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Feb. 4, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
58:16
Of Racism And Forgiveness | Ep. 709
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Ralph Northam faces down his political mortality, President Trump heads to CBS, and we recap the Super Bowl today on The Ben Shapiro Show.
Alrighty, we do have a lot to get to today.
Ralph Northam, the Virginia governor, still in trouble.
He's had himself a very bad couple of weeks.
What's weird in the Democratic Party is saying that you want to kill fully formed infants just before they exit the birth canal.
Totally cool.
35-year-old racist Facebook or yearbook photo.
Very bad.
Resign.
Go away.
Hang yourself.
That's our politics right now.
We'll get to all of that in just one second.
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Okay, well, everybody was watching an awful, boring, terrible Super Bowl yesterday, the only saving grace of which was that the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady, won his sixth Super Bowl.
While everybody was watching that, Ralph Northam was having an emergency meeting with a bunch of black members of his administration, and I guess that he's gonna try and live this one out.
So, to recap, You may remember Governor Ralph Northam from such things as, kill that fully formed baby in the middle of dilation?
Why sure!
Right, that was one of his starring efforts last week.
You also may remember him from such wonderful things as, here's a photo of me 35 years ago, either in blackface or a KKK outfit.
Now, you know your governorship is in trouble when the question is, which one are you?
The one in blackface or the one in the KKK outfit?
That's when you start thinking, well, I've got a bit of a problem here.
Now, in a second, I want to talk about why our standards in politics are just ridiculous.
And we really should consider whether or not we are willing to finish people's careers for bad taste mistakes That today look horribly racist, homophobic, bigoted from like three decades ago, whether that is the standard of destroying somebody's career, which means that legitimately we should only elect newborns because those are people who have not sinned in the past, at least to this point.
I mean, at least if we're not going to kill them, according to some Democrats.
We'll get to that in a second.
But first, let's let's bring you up to date on what is going on with Ralph Northam, who is fighting for his political life and doing so with a scalpel.
And also a blunderbuss.
So the weekend started with him holding a press conference where he said he apologized for his past actions.
He apologized for the racist video.
Then things got real weird.
So we start with him and his apology.
Earlier today, I released a statement apologizing for behavior in my past that falls far short of the standard you set for me when you elected me to be your governor.
I believe you deserve to hear directly from me that photo and the racist and offensive attitudes it represents.
Does not reflect that person I am today or the way that I have conducted myself as a soldier, a doctor, and a public servant.
I am deeply sorry.
Okay, now if that had been the extent of his statement, if he had said, listen, 35 years ago, People did really stupid stuff that now we look on and we are horrified by and I look back at that and I'm horrified by it too and it never should have happened and I had honestly forgotten about it because it's 35 years ago but now that somebody's brought it to my attention, really a terrible thing to have done.
I'm really sorry about that and I hope that you'll look at my totality of my record and see that this is not who I am, right?
That would I think be an appropriate apology and frankly I think that At that point, people should probably let it go, honestly.
But that's not what happened.
Then Ralph Northam decided, you know what?
Time for a second press conference.
Now, second press conferences are not like second breakfast from The Hobbit, from J.R.R.
Tolkien.
Second press conferences are much, much worse.
Then the first press conference is almost always.
It's hard to think of a situation where a second press conference has actually solidified things and made it better.
So here it was Ralph Northam doing a press conference and he decided that while he had apologized for his past actions in that statement you heard one second ago, now he was going to not apologize for that.
He was going to apologize for a different time he dressed Apparently he said it's not me in that photo from my yearbook page standing there dressed as a black person or as a KKK member.
My favorite statement from the weekend is that it was reported that Northern wanted to hire facial recognition experts to show that it wasn't his face in that photo.
How do you get a facial recognition expert to show that it's not you underneath a KKK hood?
Can the facial recognition experts tell what's going on?
Under, like, I thought the purpose of having the white sheet over your head, if you're a KKK member, is so that people can't recognize your face.
In any case, Ralph Northam said he wanted to do that, apparently.
And then, it got even better.
So, he said, that wasn't me.
That picture was not me.
The one from my yearbook page, you know, right above my name.
Which, legitimately, is what... I mean, it was in his yearbook page, from medical school.
Then he said, no, that wasn't me.
But, there was another party that I went to where I dressed up as Michael Jackson.
Now, first things first.
Let me suggest that if you dress up as random person in blackface to make fun of black people, I don't think it's the same thing as you dressing up as Michael Jackson in 1985 and putting on black makeup to do so.
I just don't think it's the exact same thing.
I think it's still not great, but I'm not going to pretend that I think that it's mocking in the same way that dressing up as random black person in 1910 is.
Context does matter in a lot of this stuff.
With that said, again, you know you're in trouble when you have to distinguish for the press.
Were you the guy in blackface or the guy in the KKK hood?
And then you have to distinguish from that, or was I the guy who took shoe polishes, he's about to explain, shoe polish, and make up your face to look like Michael Jackson circa 1985?
So here he was explaining, wasn't me in that yearbook photo, but if there's another photo of me dressed up as Michael Jackson looking like I dressed like a black guy, maybe that's me.
In the hours since I made my statement yesterday, I reflected with my family and classmates from the time and affirmed my conclusion that I am not the person in that photo.
That same year, I did participate in a dance contest in San Antonio, in which I darkened my face as part of a Michael Jackson costume.
I look back now, And regret that I did not understand the harmful legacy of an action like that.
OK, but then it got even more ridiculous.
So a reporter asked him.
You know, Mr. Governor, can you still moonwalk?
Because he said that he was in a dance contest.
And Northam, who's obviously one of the most intelligent people on the block.
And honestly, one of the most disappointing things about becoming an adult is realizing all the adults are stupid.
Adam Carolla makes this point all the time.
That when you're a kid, you look at all the adults and you say, that person has a nice house.
That person has a nice car.
That person has clothes and a TV and they can stay up to whatever time they want.
They can eat whatever they want.
They must be super smart.
And then as you grow up, you realize that all the kids who are sitting next to you in class eating their boogers are the adults with whom you're also an adult.
Well, it's the same thing when you look at folks like Ralph Northam.
Honestly, like this guy is the governor of Virginia and he's just an idiot.
He's just an idiot.
And I know people, well, he's a doctor.
That means he can't be stupid.
Why is it that everybody who says doctors can't be stupid also thinks their own doctor's an idiot and won't pay any attention to what they say?
Anyway, Ralph Northam is asked to moonwalk, and it's spectacular.
He looks around for space to moonwalk.
He does.
He looks around the stage for, like, do I have space to moonwalk here?
And then his wife gives him a look like, Ralph, are you insane?
Are you insane?
Like you're in the middle of a scandal about dressing in blackface and you're about to moonwalk your way out of office.
Let's watch it because it's really great.
It's good stuff.
Yes.
That's right.
You still able to move on?
Oh.
He looks around for space to do it.
My wife says inappropriate circumstances.
My favorite part of that clip is the big grin when he's like, I'm going to do this thing.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to moonwalk.
And then he gets all disappointed because his wife is like, no, no, just no.
Ralph, what are you doing?
Don't moonwalk.
So maybe this does lend some credibility to the idea that the guy isn't a racist.
He's just an idiot.
Doesn't that lend some credibility to the idea that he's just a moron?
Maybe?
I mean, my goodness.
And then it turns out that back in the day, people called him A slur that was used for black people, I don't know, 50 years ago must have been common, maybe?
I don't know.
I don't know that much about this particular racial slur.
But apparently, his nickname was the racist slur coon man, which is just lovely.
So someone, he's asked about that.
He's like, I have no idea why people called me that.
Maybe it's because I like to go raccoon hunting or something.
Like, okay, all right.
Go Ralph Northam.
How do you account for one of your nicknames that's listed in the BMI yearbook in 1981, coon man?
What's your explanation for that?
My main nickname in high school and in college was goose, because when my voice was changing, I would change an octave.
There were two individuals, as best I can relect, at VMI, they were a year ahead of me, that called me Coon Man.
I don't know their motives or intent.
I know who they are.
But that was the extent of that, and it ended up in the yearbook, and I regret that.
Yeah, so, OK, fine.
All right, fine.
Well, let's just point out a couple of things.
Number one, the weaponization of racism means that he doesn't get off here.
We're going to talk in a second about what our general standards for politicians should be.
But the way that racism now works is that it has been completely weaponized, meaning that if somebody does something any time in the past or in the present, they can be even construed as racist.
They will be ruined politically.
And Ralph Northam was a full-scale participant in this sort of nastiness.
He would take comments that were not actually racist, and then he would construe them as racist in order to slander his political opposition in the most vile fashion.
And we'll show you that in just one second.
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Okay, so as I say, Ralph Northam has been an active participant in the weaponization of the charge of racism against people.
If you recall all the way back to the 2016 election, he ran an ad against his opponent, Ed Gillespie, that is one of the most vile ads I have legitimately ever seen in a campaign.
It was an ad that showed minority children running away from a guy, a white racist in a truck, with a Gillespie sticker on the back, as though Ed Gillespie was trying to run down small black children in his truck, and Gillespie supporters were the people at Charlottesville.
It was really disgusting.
Here's what that ad sounded like.
There are these kids who are running away.
There's a, you can see, a confederate flag on the back of a truck.
This is a super PAC that ran it on behalf of Northam.
Northam never denounced it.
There are all these minority kids and they're just kind of running away, running away from this truck with a confederate flag on the back.
And on the back of it there's a Gillespie sticker.
And now all these kids are running down the street.
There's a Muslim kid running.
All these kids are running down the street.
Again, here comes the truck trying to run down these children, trying to murder these children.
They have a Gillespie sticker on the back of the truck and a Don't Tread On Me license plate on the front.
Now remember, this is a super PAC that was associated with Northam.
We ran it on his behalf.
And then parents wake up to comfort their children and remind them not to vote for Ed Gillespie, paid for by Latino Victory Fund.
They say it was not authorized by any candidate, but you never saw Northam come out and condemn the ad.
So Northam was an expert at this.
He suggested that Ed Gillespie was a racist for having mentioned MS-13, the gang, that was active in Virginia in discussions about illegal immigration.
So Gillespie participated full-scale in this sort of stuff.
That means that if you make any boo-boo at any time, the knives are going to come out for you.
And come out they did.
President Trump grabbed a pitchfork and just rammed it directly into Ralph Northam.
In the middle of this scandal, President Trump tweeted out, Democrat Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia just stated, I believe that I am not either of the people in that photo.
This was 24 hours after apologizing for appearing in the picture and after making the most horrible statement on super late-term abortion.
Unforgivable.
Now, everybody on the left said, well, you know, you made comments about Charlottesville and all those.
That's why Trump is doing this.
Because what he is saying is, you guys all call me racist for stuff.
Well, when the shoe's on the other foot, I'm not going to hold back.
I'm not going to pretend that Ralph Northam gets off easy.
Now, here's something amazing.
There was a Florida Secretary of State who'd been appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida to fill that position.
And there was an old photo of him in blackface from a party in the 1980s, and he resigned within a day.
This scandal broke on Friday.
It is now Monday.
Ralph Northam is still in office.
Not only is he still in office, he's now doing something else.
And I'm going to explain what that something else he's doing right now is.
It's really kind of fascinating.
So there is the person who would theoretically replace him were he to step down is Lieutenant Governor.
His name is Justin Fairfax.
There's an article from a website called Big League Politics.
Big League Politics is also the site that originally published the yearbook page of Ralph Northam.
We are now learning that the yearbook page of Ralph Northam was probably released by somebody who was angry at him for his stance on abortion.
Motives don't really matter in terms of who releases it, it's just how people react to the page.
So, Big League Politics released an article about an allegation regarding Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax.
And the allegation was an allegation that was put up on, I believe, Facebook by a woman who suggested that years ago, in 2004, there was an aide at the DNC who sexually assaulted her.
And she said that this person And she said that this person then went on to become a statewide candidate for office and eventually would be taking a big step up in politics.
The actual statement posted by a woman named Adria Scharf by Vanessa Tyson is the name of the woman.
She wrote, So, this allegation has been out for several months, and Big League Politics published the allegation.
in Boston in 2004 by a campaign staffer.
You spend the next 13 years trying to forget it ever happened.
Until one day you find out he's the Democratic candidate for a statewide office in a state some 3,000 miles away, and he wins that election in November 2017.
Then, by strange horrible luck, it seems increasingly likely he'll get a very big promotion.
So this allegation has been out for several months, and Big League Politics published the allegation.
Now, Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax has released a statement about it.
The statement says, Tonight, an online publication released a false and unsubstantiated allegation against Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax.
Lieutenant Governor Fairfax has an outstanding and well-earned reputation for treating people with dignity and respect.
He has never assaulted anyone, ever, in any way, shape, or form.
The person reported to be making this false allegation first approached the Washington Post, one of the nation's most prominent newspapers, more than a year ago, around the time of the lieutenant governor's historic inauguration.
The Post carefully investigated the claim for several months.
After being presented with facts consistent with the lieutenant governor's denial of the allegation, the absence of any evidence corroborating the allegation, and significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegation, The Post made the considered decision not to publish the story.
Okay, so this has led to accusations that the Washington Post spiked the story on behalf of Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax.
Now, I'll talk in one second about whether in fact that allegation is justified.
Suffice it to say, there are grave suspicions today that Lieutenant Governor Fairfax is being victimized by leaks from Northam's office, that basically Northam, in an attempt to save himself, is saying, well, don't look at my black lieutenant governor and say that that guy is ready to be governor because there's this still hanging out there.
So if that's the case, if it is true that Ralph Northam's office is going after his lieutenant governor, that's playing some real heavy-handed hardball right there.
I mean, that's some pretty low stuff.
As to the allegation that the Washington Post spiked this, one thing that both the Northam story and the Fairfax story are revealing is the insane double standard that exists with regard to allegations.
Insane double standard.
So, the Washington Post apparently had this information, they had the allegation, and they never published it.
Why?
Because it was uncorroborated, there was no supporting evidence, and there were significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegation, according to Lieutenant Governor Fairfax's office.
All of which seems like a pretty good reason not to publish a story.
Except that I'm old enough to remember when the Washington Post and every other major media outlet in the country ran with allegations by Christine Blasey Ford that had significant red flags and inconsistencies, that had no corroborating evidence, and that were blatantly denied by Brett Kavanaugh.
And it became the subject of a full-scale judicial hearing with Democrats slandering the man as a possible gang rapist.
I remember when they ran with all of these allegations and Michael Avenatti was coming forward and suggesting that he had evidence that Brett Kavanaugh might in fact have participated in gang rape and Kamala Harris, the new Democratic presidential candidate, was sitting up there implying the exact same thing.
People ran with it.
So it is worth noting that the same people in the media who say, oh yeah, well, we would never have run with an allegation like that.
It was just not substantiated enough.
Those same people were not willing to run with an allegation, were willing to run with an allegation against Brett Kavanaugh that was very close to similar.
So that's pretty, that is pretty telling about the media.
By the way, the media, I do have to make a side note here.
I don't know if you watched the Super Bowl yesterday.
If you did, I'm sorry for the hours that you wasted watching the Super Bowl.
The Washington Post ran an ad in the middle of the Super Bowl, the same Washington Post that did not run the allegations against Lieutenant Governor Fairfax, which Again, I'm okay with if you actually had that standard consistently.
They spent something like 5.25 million dollars to run an ad in the middle of the Super Bowl talking about how democracy dies in darkness.
How many reporter salaries could that have paid?
I do love that the Washington Post, they're like, you know what we could do to really restore our reputation as a journalistic entity?
What we could do is hire an actor to talk about how awesome we are, and we'll glom off of Tom Hanks's When we go off to war.
When we exercise our rights.
When we soar to our greatest heights.
When we mourn and pray.
Here's a little bit of that Washington Post self-serving ad yesterday during the Super Bowl.
When we go off to war.
When we exercise our rights.
When we soar to our greatest heights.
When we mourn and pray.
When our neighbors are at risk.
When our nation is threatened.
There's someone to gather the facts.
To bring you the story.
no matter the cost.
Because knowing empowers us. .
Knowing helps us decide.
Knowing keeps us free.
Listen, I'm in favor of journalism, and it says Washington Post, democracy dies in darkness.
I'm all in favor of journalism, but the back-patting, self-congratulatory nature of the Washington Post, patting itself on the back for journalism, Well, at the same time, having such blatant doubled standards in so much of the reporting is pretty galling to a lot of Americans.
And honestly, it ought to be galling to a lot of Americans.
There's some other problems with that ad.
I'm going to explain what those problems are with that ad in just one second.
Then we'll get to the wide and very democratic reaction to the Northam allegations and the yearbook page and the whole deal.
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OK, so.
This Washington Post ad, a couple of quick notes on the Washington Post ad that ran during the Super Bowl.
Notice that when they say, when the nation is in grave danger, and then they show a picture of Oklahoma City.
Now, I'm old enough to remember another event that put our nation in grave danger and led to us getting involved in two wars.
That would've been 9-11, but I guess we're not allowed to show pictures of 9-11 on TV, lest it be offensive.
Also, they say, journalists who have died for their profession, and then they show Jamal Khashoggi.
Jamal Khashoggi was an opinion writer For many outlets, including the Washington Post, he also happened to be closely aligned with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.
So while the Saudi government should obviously not have murdered Jamal Khashoggi, I'm not going to put him in the same category as I put other journalists or murdered for their journalism.
Also, I gotta say, like the idea that journalists in the United States are wildly in danger all the time, That the Washington Post is sort of promoting here is obviously not true.
All of the people who were killed in that particular ad are people who were killed abroad in foreign countries.
Also, I would note that the Washington Post, which sort of suggests that American journalism is constantly in danger, Like, thousands of journalists have been arrested in Turkey, journalists are routinely killed in Russia, in China, and this sort of stuff is pretty common.
Let's stand with those people.
I'm not sure the Washington Post necessarily measures up, except for their foreign correspondents who obviously do.
Okay, so, the Democratic reaction to the Ralph Northam thing has been kind of interesting.
Basically, everybody who's in sort of day-to-day Democratic politics says, let Northam go.
And everybody who's running for president says, Northam should resign.
That's the way this breaks down.
So, Terry McAuliffe, who's a former Virginia governor and deeply involved in Democratic Party politics, he says he has no indication that Northam has been a racist.
And he says, maybe we should probably let this guy go.
I know that the Ralph Northam you know, in your words, is a good man.
But has he also been a racist?
I have zero indication of that.
As I say, family doctor, had military service, had been a state senator, ran for lieutenant governor.
Ralph was always at my side.
So I can't answer it, Jake.
I'm telling you, I'm heartbroken.
Okay, so, I mean, the answer is, has he ever been a racist?
Well, I mean, it depends.
Do you think that that photo means that he is absolutely a racist?
And then you see Howard Dean.
Howard Dean, who's also not running for president, former head of the DNC.
He says, Republicans have no morals at all.
So he tries to turn it on Republicans that a Democratic governor was just caught with his hand in the blackface jar.
Republicans, you know, they have no morals at all.
I mean, you know, the Republicans are happy to ask Ralph Northam to resign.
They have a much worse guy who's heading their party.
It's ridiculous.
Okay, so he's saying, of course, because Trump is worse than Northam, that means that Trump should resign or Northam shouldn't resign.
I'm confused.
Democrats think Trump should resign, but Northam shouldn't resign?
They're going to have to explain that one.
Now, the Democrats who are running for president have universally called for him to step down.
So Hillary Clinton, who may or may not run for president, she says that Northam should go.
You got Kamala Harris, who says that Northam should go.
You got Cory Booker, who says that Northam should go.
You got Julian Castro, Julian Castro, who is running for president but no one cares.
And he says that Northam should resign as well.
I'm happy that at least he has apologized and that he recognizes that what he did was wrong.
And I do think, of course, that there's the opportunity to Uh, understand and accept his apology, but I also believe that that's separate and apart from him continuing in a position of trust and authority, which is the governor's office.
So I hope that he does resign.
Well, you know, this kind of breakdown does demonstrate what the Democratic Party leadership thinks of their own base.
So a lot of Democrats on a day-to-day level are going, listen, if our new standard is that anything bad you did in the past means that you're out of office, there will be no one left standing.
And then there are the people who are running for office who are saying, well, I have to somehow go back to the base, and I have to explain to them why Ralph Northam should stay, and I'm just not going to do that.
It's kind of fascinating to see the divide, because here is the truth.
The Democratic Party honchos are correct.
If our standard, if our standard is that stuff that you did 35 years ago that was construed as racist now, but was construed as maybe just irreverent or controversial then, is now the subject of you losing your career, there are gonna be a lot of people out of jobs very, very quickly.
Robert A. George is a member of the New York Daily News editorial board, black guy.
And the reason I mention his race is because of the thread that we're about to read.
I think it's worthwhile going through this thread that he put up on Twitter because I think this is the most nuanced take on the Ralph Northam issue that I've heard.
I think it's also the most accurate take on the Ralph Northam issue that I've heard.
Here's what he says.
says he says after much fun at northam's expense a serious thought a few tweets have run along the lines of even in the south 35 years ago everyone knew that wearing a clan outfit or blackface was racist having been in college myself at the time i started nodding but then i pause everyone knew that this type of behavior is racist That means Northam must have been racist.
He admits in his Friday statement that what he did was racist.
It means his partner in crime was racist.
But there was a compiler slash editor of the yearbook, right?
That supposedly reasonable person accepted Northam's photo and let it go, right?
Was there a faculty advisor?
Did that person approve it too?
My point here is that either everyone knew this was something really ugly and racist or they were doing something that they bizarrely thought was funny and no one stopped to think, oh, it's funny but really ugly and maybe we shouldn't do it.
He says the 2020 hindsight we have now that everyone knew that something you didn't do might not have been as strong back then.
In other words, If you think now that everything bad, like, now it's very easy to look at that photo and go, obvious racism, gross, get out of office.
But is that how people thought of it back then?
Time, context, it does matter.
He says, to make it a bit clearer, a personal anecdote.
I went to a small liberal arts college in Maryland below the Mason-Dixon line.
Of the student body of 400, I was one of five or six blacks over four plus years.
In 1985, senior class leaders bounced around ideas for a fundraiser.
They settled upon a slave auction.
Seniors would be auctioned to odd jobs for the winning bidders.
Yeah, yeah, already you're thinking, what the hell?
In fairness, this was a school which studies Greek and Latin classics, so it's theoretically possible to do a Greek or Roman-style slave auction.
Even so, I approached the planners and said, tread carefully.
I didn't hear about it anymore, so I assumed it got dropped.
Instead, I awoke to find posters declaring, welcome to 1865, it's a real live slave auction.
Um, what?
I, well, got upset.
But here's the thing.
There were quite a few other white friends, including other seniors, who were stunned.
There was an African-American underclassman who I'd become friends with who came up to me and whatever the 1985 version of what the bleep was.
I put together a strongly worded letter.
No, seriously, it was an open letter to the student body.
Got it co-signed with a couple dozen other people, infuriated, stuffed copies in mailboxes.
A day or so later, the fundraiser was canceled.
Yes, there were bruised feelings.
My African-American pal and I had a tense discussion with the organizers.
We cleared the air, and it should be noted I'm friendly with them to this day.
I don't consider them racist then or now.
It was an insensitive action, but an ultimately learning moment.
In the days that followed, I felt out of sorts.
Even though I had many friends who had my back and immediately supported me in whatever I wanted to do in response, I was still feeling alone, wondering if I did the right thing.
Then something happened.
The auditorium attendant, African American, like the entire grounds crew, Jimmy, came up to me.
I chatted with him over the years as I had a work-study job in the dining hall.
He said to me, Thank you for speaking up about that.
These kids, they just don't know.
It had quite the impact.
These kids just don't know.
In truth, I was a kid myself.
I didn't know.
Irritated as I was with the class leaders who ignored my cautionary heads up.
In fact, this was bigger than me.
Bigger than them.
Other eyes were watching.
So beware the everyone-knew-such-and-such-was-racist-in-1985 trope.
Ralph Northam is a few years older than I am.
He should have known better.
But so should several other people involved in getting that photo into the yearbook.
Hey kids, it wasn't a selfie.
The definition of racism isn't as set in stone as we might like.
The spectrum of racially insensitive or microaggression to out-and-out racism is, to use an in-vogue phrase, fluid.
Some get it right away.
Others?
They just don't know.
Okay, this is, of course, exactly right.
This is exactly right.
In a second, I'm going to explain why it's exactly right, and why a little bit of grace might go a long way in our politics, or we can keep destroying each other because it's convenient to do so.
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OK, I have a few more thoughts on the Ralph Northam controversy, and then I want to get to the latest on Jussie Smollett and my situation over at Grand Canyon University, which is getting all weird.
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So we have completely obliterated, and this is the point I think Robert A. George is making, we have completely obliterated any distinction between racially insensitive or racial jokes or stuff that's sort of uncomfortable and out and out racism. we have completely obliterated any distinction between racially insensitive or And we have obliterated that distinction going retroactively.
If you watch Blazing Saddles, people make this joke all the time, but it's true.
If you watch Blazing Saddles now, there's no way in hell that movie ever gets made.
There are KKK jokes, there are jokes about black folks, there are jokes about Jews, there are jokes about everything in that movie.
You're not allowed to tell any of those jokes now.
Mel Brooks would never have a career now.
You simply cannot tell an offensive joke.
And I'm not sure that the country is significantly better for that.
Honestly.
Like, as a Jew, there are a lot of Jewish jokes out there.
A lot of nasty, vicious Jewish jokes.
But it does, I will say that I think a sense of humor, an ability to kind of look aside when people are acting like jackasses is better for your soul and better for the country than the sort of search for microaggressions that we have today.
Now, there is a happy medium, which is people could not be jerks, and also we could be a little bit less, we could also be a little bit less sensitive about things.
I think that's actually where we should be, meaning that not all of those bad jokes ought to be told, right?
We should be, like, I'm not a fan of racial jokes, for example.
I don't think that people should tell racial jokes.
I also think that if people do tell racial jokes, we are better served as a society, not by trying to destroy their lives, but by people kind of going, okay, that guy's being a jerk, that guy's being in a bleep.
I think that this newfound crusade that we have to destroy people based on stuff they did 30 years ago, particularly, is really bad.
Now, I think that there's a case to be made that if somebody does something now that's really bad, that there should be immediate repercussions for that.
But the world that we are building, in which we dig up somebody's old high school or medical school yearbook, and then, free of context, we say, well, everyone knew it was bad then.
As Robert A. George says, I am not sure that is the case.
I'm not sure that is the case.
I think that it is certainly possible that some people knew that it was bad then, or it's possible people were ignorant, they weren't surrounded by people who knew better, they didn't have good conversations with folks who were more aware of the problematic nature of some of this stuff.
And so, instead of attributing this to racial malice, like Ralph Northam was a night rider or something, maybe he's just an idiot.
Maybe he was a racially insensitive idiot.
And maybe, if he'd been confronted about it, he would have apologized at the time.
How many times have you done something offensive in your life, and been confronted about it, and then you apologized because you realized you had just offended somebody?
I'm sure that's happened to you many times.
How would you like it if nobody said anything for 20 years and then they brought it up and said, now we're going to take away your career from you?
I think that that's going to make for a really ugly America.
It already is making for a really ugly America.
I was discussing this with some friends over the weekend.
Again, none of this is to excuse Ralph Northam dressing in blackface or in a KKK outfit or any of this.
I think all of that stuff is really egregious, but we're not discussing the egregious nature of that, except insofar as to say that on the spectrum of egregious behavior that should finish your career decades into the future, this one lies on the margin.
Really, if you're talking about things that should finish your career, I would say actual membership in the KKK like Robert Byrd, that probably should finish your career and not make you the conscience of the Senate for 50 years.
I think if you kill a woman by driving off a bridge with her in the backseat, that probably should finish your career, not lead to a presidential run in 1980 and a lionization as the lion of the Senate.
That stuff probably is bad enough that it should finish your career.
Dressing up in a racist fashion in a yearbook in 1985, I'm not sure that that should finish your career 34 years in the future.
I'm just not sure that that lies there.
There are gradations here as to what should finish your career.
But here's the thing.
There are three ways that we deal with bad stuff that we've done in our past.
And as a culture, we've become a very confessional culture.
So there are three ways to deal with bad stuff that we've done in our past.
Way number one is that we beat everybody to the punch.
This is the Barack Obama strategy for dealing with bad stuff you've done.
So if you're Barack Obama, and you're running for president, or you're thinking of running for political office, and you know That back in your high school days, you did cocaine and maybe handed out some to your friends.
What you do is you write in your autobiography, I did a little blow.
I may have done a little cocaine.
And then everybody goes, oh, well, you know, he admitted it.
He admitted it.
He said it was bad.
What do you want from him?
And then it's off the table.
So that's way number one is the confessional culture.
You preemptively declare all of your sins.
Now, this specifically works well for people who are in the political business.
So if you are Ralph Northam and you knew you were going straight from medical school into politics, you would have done this like immediately upon exiting medical school.
You would have said, oh my God, that yearbook was terrible.
I bear my soul terrible for the nation.
So that's option number one is the preemptive, the preemptive confession.
And that's what we prefer in our confessional culture.
In a second, I'm going to give you the other two options.
Option number two, when it comes to bad behavior.
Option number two.
Is that you just try to forget about it.
You try to forget about it.
And then when somebody raises it, then you apologize for it.
So how many things have you done in your life that you think are really bad?
Like really bad, that you're embarrassed of?
I would wager that literally every person who is listening to this show right now, journalist, left, right, center, it doesn't matter.
All of you have done something in your life that you are embarrassed of and you would not want to be public because it is embarrassing.
And so you have a choice.
Are you going to post a diary entry about it online today?
Or are you just going to say, does anybody even remember me doing that?
I hope nobody remembers me doing that because it was really embarrassing.
I remember it.
I'm embarrassed by it.
Bringing it up now creates new issues with my business, with my family.
Do I really need to do that?
Like, I'm sorry for it.
My entire life has been a repudiation of that, so I really need to go back and relive that and rip that scab open now that I've worked hard to move on with my life.
Now, again, it depends on the nature of the sin as to whether this is morally okay or not.
Like, you kill a person, probably you should confess that.
But you dressed up in a yearbook for your medical school 34 years ago, and then you spent 30 years caring for minority children in your pediatrics clinic?
And now you're working on Minority Kids Daily, what do you have to do?
Post a giant poster, like, in the waiting room of your clinic?
Of you, and say, I'm sorry for this?
Probably you do what most people do.
And you do this on a daily basis with your friends and family.
And you do it with your wife, or your husband, with your spouse, with your girlfriend.
You do this all the time.
You do something to a spouse, and you think, man, that was really bad, maybe I shouldn't have done that.
Or maybe she didn't notice.
As a human being, it's a tendency.
And then if she raises it, you're like, you know what?
I shouldn't have done that.
That was stupid.
I'm sorry.
So that's possibility number two.
So possibility number one is the confessional.
Possibility number two is you try to forget it and move beyond it.
And then if somebody raises it, then you apologize for it.
And then there's possibility number three, which is somebody raises the issue and then you double down on it.
Because here's the problem with option number two.
If you take option number two, somebody brings it up, 34 years ago, you dressed in racist fashion in a yearbook, 34 years ago, and you say, you know what?
You're right, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that.
The follow-up question from badly motivated people always is, so why didn't you apologize before?
Why didn't you take option number one?
Why didn't you go out there and do a dashboard confessional?
Why didn't you go out there and write a full-on Facebook post about it so that we could have cast you out before any of this started?
We could have ruined your life preemptively because here's the dirty little secret.
For a lot of folks, if they had done this sort of confessional culture thing, if Ralph Northam had done this before the primaries, that would have finished his career.
So he felt, okay, you know what?
I'm not going to talk about it because it's not an important characterizer of who I am as a person, so I'm not going to talk about it.
Then it gets raised, and now he has two options.
One is, he tried it both ways.
You can actually see him try option one and option three here.
He tried it, number one.
You can see, sorry, he tried option two and option three.
He said, okay, you brought it up, I'm gonna apologize for it.
And then people jumped on him and said, why didn't you do this before?
What's wrong with you?
Where were you for 30 years on this?
And his answer was, well, for 30 years, I've been trying to live down the shame of having done that and trying to move beyond that, but that's not enough for people.
So then it turns into, okay, I'm gonna double down.
What this leads to is a politics where your best characteristic as a politician is having no shame at all.
That you don't care about the bad stuff you did in the past.
And if somebody brings it up to you, then you just, instead of apologizing, you just say, yeah, F you.
I don't care.
Whatever.
Whatever, man.
You want to make a big deal about it?
Float your boat.
Right?
That's why Donald Trump is very successful in politics.
Because he takes option three all the time.
Option three is always double down, which means he never gets asked the follow-up question to option number two.
He never gets asked the follow-up question, well, why didn't you do this earlier?
Why didn't you apologize earlier?
Because he never apologizes.
People bring stuff up to him and he just says, whatever, I don't care.
So what you're going to get is more politicians like that.
You're going to get more politicians who don't have a sense of shame, who don't have a sense of guilt, Who say, you know what, screw this entire system because you're being dishonest.
And here's the truth.
I think a lot of people in politics on every side are being wildly dishonest when they bring up old material to club people to death with.
I've been pretty consistent about this.
Whether we are talking about film directors, where people go and dig through their old tweets, or Kevin Hart, where people are digging up through his old tweets trying to destroy him.
This is an ugly society we've created for ourselves in social media.
Honestly, there are just people who are lucky that cell phones did not exist 40 years ago.
Because now, everything that you do is captured on camera.
So everybody is very wary of what they do on camera.
But, the only thing with Ralph Northam, honestly, the only thing that happened to Ralph Northam is that there was a camera present when he did this.
You know how many politicians probably dressed in blackface over the last 35 years dressed up as Michael Jackson or O.J.
Simpson or something for a Halloween party?
If there were cameras present at all of those places, do you know how many politicians there would be from the Baby Boomer generation?
Zero.
Legitimately zero.
So, here's your choice, Americans.
Here's our choice.
Our choice is, we can either see these things in the context of a less sensitive time, which has good aspects and bad aspects.
Less sensitive means that people are less offended all the time.
It also means that people do more insensitive things, which is bad.
Right, what I would like is for people to be more sensitive, but also more sensitive to others and less sensitive toward their own feelings.
Like that would be the ideal.
Is that your soul, in the Jewish prayers we say this every morning, your soul is like dust to your enemies, but by the same token, you try to be kind to people and non-offensive to other people.
With all of that said, we live in a political culture where you are supposed to cast your opponents in the worst possible light at all times, and if that means going back into the past, digging up stuff, and then forcing them into a corner and beating them, then you do it.
Then you do it.
So, there's no grace, there's no forgiveness, there's no seeing people in the best possible light, there's no attempt to see people as the totality of a group of characteristics.
Instead it's, you did this one bad thing back, way back, A long time ago when, honestly, people were more ignorant and people weren't as sensitive.
And now we're going to destroy you for it.
I don't know that we can have a politics that operates along these lines.
I'm not sure who survives these politics other than people who we have deemed immune for intersectional reasons.
And there are a group of people who have deemed immune for intersectional reasons, that if you apologize for your own privilege, or if you happen to be a member of an intersectional group that has been historically victimized, you can say whatever you want.
So you can be an anti-Semite if you are a black candidate for office who hangs out with Louis Farrakhan.
And if you are Rashida Tlaib and you're Muslim, then you can be anti-Semitic as you want to be.
But it doesn't matter, because you're intersectional.
It's all of this is incoherent.
It's divisive.
It's ugly.
It means a worse politics for the country as a general rule.
And none of this is defense of Ralph Northam's yearbook page.
What it is is a call for us to look, I think, into our own hearts and decide what kind of politics we would like to have on an ongoing basis.
A politics that involves at least a little bit of forgiveness or a politics of pure, unadulterated justice with 20-20 hindsight where everybody has had to be perfect forever.
And if not, then we will go ahead and rip them down off their pedestal and beat them to death.
Alrighty, let's get to some things I like and then we'll do some things that I hate.
So, things that I like.
Over the weekend, I've been reading a lot of sports because I just need distraction from politics these days.
I'm just annoyed by the political scene, I'll be honest with you.
And so I've been reading a lot of sports books.
If you're into sports books, this is one of the great sports books of the recent past.
Jack McCallum, longtime columnist for Sports Illustrated, he wrote a book right after the 1992 Olympics called Dream Team, all about the USA basketball team, which was, you know, the greatest conglomeration of basketball talent ever put on one court.
It was Bird and Magic and Jordan and Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing and David Robinson and just an amazing bevy of talent.
And the book itself is a lot of fun.
It's it's gossipy and it's it's about Honestly, like an aspirational, it gives you an aspirational feeling about the country and about our ability to get along with each other despite our differences.
So it's well worth reading.
Go check it out.
Dream Team by Jack McCallum.
That one is a lot of fun.
I think that you will enjoy it.
Okay, other things that I like.
So Andrew Sullivan.
has a fascinating piece today, it's hilarious, called The Nature of Sex.
And Andrew Sullivan is a gay man, and his basic contention is that if you try to separate out sex from gender, in essence you're going to be reading out the gay and lesbian movement.
Because if you say that sex and gender are entirely disconnected, and that a biological man can actually be a woman, then a lesbian should be able to be with a biological man who is in fact a woman.
And a lot of lesbians are going, well, hold up a second.
Like, that's not something I'm interested in.
Like, if this is a biological dude with all the biological appendages and he calls himself a woman, I'm not attracted to that.
And you can't call me a transphobe because of that.
And yet that's exactly what's happening, right?
The new move in kind of radical trans circles is to say that Caitlyn Jenner not only is a woman, but always was a woman.
And therefore, if you were a lesbian, you should have been attracted to Caitlyn Jenner back when Caitlyn Jenner was fully attached to all of his original parts.
So Andrew Sullivan has a long piece about this today, talking about how the destruction of biological sex actually destroys lesbian and gay rights.
He says, the core disagreement, it seems to me, is whether a trans woman is right to say that she has always been a woman, it was born female, and is indistinguishable from and interchangeable with biological women.
He says, most of us find this argument hard to swallow entirely.
We may accept that Caitlyn Jenner, who came out as a woman in 2015, always understood herself as a woman and see the psychological conviction as sincere and to be respected.
But we also see a difference between someone who lived her life as a man for decades under the full influence of male chromosomes and testosterone and who is socially accepted as male and then transitioned and a woman to whom none of these apply.
Okay, but he's being ripped up and down for all of this, and it's hilarious.
It's why the attempt to... It's why the attempt to link together LGBT doesn't make any sense.
Right?
LGB are all sexual orientations.
T is a sexual identity.
That's not the same thing.
And these aspects of the LGBT movement are finding themselves in conflict.
Now what's hilarious about all of this is that, of course, it's just as true of straight people.
I like that it took a gay man to point out that, by the way, I may not be attracted to biological women.
Well, why is it that straight people have been saying, right, there's differences between men and women.
Everybody's like, ah, those straight people with their sexism.
And then gay people say like, oh, okay, I guess that's true.
So that's kind of hilarious.
So you can go read the piece by Andrew Sullivan.
It is somewhat telling about the state of our politics in the nation at this point.
Okay, time for some things that I hate.
So many things to hate today.
So first of all, I will point out that the Super Bowl stunk.
It was terrible.
The only redeeming quality of the Super Bowl is the Tom Brady one.
Yes, I rooted for greatness.
Sorry.
Sue me.
The Daily Beast, though, had a full piece before the Super Bowl, and it was titled, I kid you not, Tom Brady's New England Patriots are Team MAGA, whether they like it or not.
They said their star quarterback, coach, and owner all supported Trump.
But that's not the only thing that makes the Super Bowl-bound Patriots the preferred team of white nationalists.
You're doing it wrong, Corbin Smith of the Daily Beast.
Learn to code.
My goodness.
So this is the new thing, is that the Patriots are the team of white nationalists.
Alright.
Now if that's the direction you're gonna go.
The worst tweet I saw yesterday was from the Krasenstein brothers, who are just hilarious examples of strange humans.
And one of them tweeted out, while other people are shouting, let's go Patriots, or let's go Rams, I'm shouting, let's go Robert Mueller.
And it's like, okay, are you like watching this alone from your padded cell, the Super Bowl?
Like you're just in a straitjacket screaming at the walls, let's go Mueller!
While Tom Brady drives down the field, throwing passes to Julian Edelman.
If you've let politics take over your life to this extent, I would suggest that you may be nuts.
Okay, other things that I hate today.
So the media, I love the media in the sense that they're terrible.
So, Jussie Smollett, you'll remember this story from last week.
The suggestion was that he'd been walking down the mean streets of Chicago at 2 a.m., coming back from a subway, and he was carrying a sub sandwich, and two guys who are two guys two white guys came out of the woodwork one threw a rope around his neck and then they started shouting this is maga country while they beat him up well now it turns out that a couple of problems okay a couple of problems
according to rafer weigel of fox 32 in chicago the he apparently was missing from the tape for a minute when he was missing from the tape When he re-entered the tape, he had a noose strung around his neck.
But he didn't call the police for 40 minutes.
Also, when he came back into the tape, he was still carrying his Subway sandwich.
Which is weird, like normally when you're assaulted and someone pours bleach on you and puts a noose around your neck and shouts, this is MAGA country and breaks your rib, which was his original contention.
When that happens, I mean, you really must love Subway sandwiches, right?
Like you must be super into that sandwich.
Like if you're getting your ass kicked by a bunch of, by a couple of racists on Chicago street in 20 degree below weather at 2 a.m.
and they're breaking your rib and you still hang on to that Subway sandwich, man, you are either hungry or you love Subway sandwiches for some perverse reason.
I was bruised, but my ribs were not cracked.
Jussie Smollett did some sort of concert and there he talked about his courage and the headline from all of the media outlets were how courageous Jussie Smollett was.
Nobody has yet asked him straight questions about like all the inconsistencies in his story.
But at least we know he's very brave because he performed in a concert and talked about how he had been mischaracterized.
I was bruised, but my ribs were not cracked.
They were not broken.
I went to the doctor immediately.
Frank Datson drove me.
I was not hospitalized.
Both my doctors in L.A.
and Chicago cleared me to perform, but said to take care, obviously.
And above all, I fought the f*** back.
Okay, well, again, like, some details would be good.
I like that he has to read the statement off a card.
He can't just say it, which is always the sign that you're not trying to be legally careful, is that you're reading off an actual printed note card at a concert.
In any case, we still don't know all the details.
Maybe it happened just the way he said it did, but I don't think that it's irrelevant to ask questions about how this thing went down, considering, again, there have been a lot of inconsistencies in his story, and he wouldn't turn his cell phone over to the police.
So, a few things.
Okay, other things that I hate today.
So, Grand Canyon University cancelled a speaking engagement that had been scheduled for me in a couple of months.
And they cancelled it because I'm apparently a very scary human.
And they put out an incredibly long statement about why they cancelled my speech there.
Here's what they said.
We wanted to take a moment to address Grand Canyon University's decision to cancel a speaking engagement on campus by Ben Shapiro.
We believe in many of the things that Ben Shapiro speaks about and stands for, including his support for ideals that grow out of traditional Judeo-Christian values and a belief in a free market economy.
Our decision to cancel Shapiro's speaking engagement is not a reflection of his ideologies or the values he represents, but rather a desire to focus on opportunities that bring people together.
To understand that decision, one has to first understand the university's history and culture that has been created on our campus.
As a private interdenominational Christian institution, Grand Canyon University's core beliefs are rooted in biblical truths and outlined in our doctrinal statement and ethical position statement.
These foundational documents, inspired in large part by the Nicene Creed, articulate our commitment to the full inspiration of scripture and provide clarity, unity, and alignment across the university on matters of ethics and morality.
And then they talk about their very diverse student body and their ability to offer education to all socioeconomic classes.
And they talk about their culture and how kind they are.
They say, in short, it has created a unique and united community where no matter their political differences, people come together as one to make a difference in the world around them.
Today, we live in a very divided America.
The current high volume of rhetoric has not led to community building or problem solving.
Grand Canyon University, rather than engage in this type of rhetoric, has instead worked to bring people together and build partnerships to renovate our inner city community.
And then they talk about all of the wonderful things they've done for the inner city community.
As a university, we encourage thoughtful discussions and rational dialogue in our classrooms about the issues affecting our societies, and we encourage students to put greater emphasis on actions that produce positive change in our society.
They say, based on the response we've received from some within the Grand Canyon community regarding the decision involving such high-profile speakers as Ben Shapiro, we've obviously disappointed and offended some of you.
We know that if we had made a different decision, we would have disappointed and offended others within the same community.
It was not our intent to disappoint or offend anyone.
It was rather to use our position as a Christian university to bring unity to a community that sits amidst a country that is extremely divided and can't seem to find a path forward toward unity.
That's a pretty weak statement.
Sorry to break it to you, GCU, but if you are seeking unity, probably the worst way to go about that is to simply ban debating voices.
To ban dissenting voices.
My events are unfailingly polite.
Go watch my events.
They're incredibly polite.
Obviously, what happened here is that a couple of motivated professors at GCU decided that they were going to speak up to the administration, and the administration caved to them, or a couple of students.
Apparently, according to reporting, people were upset about my position on DACA, which doesn't even make any sense.
Honest to goodness.
I mean, people who listen to the show know I'm actually libertarian on immigration, as long as it is not raising the crime rates, as long as people are not coming here to use welfare, and as long as there are not assimilation problems with citizenship.
And yet, apparently, even a whiff of controversy was enough for GCU to run screaming for the Hills.
So, well done there.
Well done there.
Meanwhile, I wonder if they would reject somebody from the left who was in any way controversial.
Speaking of which, final thing that I hate for today.
Fresh face of the Democratic Party.
So fresh.
So face.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Apparently, she had a wonderful conversation with Jeremy Corbyn, the ridiculous, disgusting, anti-Semitic piece of filth who runs the Labour Party in Britain.
He said, great to speak to AOC on the phone this evening and hear firsthand how she's challenging the status quo.
Let's build a movement across borders to take on the billionaires, polluters and migrant baiters and support a happier, freer and cleaner planet.
And then AOC tweeted, it was an honor to share such a lovely and wide reaching conversation with you, Jeremy Corbyn.
Also honored to share a great hope in the peace, prosperity, and justice that everyday people can create when we uplift one another across class, race, and identity, both at home and abroad.
Is it possible that the modern Democratic Party has a serious problem with allowing anti-Semitism to flourish inside its ranks?
I think that that's pretty obvious at this point.
And we're going to continue to pretend that they are tolerant and open and diverse, when in fact, many on the radical left are precisely the opposite.
And AOC's association with one of the worst people in the West, Jeremy Corbyn, is just the latest indicator of that.
Alrighty, so we'll be back here a little bit later today with all the updates.
We have a couple of more hours of programming coming up later with all the updates and prep for the State of the Union address.
Be there, or we'll see you here tomorrow in prep for the State of the Union.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Karamina, hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera, production assistant Nick Sheehan.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
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