But it is.
It does intensify it.
And I think it the, I don't know if it's just because of the short form communication with Twitter that you cannot dive into into nuance discussion or what it is, but it does it does, I think, encourage this tribal polarity for sure.
Thanks a lot.
And yeah, if you guys want to check out Dina's book, it's called Something.
Grace Cancel.
Cancel.
I want to say Grace uncanceled for some reason.
That's the opposite of your title.
No, no, Grace Canceled.
And people can get it at DanaLash.com.
DanaLash.com.
Beautiful.
Okay.
Well, thanks a lot.
Thank you, guys.
Appreciate it.
Don't get the Corona.
We'll try not to.
And you also.
Yeah.
No promises.
May the force be with you.
And also with you.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
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Yes.
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Would the Second Amendment cover laser sharks?
Like if you were to fit a laser to a shark?
The Second Amendment covers all bearing of arms and also apparently tanks.
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