All Episodes
Aug. 30, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
55:14
Ep. 174 - The Left Should Sit Next To Kaepernick For The National Anthem

Kaepernick IS the modern left, Trump prepares for the debates, and we Deconstruct The Culture! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
So last week, the left lost its mind because the price of EpiPens skyrocketed.
EpiPens are these things that you use if you have a bee sting and you go into anaphylactic shock.
Hillary Clinton quickly jumped on the story.
She characterized it as a failure of capitalism.
She said, quote, millions of Americans with severe reactions rely on their EpiPens.
Over the last several years, Mylan Pharmaceuticals has increased the price of EpiPens by more than 400%.
That's outrageous, and it's just the latest troubling example of a company taking advantage of its consumers.
Naturally, as always, Hillary called for more regulation.
But there's a reason EpiPens have skyrocketed in price, and it's not because the company is super duper mean to little kids who suffer from bee stings.
Here are the two real reasons why EpiPens got so expensive so fast.
First, insurance coverage masked the increase.
So insurers and employers typically negotiate with Mylan Pharmaceuticals over EpiPen prices.
That means end users didn't have any clue about the price increases until they lost their insurance or until their deductibles jumped.
So thanks, Obamacare, for forcing parents into position where they had to pay cash for the EpiPens or pay more for their insurance coverage.
Mylan has actually been giving coupons to consumers, customers, for co-payments on commercial insurance.
They've handed out 700,000 EpiPens to public schools for free.
But Obamacare has made people feel the pain via their insurance companies because now they have to buy the insurance or they have to pay a fine.
Mylan CEO Heather Bresch, who by the way is the daughter of a Democratic senator, says, quote, we recognize the significant burden on patients from continued rising insurance premiums and being forced to pay the full list price for medicines at the pharmacy counter.
So thanks, Obama.
Second reason.
The federal government prevents competition.
So EpiPen could only jack up prices because they have no competition in the marketplace.
EpiPen doesn't cost $600 in Europe.
That's weird that they were able to escape competition, given that epinephrine, which is the key component in the EpiPens, isn't patented.
It's been synthesized for well over a century.
In Europe, there are lots of competitors to the EpiPen.
But in the United States, the FDA has actually prevented competitors from entering the market.
The biggest competitor to EpiPen, which is called Adrenaclick, is barred from substitution for EpiPen in prescriptions.
So what that means is that if your doctor writes you on EpiPen, normally your pharmacist can give you the generic version.
They can't under law.
Obviously, EpiPen lobbies to prevent competition.
So far, they've succeeded.
The solution here isn't to create more government regulations that would ensure more competition in the insurance and medical device marketplace.
The solution is price controls, according to the left.
That would make availability of EpiPens lower, not higher.
In the end, it would destroy the marketplace altogether.
But that's what the government is good for.
The government doesn't create markets.
It doesn't create products.
All it does is create shortages, hire products, and tells you it's doing the bidding of the people while it does all of these things.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So first of all, I want to thank our newest advertiser, U.S.
Tax Shield.
So, if you're having problems because you haven't paid back taxes to the IRS, and let's face it, you could have done that by mistake because the tax codes are so ridiculous and overbearing.
You could have done it because you just neglected to pay your taxes, or you could have avoided taxes.
Whatever the situation is, the worst thing you can do now is to just continue to avoid paying your taxes.
What you really need to do is go to my friends over at U.S.
Tax Shield.
They have an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.
And they help all these people.
They help people just like you who have personal tax liabilities or business payroll tax liabilities or fees and penalties.
You can call them for a free consultation and a senior tax consultant will call the IRS hotline with you on the line.
You can actually have this consultant on the line to help you find out exactly what your liabilities are and then they'll walk you through the process and give you a guaranteed quote that never increases no matter how much work they have to do for you.
They also set you up with what they call the Fresh Start program that helps you come clean with the IRS, settle your debt in a very short period of time.
This is obviously imperative.
If Hillary Clinton's in the White House, we're all getting audited.
So if you have back taxes, now's the time to pay them, gang.
You need to call up U.S.
Tax Shield today.
Free consultation at 1-800-542-2226.
That's 1-800-542-2226, or you can visit us at us-tax-shield.com-slash-ben.
Make sure it's us-tax-shield.com-slash-ben.
The slash-ben makes sure that they know that we sent you, and that means that they continue to advertise with us, which, of course, we're grateful for, and so are all of the illegal immigrants, slave laborers that we hire to work on this show.
Their English is surprisingly good, actually, but, you know, but there you have it.
Okay, so us-tax-shield.com-slash-ben.
The number again, 800-542-2226.
Okay, so we begin today with the latest in Wienerville.
So, the Wiener Saga continues.
Uhuma has now cut off the wiener, and she is no longer wearing her wedding ring.
Which, again, I know all my ideas of romance died the minute they announced that they were breaking up.
Remember when Al Gore broke up with Tipper, and the media went nuts?
Oh my god, if Al Gore is breaking up with Tipper, And that means all romance is dead.
Well, it turned out that romance was not dead.
No one cared.
But there were like tons of articles about this.
Al Gore, if it can happen to Alan Tipper, who can't it happen to?
Well, me.
It can't happen to me.
But the same thing is sort of now happening with Huma and Anthony Weiner, people going, oh my God, our ideas of romance, they're just dead.
Okay, if your idea of romance was an arranged marriage officiated by Bill Clinton, let me recommend that you have a better idea of marriage and romance in the future.
because come on, gang.
I mean, seriously.
Come on.
The left, though.
They've said we should all stop paying attention to Wiener Gate 2016.
We have to say Wiener Gate 2016 because that's what distinguishes it from Wiener Gate 2012 and Wiener Gate 2014.
But Wiener Gate 2016 is a whole new scandal.
And the Democrats are saying we should not pay any attention to Wiener Gate.
Wiener Gate must be ignored.
Ignore the wiener behind the curtain.
So, here is Jennifer Granholm, who's legitimately one of the crazier women in politics.
I mean, she is completely nuts.
She's the one who was waving her arms like a shrieking banshee at the DNC back in 2012.
And she says it's time to respect Huma Abedin's privacy.
I mean, I think that Donald Trump and everyone else should respect the privacy of Huma Abedin, who is, as you know, an utterly graceful, wonderful human being who's going through a terrible situation and who's tried to keep her marriage together.
So I say let us respect their privacy.
That is nonsense about classified information.
Okay, so what Trump had said that bothered her is he said that it's upsetting when you have somebody who is susceptible to being blackmailed over this sort of stuff so close to classified information.
Okay, it's not the world's strongest argument, but it ain't the end of the world.
I mean, Democrats have been making this argument for years and years and years.
But the Democrats have decided the bad guy.
So Anthony Weiner texts his junk to other people.
Huma Abedin has basically a sham marriage with Anthony Weiner for several years.
Anthony Weiner, by the way, was texting that to his paramour online.
He was saying, yeah, we have a broken marriage, a sham marriage for the last several years.
But the real person at fault here in all of this is not Wiener and it's not Houma.
It's actually Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is the bad guy here.
This is all silly towns.
I mean, the real person at fault is, of course, Anthony Wiener.
And again, if you were surprised by this, then that's because you haven't been watching the news for the last six years or so.
I also want to make one more point on this, and that is that Jennifer Granholm said, oh, it's all personal.
It's so private.
It's personal and private.
According to the left, personal and private don't really exist anymore.
The personal is political.
Every person on the right who's ever done something that the left doesn't approve of in their personal life is outed and shamed and their career destroyed.
Every single person.
When someone on the left does something that is really kind of gross, And we talk about it?
Then it's, oh, their personal life.
You can't touch their personal life.
How dare you?
How dare you talk about the deep personal relationship gap that now exists between Huma Abedin, a very public figure, and Anthony Weiner, another very public figure.
How dare you talk about such things?
You know, that's their private life.
The reason for this is because people on the left have no standards.
So if you have no social standards, it's very easy to say, oh, Denny Haster, look at that guy.
You know, he was having sex with, or at least allegedly molesting, high school boys back in the day until he's a hypocrite.
Mark Foley, he was nailing the pages.
He's a hypocrite.
But Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner, they have no standards on sexual behavior, so how dare you?
How dare you call them out?
What this does, it leads everybody to have no standards.
If you have no standards on sexual behavior, if you don't stand up for any standard on sexual behavior, then you can never be called a hypocrite.
Donald Trump is not called a hypocrite on sexual behavior because he has no standards on sexual behavior.
This is the way that the left is capable of destroying standards for an entire society on the basis of a few scandals.
So here's my rule.
If it's news for one side, it's news for the other.
If Steve Bannon getting into an altercation with his ex-wife is front page news at the New York Post, then it's also front page news at the New York Post that Anthony Weiner was sexting his junk to women across the country.
The left doesn't get to claim that the personal is political, except when it applies to the left, in which case the personal is personal.
Also worth noting, for the left, what is personal has always been a very controversial subject.
I mean, now, I'm supposed to pay for a woman's abortion.
That's not personal.
I'm supposed to pay for it.
That's in their platform.
It's supposed to be publicly funded abortion.
I was under the impression that that was, at least according to the Democrats, a private decision, but now I have to pay for it.
I have to pay for Sandra Fluck's contraceptive care.
I'm supposed to do all these things because the personal is no longer personal, the private is no longer private.
It's my business to pay for all the stuff you do, but it's not my business what you do.
That simply doesn't wash.
If it's all of our business that we have to pay for everybody else's sex lives, then if their sex lives become the news story, that's just the way that it goes.
But the defenses of the Clintons and the Wieners are rolling on.
And Joan Walsh, who's legitimately one of the nuttier people in politics, she's over at Salon.com, she was on MSNBC the other day, and she's saying that Donald Trump is not just a bad guy because of Huma Abedin, she's saying Donald Trump is bad because he's questioning the health of Hillary Clinton, which shows that he's a vicious, vicious sexist.
What did Paul Ryan call the classic definition of a racist comment?
This is the classic definition of sexism.
You know, men, bad men...
Men have basically said for centuries that women can't handle the rigors of most jobs, but most importantly the presidency, because our tiny little lady brains and, you know, our proclivity to hysteria and exhaustion just disqualify us from leading the free world.
Well, as no one has ever said that except for Joan Walsh just now, I'm wondering where she got the whole Donald Trump says that lady brains are incapable of functioning at high level.
If her point here is that lady brains are capable of functioning at high level, perhaps she could provide us with a better example next time she's on television.
Okay, in other news, the Colin Kaepernick scandal continues to play out.
So the left, you know, the left has trouble with the Colin Kaepernick situation.
Colin Kaepernick is, of course, the really crappy quarterback.
For the San Francisco 49ers.
He is not good at what he does and he was sitting down for the national anthem, made a big deal out of it.
We talked about this yesterday.
Now the media are starting to just worship at Kaepernick's altar.
Kaepernick is a brave man.
He's a wonderful man.
He's just a great, brave, wonderful man.
What a wonderful, wonderful guy.
And they've trotted out all the usual suspects in order to talk about how brave Colin Kaepernick is.
So they've got Spike Lee out there.
Spike Lee, who's legitimately a racist.
I mean, Spike Lee, he says that he stares daggers at interracial couples.
Spike Lee is very, very upset that Harlem has gentrified, so it's no longer a crap hole.
Now Harlem actually has people there who have money.
They're actual investors in businesses moving in, making lives better around the community.
Spike Lee opposes that.
Colin Kaepernick says that, Spike Lee says Colin Kaepernick is just like Muhammad Ali, What a wonderful guy Colin Kaepernick is, and of course he's wearing the Malcolm X t-shirt, he made the movie X with Denzel Washington, but it is worth noting that for large swaths of the black community, for all of the homage paid to Martin Luther King, in the eyes of a lot of people on the left, Malcolm X actually won.
The racial polarization of early Malcolm X, not the pre-Islamic conversion when he decided to be peaceful, the kind of early Malcolm X, Nation of Islam Malcolm X, There are people like Spike Lee who still believe in that vision of Malcolm X, the kind of racial polarization, America's a terrible place and needs to be torn out by the root.
Here's Spike Lee talking about how Colin Kaepernick is a hero for not standing up for the national anthem.
Muhammad Ali was the most hated person in America.
He couldn't box in America.
Muhammad Ali, people love, is him lighting the torch with his arms shaking.
They should understand in what tradition, the history, of why Colin did this.
Okay, the reason Colin did this is because he's going to get cut in a week.
And so when he gets cut, he wants people to think that it was because he was really having a tough time with the racial controversy, not because he's a super crappy quarterback.
But I want to point out something, and that is that the left actually believes in what Colin Kaepernick is saying.
And Donald Trump had a response to Colin Kaepernick that I thought was ill-calibrated.
It was ill-calibrated.
I think a lot of people had this gut response, but it was an ill-calibrated response.
Trump came out and he said, look, if Colin Kaepernick hates the country so much, he can take off any time.
And I think that's a lot of people's gut reaction.
The reason I say that that's not a credible intellectual response is we all have criticisms of how the country is run.
We all have criticisms of various policies that affect us in our daily lives.
That doesn't mean you love it or leave it.
It does mean that his criticisms are unfounded.
It does mean that Colin Kaepernick, if he truly cared about young black people, he could do more than mouthing off and sitting on a bench.
He could actually go out there and encourage young black people to, for example, finish high school, get a job, and not have babies out of wedlock.
That would be a much better use of his time, as opposed to ripping on the cops.
But the left has decided that Colin Kaepernick is the new racial hero.
ESPN's Max Kellerman, who, as I've said, is just an awful host.
He's on one of the local stations out here in LA, and he's legitimately the worst host on radio.
He does a show called Max and Marcella's, which, if you can imagine a dental drill but in your ear, That is what that show is.
Max Kellerman was on TV and he's talking about... It is amazing how Max Kellerman is able to get away with... He drops into black dialect every so often on the show.
And it's really weird.
And it's amazing how he's able to get away with it because he's of the left.
But here's Max Kellerman talking about Kaepernick.
Instead of America, love it or leave it.
How about America, love it, so change it.
That's been the history of our country.
Those who really love America have consistently changed it for the better.
Okay, so he says, and I think that that's correct, that you can have criticisms of America without leaving America, and so the love it or leave it idea is, it can be used both ways, which is why I don't like that argument.
But here's the thing.
I don't even think folks on the left love America.
I don't.
I don't know what they love about America.
They think America not only is a terrible place, but that it was founded in this original sin of racism.
See, the narrative of America, according to Howard Zinn, is basically that America was born in sin, it was created in sin, and never escaped that sin.
So a bunch of evil white guys got together and decided they didn't want to be ruled by a bunch of other evil white guys, and they decided they were going to enshrine a system to protect their own property rights, and they were going to allow slavery to continue in the United States for another 80 years because they wanted to make sure that they were rich and privileged, Over the poor minorities as well as the poor whites.
And then we had 80 years of slavery.
And then we had the Civil War, which was for a few minutes an okay thing, but wasn't really fought over slavery anyway.
It was really fought over economic interests.
And then there was 100 years of Jim Crow, which was basically winged and nodded at by the federal government.
America's a bad place, founded in racism.
It's baked into our DNA, as President Obama likes to say.
Hillary Clinton has said sort of the same thing.
And so what I don't understand is why the left would be critical of Kaepernick even sitting for the anthem.
I don't know why they stand for the anthem.
You know, I made this comment to a lefty this morning.
I do a morning show out here in this leftist on the morning show, and we were having this conversation.
He said, "I actually think that there's value to what Kaepernick's saying." And I said, "Okay, so let me ask you, why do you stand for the anthem?" And he says, "Well, because I'm patriotic." And I said to him, "I need a definition for your word." The left likes to use buzzwords like patriotic, but I don't know what that means.
If America love it, so change it, is the definition of patriotic, then presumably bin Laden could have been a patriot, right?
He could love America and just want to change it by turning it into an Islamic caliphate.
And anyone who wants to change the country, at least at its root level, doesn't love the founding ideals.
And what do you love about America?
Its borders.
You like the scenery?
You have to be more specific.
What makes you a patriot?
What makes me a patriot is that I believe in the foundational philosophy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, limited government, individual liberty, individual responsibility, rights given by God.
That's what I love about the United States.
Those foundational principles, which we haven't always lived up to, But which we have strived to live up to and gradually have recognized in some ways, in some very, very important ways, while losing it in other ways, like when it comes to government intervention in the economy and its crackdown on religious freedom.
At the same time that we've obviously expanded the beautiful ideas of the Constitution and Declaration to various minority groups, blacks and Hispanics and gays and Jews and women.
You know, as we've done all of that, Which has been a wonderful, wonderful development.
We've receded in some ways with regard to the size and scope of government, which now is in your business all the time, every day, right?
I mean, that's just the fact of that.
But you can love the founding principles, which is what the flag was created to stand for.
I don't think that the left likes those principles very much.
They don't like limited government.
They don't like the idea of God-given rights.
You get your rights from government, according to the left.
Not from God.
They don't like the idea of individual responsibility.
We're all supposed to take corporate responsibility, collective responsibility for the individual's sin.
So I'm not sure why they stand for the anthem.
I'm really not.
I think they do it out of politics.
And here's the thing.
Most people know this.
Most people know this.
Harvard did a study.
In 2011.
And in this study, what they found was that the vast majority of people who actually go to a 4th of July march, like a 4th of July parade, end up moving toward the right.
They end up moving toward Republicans, even though the parades have no political content.
There's no political content there.
They end up moving to the right anyway, because when people swell to the flag, when people thrill to the idea of America, what they're thrilling to is the founding story, that story of a country founded in grand ideals that we haven't always lived up to, but we've lived up to better than any other country, and we've spread that liberty around the globe, ensured it for literally billions of people all over the planet over the course of history.
We've saved countless lives.
We've made life better for everyone inside the United States.
We're the most powerful, most free country in the history of the world.
That's what we love about it.
The left doesn't love those things.
The left sees us.
The left sees history.
This is why they call themselves progressive.
They see history as a continuous chain of improvements, but what that means is That the founding principles were bad, and so we're improving those founding principles.
We're moving beyond that.
Barack Obama said this in his second inaugural address.
I thought it was the most ignored important line in history, in modern history.
He said, freedom means we don't all have to define liberty the same way.
Well, no, that's actually what we do have to define the same way.
That's the one thing we do have to define the same way.
If we don't define liberty the same way, then your liberty is my tyranny.
Because your liberty to get a cake from me ensures that you can cram down on me the ability to steal my cake for your gay wedding.
Your liberty to get health care means that you can force my wife, who's a doctor, to take care of you without paying her.
We have to define liberty the same way, or there's nothing else to talk about in the United States.
But the left doesn't like any of these principles, and so I ask the left, why don't you sit alongside Kaepernick?
I mean, that's really what you should do.
Well, we have to take a break here on Facebook Live and YouTube, but you can go to dailywire.com to subscribe to the rest, and we have lots coming up, including deconstructing the culture.
We're going to talk about Donald Trump's debate preparation for whatever it's worth.
I'm not encouraged.
We'll talk about that.
We'll do some good Trump, bad Trump.
We'll talk about Hillary and her continuing unfolding failure of a campaign.
Lots to get to dailywire.com.
Eight bucks a month, you can become a subscriber.
Plus, you can join the mailbag, which we do on Thursdays.
The vaunted Ben Shapiro Show mailbag, the greatest mailbag in all of human history.
So we'll be doing that on Thursdays.
Go to dailywire.com to subscribe, or if you just want to listen to the rest, then go to iTunes or SoundCloud.
We are the number one conservative podcast in America, so thank you.
So, meanwhile, the media continue to target Donald Trump and just over and over Donald Trump.
Everything is about Trump, and we'll get to Trump in a little while.
We'll do a little bit of good Trump, bad Trump in just a minute.
I think it's important to point out that the Obama administration just continues to lie.
Like, they never, ever stop lying.
It is truly incredible.
So, John Kerry came out now, and it's amazing what they want from the media.
So the media's already on the side of the left, clearly.
The media already are siding with everything the left would want to do.
John Kerry, the man whose face is obviously suffering from some sort of internal collapse.
I mean, it looks like a mudslide in the San Fernando Hills.
John Kerry, he came out yesterday.
He was at a press gaggle in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
And he said that the media should stop covering terrorism.
He said, Remember this?
No country is immune from terrorism.
It's easy to terrorize.
Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
But if you decide one day you're going to be a terrorist, and you're willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people.
You can make some noise.
Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn't cover it quite so much.
People wouldn't know what's going on.
Then he paused for a second and his face went... and slid down the hill.
So, this is something that Obama has said before, too.
He said that the media constantly overstate the threat of terrorism...
How about this?
How about you protect us from terrorism and then we won't have to talk about the threat?
How about that?
But it's always the media at fault.
Obama's been saying this for years.
The reason he's unpopular on Obamacare is because the media aren't telling the truth.
The media... So it's amazing.
The left can blame the media and the media just take it.
That's totally fine.
When the bright blame the media correctly, then all hell breaks loose.
Speaking of lies, Josh Earnest over at the White House, the press secretary, again, this guy has the most Dickensian name.
I mean, Dickens is famous for having, you know, names for people like Chuzzlewit for people who are confused in the head.
All of his names are very evocative of what the people are.
Josh Earnest is the most Dickensian name because he's the least earnest person on earth, but he fakes earnestness.
So here's Josh Earnest talking about how Obamacare is a massive success.
By the way, all the premiums are skyrocketing and the program is going bankrupt.
The vast majority of people all across the country will have access to a plan That costs $75 a month or less.
And these are plans that are quality plans that meet a set of benchmarks that weren't previously available in an affordable way in the private insurance market.
Nope.
Nope.
So it turns out that about 10 to 11 percent of Americans are still without insurance plans.
The people he's talking about, the low-cost insurance plans, that's called Medicaid, gang.
He's not really talking about low-cost insurance plans.
I was talking to my nanny, and she buys her own insurance.
She's self-employed.
Or I employ her, but she's not.
I guess she's an independent contractor because she does other work for other people.
And she buys her own insurance plan.
And the insurance plan that she buys, she's spending, just for herself, $200 a month.
And she has a $75 copay every time she goes into the doctor.
And she's a healthy, you know, young woman.
She's probably in her early 40s.
That's not unusual.
The insurance plans, the premiums have jacked up everywhere.
But again, the lies must proceed.
And these lies must be crammed down on the American people.
So now, the Department of Justice, this one I love, the Department of Justice has released a video telling cops how they should deal with people.
They're actually telling cops that they need to treat people specially by asking them whether they are a man or a woman.
Make no assumptions.
Might be a man, might be a woman.
Here we go.
Your safety as an officer is always the first priority.
However, in order to be safe and effective, officers must be able to distinguish between a threat and a stereotype.
Driver's license and registration, please.
Yes, officer.
Is this your most current identification?
Yes, it is.
It needs to be updated.
Do you prefer if I call you ma'am or sir?
Ma'am, please.
When someone's name or gender on a license is different from what you expect, how do you react?
Is this person committing identity theft?
Are they a fugitive?
Possibly they're just transgender.
I don't have to be in the room with you to know what probably just happened.
Somebody just snickered, laughed, or made a joke.
Yep.
Trust me, I know.
I'm a cop too.
As police officers, we use humor to deal with things that make us uncomfortable or afraid.
Wait, I'm not- wait, hold on, what?
Sir, what were you doing?
Can you excuse us for a moment?
Just step up here for a minute.
Sal, what are you doing?
Don't let the fact that she's transgender throw you off, okay?
Show her the respect that she deserves.
You're right.
I'm sorry.
Okay, so let's show her that we're a professional agency and we'll go back out there and we'll start from the beginning.
Okay, I like the stilted dialogue.
That's my favorite part.
If officers understand who transgender people are as a part of their community, interactions can go a whole lot better.
Starting a dialogue and engaging proactively with transgender community members and community groups will be extremely helpful to your department now and in the future.
Okay, question.
Is it possible that it's identity theft?
I mean, like, they say that it's not identity theft because the person's clearly transgender, but aren't you judging them by their appearance then?
I thought that was the whole point, is that you can't judge people by their appearance.
By the way, what happens if the guy is just a dude?
Like, here you've got people who are dressed as ladies, but what happens if it's clearly a guy and he just says, no, I'm a woman.
I would prefer that you call me by ma'am.
And we're now having to cram down these notions of false identity because the government suggests that we have to engage in the subjective fantasies of people who have a mental illness.
It's just, it is amazing.
So these are the lies that the Obama administration wishes to cram down on people.
You know, obviously, the people who are snickering, the reason they're snickering there is because it's ridiculous that the government is trying to cram down this perception.
No one wants cops to snicker at people who have called for help.
But any sexual harassment video is inherently hilarious, even if the sexual harassment is not funny.
But if you've ever seen one of these, if the company's ever made you watch one of them, they're really, really funny.
Because it's always like, Bob, you shouldn't grab her butt!
Okay, yeah, Bill, don't laugh at the person who just called the cops to help out.
But also, it's not the end of the world if you call the person by their birth sex when it says on their license what their sex is.
All right.
Meanwhile, it's time for a little bit of Good Trump, Bad Trump.
So let's play the theme, thanks, of course, to our good friend Brandon Snipes.
So actually, over the past couple of days, we've gotten a fair bit of good Trump.
Today, unfortunately, is not one of those days.
So, tomorrow, Trump is supposed to give his big immigration speech, and nobody knows quite what to expect, including Donald Trump.
What I really am looking forward to, what I would like to see, is Donald Trump do—you remember when you were a kid, when I was a kid, we did this—we had these choose-your-own-adventure books?
You remember these things where you get to like page 16 and it would say, if you wish to go through the door, turn to page 35.
If you wish to kill the monster, turn to page 27.
Right?
I want Trump to do one of those speeches.
Like, I'd like for him to get to a point on teleprompter and then pull the audience.
And then if they go in one direction, then he just pulls up a different speech.
Like, you can just stop in the middle of the speech, you should go, so, what should we do with all of the illegal immigrants?
Raise your right hand if you want to deport them all, including the Muslims.
Raise your left hand if you want to make them all citizens and make one of them king.
And then people can raise their hands and then he'd just switch the speech out immediately and move on to choose your own adventure with Trump.
It is exciting to watch, I will say that.
So one of the things that I've claimed all along is that Donald Trump, and this is one of the reasons why I've opposed Trump even after the primaries, is that I feel like there are people who are selling out their principles in order to back Trump.
And again, you want to vote for Trump knowing full well what he is?
Your business.
I get it.
I understand the logic for the one millionth time.
I get it.
If, however, you are selling out your principles in order to back Trump, if you are saying everything that you thought was important is no longer important because Donald Trump must be supported, then I don't think it's any surprise when people think conservatism is Trumpism.
So Ann Coulter, who wrote this book, In Trump We Trust, Trump basically did to Ann Coulter what God once did to Abraham.
He said, go up to the mountain and sacrifice your firstborn son.
So Trump went to Ann Coulter and he says, I need you to take your book and take it up to the top of the mountain.
I need you to take your immigration position and take it to the top of the mountain and sacrifice it.
Sacrifice it to me.
And Ann Coulter went, All right.
And so Ann Coulter, she says, here I am.
So Ann Coulter, here she is saying that Donald Trump has been completely consistent on immigration from day one.
Quick note before we play it, quick note.
Yesterday, there were reports that Donald Trump was talking not about a physical wall, but a virtual wall that he's gonna build with Mexico, which will be virtually 10 feet higher every time he's insulted, and which Mexico will virtually pay for.
He's now walked that back.
He says, no, the wall's gonna be so real, so real it makes your head spin, realer than Melania's breasts.
But in any case, here's Ann Coulter talking about this.
Are we talking about deporting 11, 12 million people as he promised to do during the primaries?
No, I think he has been consistent really pretty much from day one that he's going to protect the borders and not dissolve, you know, American sovereignty.
Okay, so he hasn't changed at all.
At all.
Yes, he has.
Yes, he has.
And listen, I know how dearly Anne holds the issue of immigration.
I mean, I've been friends with her for a long time.
We've had this conversation at least a hundred times.
The idea that he hasn't shifted his position is silly.
If he comes out tomorrow and endorses Jeb Bush's plan, she's going to have some egg on her face.
And I understand what's driving her.
What's driving her is this belief that if the immigration cycle continues as it's been going, then America is over.
And she basically says that.
She basically says that we've turned America into a charity war.
That's her line.
Somehow Syria has become our problem.
I mean, if Latin America is America's problem, why isn't Europe taking care of Syria?
How did the entire world become our problem?
I don't see England and Germany reaching out to take refugees from Central America.
We've just turned our country into a charity ward when I think it's time to put Americans first.
And that is clearly Donald Trump's principle.
He fell for the nonsense about... I mean, he was being pushed in a question.
Being pushed, pushed, pushed.
What about the hard case?
Let's spend all of our time talking about the hard case and never develop a speeding law.
Just that one case of the man rushing his wife to a hospital and going 80 miles per hour in a 60 mile zone.
We'll deal with that.
We'll burn that bridge when we get to it, as I like to say.
Okay, so she's not wrong that America has become sort of the repository for all the bad things in the world.
It's also true that she is not averse to Donald Trump turning America itself into a charity ward for people who are born here.
I mean, Donald Trump is a big government guy who's basically said he's going to give handouts to everybody here.
But the point here is really not that.
The point here is that people like Ann Coulter, they've basically said that their principles are now secondary to their support for Trump.
And that has an impact.
That has an impact.
I'll tell you what the impact is.
Here's a real choice.
Here's the real analog.
I've been looking for a political analog for this election cycle for a while.
The choice that we basically have is, on the one hand, Jimmy Carter and Hillary Clinton.
On the other hand, at best, Herbert Hoover with Donald Trump.
That's the choice.
And so it's a real question.
Which did more damage to conservatism, Herbert Hoover or Jimmy Carter?
Jimmy Carter was a terrible president, did a lot of horrible things.
A lot of horrible things, some of which have ramifications for today, including the fall of the Shah in Iran, right?
He did a lot of terrible things, Jimmy Carter.
He also was so unpopular that he ended up preceding the greatest upsurge in conservatism in the modern era under Ronald Reagan.
On the other hand, you have Herbert Hoover.
Herbert Hoover was a bad president who proclaimed that he was conservative, and then after he left office, spent his time talking about conservatism.
But when he was in office, he actually imposed a very soft version of the New Deal.
So he blew out spending, he raised taxes, he increased tariffs.
He did all the things that FDR would come in and then triple down on.
And so people said, okay, well, conservatism is obviously the stuff that failed, and FDR is the stuff that succeeded, even though Hoover never sold them conservatism.
Hoover never presented conservatism.
And we're still sticking with the legacy.
We're still feeling the legacy of Herbert Hoover.
Every time Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton cite FDR, what they're really doing is slapping at the Herbert Hoover Republicans.
Saying your party are the people who opposed FDR.
Your party are the people of Herbert Hoover.
How many times have you... You still know Herbert Hoover's name because of what a bad president he was as a Republican.
So it's a real serious consideration.
Which is worse?
To have the guy who perverts conservatism and eats out its inners?
Or the guy who's just terrible, left, horrible, incompetent, does serious damage?
It's a real consideration.
The reason that Hoover was so damaging is not just because he was a bad president.
It's because so many people went along with Herbert Hoover because he was their guy.
You don't go along with people just because they're your guy, unless they represent your principles.
But I'm seeing that happen with too many people.
Now, Megyn Kelly had on Mike Huckabee, and she was correct.
I mean, she says to Mike Huckabee, why do you keep tweaking this issue?
Why do you keep flip-flopping?
Why can't you just stick with it?
The best one that we have is the one around San Diego.
It's the one that stopped illegal immigration by 90% since it was built.
It's been tremendous.
It's not only physical, it is also electronic.
So it's not an either-or, it's a both-and.
So what is the need to sort of come out and tweak the issue just as Trump is getting Poked himself for softening the issue of what we're going to do with the 11 million illegal immigrants.
Is this all about outreach to so-called moderates or people who aren't already on the Trump train?
I don't think the surrogates are serving Donald Trump very well if they try to undermine his basic message, which is the wall.
But the bigger picture here, and I think a lot of people are losing sight of this, is that there is a real clear choice in the issue of immigration.
Donald Trump is going to build... And he's right, there is a choice in the issue of immigration.
Trump is going to be better than Hillary.
But this is always the last repository of Trump support.
In the end, it always comes back down to, he's not Hillary.
Again, that is his best argument.
That is his best argument.
But make that argument.
Don't make the he's wonderful on everything argument, because it's silly.
That part that Huckabee sang right at the end, that's exactly right.
There is a choice.
Bill Clinton, he's caught on tape talking about Syrian refugees coming to the United States, and listen to what he says here.
It's pretty incredible.
This is an enormous opportunity for Americans.
Detroit has 10,000 empty, structurally sound houses.
10,000.
And a lot of jobs to be had repairing those houses.
But Detroit just came out of bankruptcy and the mayor's trying to do an innovative sort of urban homesteading program there.
But it just gives you an example of what could be done.
And I think any of us who've ever had any personal experience with either Syrian Americans or Syrian refugees think it's a pretty good deal.
So he says we should send all the Syrian refugees to Detroit, which is really bad luck for the Syrian refugees.
I mean, out of the frying pan, into the fire, apparently.
But his idea that he's going to send these people to Detroit and that they're going to make Detroit a stronger, better place when Detroit has no tax base and no jobs in the first place, yes, there is a clear choice when it comes to immigration.
And that's what people should be harping on.
They shouldn't be harping on the fact that, on the idea that Donald Trump is some sort of consistent harbinger of conservatism.
He isn't.
He isn't.
Okay.
Time for some things that I like and then some things that I hate.
So, things that I like.
So, we were gonna do movies with bad scores that are good movies, but we decided to push that off because Gene Wilder died.
And this makes me sad.
Like, there are certain figures from your childhood where you remember watching all their movies and it just makes you sad even though you never knew the person.
I remember when Robin Williams committed suicide.
I remember it depressed me.
Like, I was very sad when Robin Williams died.
Because, you know, Aladdin and Hook and he was a fun character and you feel bad for him.
Gene Wilder lived a much fuller life.
I mean, he was 83 when he died.
Apparently, he died surrounded by family.
But one of the more likable people ever to appear on screen.
Well, this is my favorite Gene Wilder movie and I love a lot of Gene Wilder's work.
I mean, I think Blazing Saddles still holds up.
The New York Times doesn't because It's politically incorrect, and they're politically correct, so they don't like it.
Blazing Saddles is still a hilarious movie, really, really funny.
He's obviously a classic in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
He's been in a lot of movies that are really great.
He's great, by the way, as kind of the kidnapped bank teller in Bonnie and Clyde.
But my personal favorite Gene Wilder movie is one that's not his best movie, but it's one that holds kind of a special place in my heart because of what it's about.
And it's called The Frisco Kid.
Very, very early Harrison Ford.
So Gene Wilder is in this movie with Harrison Ford, and Gene Wilder plays this Polish rabbi who comes to the United States, and he's traveling from New York to San Francisco in order to get married, and he's gonna be the rabbi of this town.
He's basically been thrown out of his Polish shtetl, out of his town, because he's kind of the ignoramus in the yeshiva, and he comes to the United States, and he's gonna cross country, and his stuff gets stolen from him, and he ends up hooking up with Harrison Ford, who's a robber, who's a bank robber.
He's a train robber.
And Harrison Ford is going to help take him across country.
Well, this is a scene where they're captured by Indians.
And the Indians insist that Gene Wilder turn over a copy of the Torah.
Now, for people who don't understand, a Torah scroll is actually really labor intensive.
So, Torah scrolls take years to write for a lot of people.
They're all handwritten.
If you mess up one letter in a Torah scroll, you actually have to tear out the entire sheet of the Torah scroll, and you have to replace it.
So, I mean, it's really labor-intensive and perfectionist-oriented, and he's supposed to be bringing the only Torah that this community is going to have on the West Coast, and the Indians, the Native Americans, want to take the Torah from him.
So here's a little bit of that scene.
Wonderful!
Wonderful and nice dancing.
Nice does not make rain.
Yes or no, can your god make rain?
Yes.
But he doesn't.
That's right.
Why?
Because that's not his department.
But if he wanted to, he could?
Yes!
What kind of a god do you have?
Don't say my gods.
Is your god too?
Don't give him to us.
We have enough troubles with our own gods.
But there's only one god!
What does he do?
He can do anything!
Then why can't he make rain?
Because he doesn't make rain!
He gives us strength when we're suffering.
He gives us compassion when all that we feel is hatred.
He gives us courage when we're searching around blindly like little mice in the darkness.
But he does not make rain!
- - Of course, sometimes just like that, he'll change his mind. - - It's a great movie.
It's a really funny movie.
There's a scene where, so one of the scenes that I was talking about is there's a scene where they literally threaten to torture him unless he turns over the Torah.
Like, they become very enamored of this new God who can make rain, and they try to take the Torah away from him, and he basically says, I'm willing to die before I turn this over to you.
It's really very moving.
For Jews like me, it's actually a very moving film, and there's some great scenes.
There's a scene where they're being chased by the posse because Harrison Ford is running away, and he refuses to ride a horse on Sabbath, because you're not allowed to ride a horse on Sabbath.
And so they're waiting for the sun to go down just behind the hills and then get on the horse.
It's a really good movie.
So the Frisco Kid with Gene Wilder and obviously we're all very, again, I don't know anybody who didn't like Gene Wilder's work.
Gene Wilder is just, he was great.
Okay, other things that I like.
So I have to admit, I find Alex Jones absolutely hilarious.
Not the way that he means to be, but Alex Jones, he was basically begging Hillary Clinton not to kill him.
To which Hillary Clinton said, But he's begging Hillary Clinton not to kill him.
He's a conspiracy theorist.
He thinks Hillary Clinton kills lots of people.
And here is crazy, crazy Alex Jones.
It's time for Hillary Clinton to repent.
It's time for Hillary Clinton to stop the murder, to stop the killing, to stop licking her lips like Madeleine Albright and herself when they talk about all the dead kids.
I look at how you put in jihadis and al-Qaeda.
into Libya and into Syria to kill hundreds of thousands of Christians.
And Obama won't let the Christians get out, but lets the Sunnis that engage in the crime escape.
And I just think...
And he just, he continues along these lines and he asked her not to, not to kill him.
First of all, whenever I listen to Alex Jones' voice, whenever I listen to him speak, it sounds like he tried to eat a Jew and it got stuck halfway down.
But Alex Jones is so full-blown crazy.
And the fact that Alex Jones is respected by people in the Trump campaign should be mildly troubling.
But I enjoy it nonetheless.
You have to enjoy it.
Why go to the circus if you're not going to watch the clowns?
I do have a soft spot in my heart for Alex Jones, I'll admit, because Alex Jones was on the night before me, or two nights before me, with Piers Morgan on gun control.
And this also was a famous interview, because Alex Jones started screaming like a nutcase, because he is crazy.
You can find tape of him screaming about gay frogs online, it's pretty easy, where he just starts screaming about the gay frogs!
It's pretty amusing, but he was on the night before with Piers Morgan, and he just starts screaming and threatening him.
They're talking about gun rights, and he's like, I need my guns to kill people like you!
It's really over the top.
That is a paraphrase, not a direct quote.
And Piers Morgan had me on a couple nights later, expecting me to be Alex Jones.
And needless to say, he was surprised when I was not.
OK, time for one more thing I like.
So Vladimir Putin, I think this is hilarious.
It's not really a thing I like, it's just really funny.
Vladimir Putin was apparently arrested in Florida for trespassing.
Here's what Vladimir Putin looked like.
Alright, Vladimir Putin is in the Palm Beach County Jail.
No, not the President of Russia.
It's this man who also apparently shares the same name with the Russian leader.
Putin was arrested August 21st at the public store in City Place.
Police say he kept going into the store to yell at customers.
Putin is charged with trespassing.
And when they freed him on bail, he invaded Ukraine.
So everything was just great.
I have a feeling, just my guess, his original name was not Vladimir Putin.
I don't think when he was born, his mom's name was like Janet Putin.
And she's like, I'm gonna name my son Vladimir.
For people who can't see, Vladimir Putin is a dreadlocked black guy in this photo.
So call me crazy, I don't think that that was his original name.
Okay, things that I hate.
So, and then we'll get to it.
Yes, there's our liner, I'm sorry.
And then we'll get to deconstructing the culture.
Okay, so things that I hate.
So Chris Brown has now pulled a gun on a woman again.
Not again, but he's the guy who beat the crap out of Rihanna, and everybody sort of treated him as though it was not a big deal.
Like, Rihanna made a big deal out of it, the media made a big deal, and then he came back and he made more songs, and it was cool.
Okay, but Chris Brown has now apparently, he's under investigation, police investigation, after he allegedly pulled a gun on a woman.
LAPD is investigating the assault case.
According to TMZ, the alleged incident went down early Tuesday morning in L.A.
We're told Chris and the woman were in a home where she claims that they argued and he pulled the gun.
The woman called 911, police responded and took a report, and Chris is the sole suspect.
He, of course, has gotten into fights with Drake and Frank Ocean, and he got into a fight with Rihanna that left her bruised.
It is amazing the sort of leeway that we'll grant to our artists.
It is truly amazing.
I mean, if somebody makes one song that you like, you're willing to overlook the fact that they were molesting little boys at Neverland Ranch.
And when they die, then we pretend that they were wonderful people.
And if you mention the fact that they were molesting little boys with Jesus juice at Neverland Ranch, then you're the bad guy for raining on the parade.
Chris Brown does, like, two good songs.
And he pulls guns on women, and everybody just sort of goes, oh, well, you know, that's Chris Brown.
It's amazing the standard to which we hold our entertainers, and it needs to rise.
Speaking of which, T.I., I guess he's a rapper, T.I., and he's very upset at Rudy Giuliani.
He's upset at Rudy Giuliani because Rudy Giuliani has said that Beyonce needs to stop ripping on the police, so T.I.
is now ripping on Rudy Giuliani.
Man, I wanted to ask you about Rudy Giuliani saying that Beyonce's VMA performance was a shame.
You know, how she addressed the Black Lives Matter issue.
$15, sir.
Who gives a f*** about what Rudy Giuliani says about music?
Who cares?
He's not an aficionado of music.
This isn't politics.
You need to worry about Trump's campaign.
He said he saved more black lives than anybody that was on the stage last night.
That's what Giuliani said.
It's $15.
I don't really, I'm not really as, I don't know, I guess if you mean by, you know, he also imprisoned so many unnecessarily, you know, so I think, you know, you have to count against the black lives he saved for the black lives he destroyed by imprisoning people for too long, taking them away from their families and breaking up homes.
But, I guess, tomato, tomato, depends on how you look at it, you know what I mean?
Tomato, tomato.
Okay, so one of the things I love about this particular clip, is the immediate flip from, Rudy Giuliani shouldn't talk about music, he doesn't know anything about music, to, I know everything there is to know about Rudy Giuliani's crime policy in New York.
From T.I.
I mean it happens literally in a 30 second clip.
He goes to, now I'm going to talk in specific detail about Hillary Clinton's crime policy and why Rudy Giuliani's stop and frisk policy wrongfully imprisoned black people.
It is worth noting, by the way, that as a teenager, he was arrested several times for drug dealing.
He was originally known as Rubber Band Man, apparently, for wearing rubber bands around his wrist to denote wealth in terms of drugs.
So, I'm sure that he has a lot to say about innocent black people being arrested.
Okay, final thing I like, then we'll get to deconstructing the culture.
So, they've now released the full list of people on Dancing with the Stars, and Rick Perry is on Dancing with the Stars.
Okay, so there are a bunch of people on Dancing with the Stars.
Rick Perry is on Dancing with the Stars.
Ryan Lochte is on Dancing with the Stars.
Calvin Johnson is on Dancing with the Stars.
Vanilla Ice is on Dancing with the Stars.
Amber Rose is on Dancing with the Stars.
So, I will just point out, I have never watched an episode of Dancing with the Stars unless it was under duress with my wife sitting at my side in handcuffs chaining me to the couch.
That is almost entirely true.
But the fact that Rick Perry has moved from legit presidential candidate to reality TV star, maybe he thinks that his path is to become a reality TV star and then he can run for president again.
It seems like it worked out really well for Donald Trump, but it is sort of humiliating for a guy who was maybe the most successful governor in Texas history to be now on Dancing with the Stars shimmying it up with some nubile babe next to Ryan Lochte.
And you know, there's a double standard for the right and the left, by the way.
If it was a has-been Democrat politician, then it would be oh-so-charming.
If it's a Republican, then it's just laughable.
And they're gonna laugh at Rick Perry.
And the fact that he doesn't know that, to me, is kind of sad.
It's kind of sad.
But don't worry, he'll be the first one off.
They'll toss him off immediately because he's a Republican.
Okay, time for some Deconstructing the Culture because it is a Tuesday.
So, this week in Deconstructing the Culture, There's a guy named Mike Posner.
Now, understand, you and I may be listening to this music at the same time for the first time, because I don't know any of this music.
Mike Posner has a song called I Took a Pill in Ibiza, and apparently it is about him literally taking a pill in Ibiza.
Here is the music video, and here is the song.
I took a pill in Ibiza, to show Avicii I was cool.
No.
No.
I'm living out in L.A.
I drive a sports car just to prove I'm a real big baller Cause I made a million dollars And I spend it on girls You don't wanna be high like me Never really know why like me You don't ever wanna step off that rollercoaster And be all alone And you don't wanna ride the bus like this Never know who to trust like this You don't wanna be stuck up on that stage singing Stuck up on that stage singing Oh, I know
A sad soul Okay, I have to stop it because I'm gonna have nightmares.
I don't know what... Seriously, this music video has like this... for people who can't see and this is why you need to subscribe.
It's truly horrifying.
I'm afraid there's like this giant...
I don't know if it's a paper mache head.
It's like three feet tall.
That's supes creepy.
And it looks like he's going to lure children into the woods and then rape and murder them.
And it's in some sort of club and there are a bunch of good looking women dancing around this face.
I mean, I assume this isn't, tell me, somebody tell me this isn't what Mike Posner actually looks like.
This is actually like just a mock head, correct?
Okay, thank you.
Okay, because I don't want to be insulting if he has some sort of congenital defect or something, but this is actually not my... Okay, so it looks like what it is, which is something horrifying sitting in a club and a bunch of hot women dancing around it.
Now, it wouldn't be a music video in today's day and age without hot women dancing around something.
I mean, last week we had hot women dancing around construction sites.
It didn't look like they were capable of putting a hammer to a nail, but...
I mean, I don't think anyone was objecting to that, but in this case, you've got this creepy paper mache head with people dancing around.
I don't know what it's supposed to mean, maybe this is like his physical manifestation after he takes drugs.
For people who can't hear the lyrics, because the lyrics don't matter that much in songs like this, it's all about the rhythm and the tune, here is the actual lyric.
I took a pill in Ibiza to show Avicii I was cool.
I don't know who Avicii is, or what it is.
Oh, a DJ.
OK, whatever.
And when I finally got sober, felt 10 years older, but F it, it was something to do.
I'm living out in L.A., I drive sports cars just to prove I'm a real big baller because I made a million dollars, and I spent it on girls and shoes, which is obviously a wise investment strategy.
Which is why he needs to talk to our friends at Birchgold.
He says, but you really don't want to be high like me, never really knowing why like me.
You don't ever want to step off that rollercoaster and be all alone.
You don't want to ride the bus like this, never knowing who to trust like this.
You don't want to be stuck up on that stage singing.
Step up on that stage singing.
All I know are sad songs, sad songs, darling.
All I know are sad songs, sad songs.
Okay, so this is a theme that has become very prominent in pop.
In the last 15 years or so, where you see singers who are extraordinarily wealthy, extraordinarily successful, whining about their lives.
And I think Miley Cyrus did a song like this, where she talked about how it was really tough to be a celebrity.
I know Britney Spears did a song like this.
It was really rough to be a celebrity.
It's so tough and rough to be a celebrity.
Okay, the only reason we know about you is because you make crappy songs like this.
But there is an undertone here of something that's a little bit sad.
There's something hypocritical about this, first of all.
If you're making lots of money while singing this song on stage about how it's really hard making lots of money singing this song on stage, I have a solution.
Right?
You could just stop, you could put down the mic and you could leave and you could spare all of our eardrums and you could prevent me from having nightmares for the next week over your horrifying music video.
But you don't do that.
So what you're really saying is, the real undercurrent is, I'm really cool.
I'm really with it.
There's something, it's very broody.
There's something they do in pop and rock music, all these brooding guys.
I'm so broody, man.
I'm broody and I'm deep because I know that what I'm doing is empty.
But that's just what makes me deep.
So I'm empty but I'm deep.
But I'm deep because I know I'm empty because I'm deep.
They know you're just stupid.
But you're making a lot of money off being stupid, so I guess I can't blame you.
This sort of ethos, it actually is revealing.
If you actually took it seriously, there'd be something revealing here, which is that your lifestyle sucks because you have no values.
If you earn a million dollars and your first reaction is to spend it on girls and shoes, that's because you have no values.
If I had a million dollars, I would start investing it in real estate and give some charity.
Like, that's really where my money would go.
And I'd be doing that to build a financial future for my children.
But if you don't have kids, if you don't have a wife, if you don't have a plan for the future, if you don't have values, then of course you take the money and you blow it on things.
This is why young athletes who make tons of money, they're broke by the time they're 40.
If that.
Usually it's earlier.
This guy's saying that he's going around taking drugs to show people that he's cool, and his life is empty.
Well, I have an idea.
How about you make your life not empty?
How about you make your life meaningful, but then you undercut your own appeal?
Because in a post-God society, hipster cynicism is the new reality.
In a post-God society, if you are hip, that means that you have to be cynical about life.
Values are for squares.
Values are for people who aren't cool, who aren't with it.
And sure, you have no values, and now you're miserable.
And then you're surprised you're miserable, even though you have the money and you have the fame.
And the only path that you're providing to people is a path of misery because you're saying there's no God, there's no values, the only thing you can shoot for is the money and the fame, and I'm telling you that it's empty.
Well, congratulations, you're not saying anything new.
Solomon was saying this 3,000 years ago in the temple.
He was saying all is vanity.
So that message has been around a while, but at the very end of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, okay, well that being the case, all you can cling to is God and what God wants from you.
That's all that you can cling to.
But we as a society have refused God and what God wants from us.
We've refused values.
We've refused building for the future.
Everything is about the temporary here and now.
And so all we can do is reward each other for being with it enough to recognize that our lives are empty.
And then we're surprised when more kids fall into it.
Well, why?
This is the height of cool.
Most kids who watch that, if they don't get nightmares, are thinking, OK, I could be the guy in the club with the hot girls, and that looks pretty good to me.
Even the guy who's complaining about it doesn't seem to be complaining about it enough to give up the lifestyle.
So that sort of nihilistic hipster cynicism that they earn money off of while promulgating the same lifestyle they're condemning, I find it really off-putting, and I think that it's a problem.
When he says, you don't want to be high like me, When you glorify the lifestyle, then why wouldn't people want to be high like you?
You've provided no values alternative, and people like you rip down those values on a regular basis because those values require actual standards, and standards are by nature intolerant.
Okay, there's a bit of deconstructing the culture and a deep read on a very shallow song with a creepy bobble-headed clown.
So, there you have it.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
Export Selection