Andrew Clavin skewers Everyday Feminism’s absurd cultural appropriation guide before dissecting Ted Cruz’s 45% unfavorable Gallup rating, framing his Obamacare defiance as principled while Trump’s populism exploits voter rage. Citing Plato and Sullivan, he warns democracy’s collapse risks tyranny—Clinton’s Detroit NAACP speech exposes urban decay hypocrisy, while a Trump-Clinton matchup would gut moral debates like abortion. A pro-life vs. pro-choice clash underscores relativism’s erosion of innate ethics, mirroring Avatar’s anti-Bush propaganda. The episode ends with election chaos and a Clinton/Trump drinking game tease. [Automatically generated summary]
Every now and again, I like to go visit a website called Everyday Feminism because while feminists are as amusingly stupid as goldfish, you're not allowed to keep them in a bowl of water on your desk.
Today at Everyday Feminism, we find an article called Five Simple Questions That Will Help You Avoid Unintentional Cultural Appropriation.
Now, cultural appropriation is when a member of one culture uses or wears something that is generally associated with another culture.
This is a very bad thing to do because it suggests that we're all children of God sharing a small planet together and should be able to borrow interesting customs and costumes from one another at will in a spirit of love and harmony.
Who wants that?
An example of cultural appropriation would be if a white girl wore dreadlocks and said things like, I be a white girl, but I think dreads is the shanizle.
This would of course be cultural appropriation from blacks and would thus give a black girl the right to beat the white girl up.
That would in turn be cultural appropriation from the Sicilians who would then be allowed to bury the black girl in cement, leaving the white girl free to wear the dreadlocks.
Other examples of one culture group stealing something from a different cultural group would be an African using technology, a man using a woman's bathroom, Mexicans using America, Muslims loving their neighbors as themselves, and women acting rationally.
Which brings me back to everyday feminism.
Here are the five questions the website suggests you ask yourself before doing something that might unintentionally be cultural appropriation.
I am not making these questions up.
Say you're a white girl and you want to wear a kimono.
Everyday feminism suggests you ask yourself, one, to what ethnic slash racial slash cultural group does the practice or artifact belong?
Obviously, with the kimono, the answer is the Japanese.
Question two, how is the group that the practice or artifact belongs to oppressed?
Here the answer is Japanese people have to live in Japan and are forced to speak a language no one can understand.
Question three, do you benefit from using this artifact?
How?
That's really two questions, but remember these are feminists and after they count past one, things get a little unclear.
Question four, why might your using this artifact make someone uncomfortable?
Actually, kimonos are generally loose-fitting and made of silk, so it should be pretty comfortable for everyone.
If not, you can exchange it for a larger size.
And finally, question five, what makes it possible for you to use this artifact?
And here the answer is that your boyfriend has been hanging out on those Asian girl websites, so wearing a kimono will really get the evening off to a good start.
Once you've asked yourself these five questions, you should know whether you're unintentionally engaging in cultural appropriation, and you should then be ready to move on to the next stage, which is intentional cultural appropriation.
With a little practice, you'll soon be able to walk right up to the nearest American Indian and steal his land.
Trigger one, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
People, I love everyday feminism.
Like, thank you, ladies, for providing the laughs.
John Boehner's Integrity Show00:07:16
Man, oh man, that sight is so.
Can you imagine living like that though?
Oh, I'm really glad I tuned into this site so I have that advice before I put on my kimono.
Anyway, it's Indiana Day, and we here are going to be playing a drinking game.
Every time a sentient creature even thinks about voting for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, we're going to take a shot.
And you can watch this.
You won't be able to see this unless you subscribe.
So you got to subscribe.
And if you subscribe, you not only can hear it, you can see it.
And what you'll see is two sneakers sticking out from under the desk, basically.
But you can subscribe and you can send in questions and we'll have you on the show.
We were just talking before the show.
We're going to arrange to start answering some of the mail we get if you subscribe.
If you don't subscribe, then we just ignore you and may even drop by your house and take things.
We don't know.
All right, so it's on to Indiana and things are looking grim for the Cruz people.
Ted Cruz is not happy.
Not only, there's a poll out today, a Gallup poll, and this is not about the voters.
This is how Republicans see Ted Cruz, okay?
There's a Gallup poll that says Ted Cruz, who's attempting to hold on to the narrowing possibility that he can wrest the GOP nomination away from frontrunner Donald Trump, faces a crucial Indiana primary on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, and perhaps ominously for Cruz, he has run into headwinds among Republicans at the national level.
His image has essentially nosedived over the past week or two, while Trump's image has become more positive.
Republicans' views of Cruz are now the worst in Gallup's history of tracking the Texas senator.
His image among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents is at 39% favorable and 45% unfavorable.
This is among Republicans, based on an April 24th to 30 interviewing for a net favorable score of minus six.
The last few days have marked the first time we have seen Cruz's image underwater since we began daily tracking in July.
That's the Gallup poll.
So Republicans don't.
Now, part of this is obviously just the effect of losing.
I mean, part of this is that Donald Trump had these mega victories all throughout the East Coast, all throughout the train Amtrak corridor.
And I think that it's just making Cruz look desperate.
He's tried this thing with Carly Fiorina.
He tried teaming up with Kasich.
And I think people are just thinking, like, ah, you know, he's beginning to sweat.
He's beginning to, you can see him sweat.
And I think people don't like that.
And of course, there's also the fact that the Republican establishment is now, can't help itself but voice this hatred of Cruz.
They have been, you know, Cruz went into the Senate.
He called Mitch McConnell a liar.
He shut down the Congress.
He shut down the government over funding Obamacare.
He made a show of his own integrity in contrast to the lack of integrity of the Republicans.
And somehow, I don't know, the Republicans didn't take that well.
John Boehner, who is like the avatar of the establishment, he is the establishment turned into a human being.
John Boehner called him, he said, Lucifer.
He's Lucifer in the flesh.
And the Satanists objected to this.
The Satanists objected to Lucifer, their hero being compared to Ted Cruz.
It says, Magus, Magus Peter Howard Gilmore, the high priest of the Church of Satan, said in a statement, having a conservative Christian likened to Lucifer, someone who opposes equal rights for same-sex couples and promotes the ability to deny services to people with different values, we Satanists see as besmirching the positive, heroic aspects of Satan as portrayed by Milton in his epic poem, Paradise Lost.
So that rumbling you heard was John Milton rolling over in his grave.
Ah, that's not what I meant.
So these guys took an English class, and God, they took like English 101 and read stories about Satan as a hero in Paradise Lost.
Anyway, now Cruz is reduced to claiming that he and Boehner never worked together at all.
Here's Cruz responding to this.
I don't even know John Boehner.
During the government shutdown, I reached out to John Boehner and I offered for Michael Lee and me to come over and work with the speaker.
Can we resolve this and actually get something meaningful done to stop the disaster that is Obamacare?
John Boehner's response was, I have no interest in talking to you.
What possibly could be accomplished by having a conversation, no, I will not meet.
So when he says that I'm the worst guy he's ever worked with, he's never worked with me.
The thing to understand about Washington, actually Boehner's comments reveal everything that is wrong and corrupt with Washington, everything that you're angry with.
When John Boehner calls me Lucifer, he's not directing that at me.
He's directing that at you.
What Bader is angry with me for is not anything I've ever said to him.
I haven't said much of anything to him.
What Bader is angry with me for is standing with the American people, is energizing and encouraging House conservatives to stand with the American people and actually honor the commitments we've made.
See, that's essentially the truth.
What Boehner and the rest of the Republicans are angry about is that Cruz was representing the base, and they've been consistently telling the base one thing and doing another over and over and over again.
And that's why everybody, that's why the party split.
But it doesn't matter because Cruz is now caught in this vice because the establishment hates him.
And the people now think that he's the establishment compared to Trump.
They think he's the establishment.
Yesterday he gets in this argument with a Trump protester.
It went on for like eight minutes.
He's debating this protester.
And, you know, if you see it, if you can see the video, the guy has just got this kind of implacable face, this little grin on his face.
And Cruz is arguing.
Well, play the small cut we have.
This man is lying to you, and he's taking advantage of you.
And I would encourage you, sir.
Look, I appreciate your being out here speaking.
If I were Donald Trump, I wouldn't have come over and talked to you.
I wouldn't have shown you that respect.
In fact, you know what I would have done?
I would have told the folks over there, go over and punch those guys in the face.
That's what Donald does to protest.
Yes, sir.
I think a candidate is campaigning work lying to you.
Okay, stop, huh?
What word did I say was a lot?
Donald telling people to punch me right.
Okay, look, let me ask you, sir, just go home and Google Donald Punch in the face protesters.
And at his rallies, this is on national television.
You can watch the facts of him standing at the podium saying, punch that guy in the face.
And in fact, he says I'll pay your legal fees when you punch him in the face.
Trash group and there's a problem.
So this guy is immovable.
You know, Cruz is citing the Constitution.
He's citing the facts.
He's arguing.
He's debating the guys going, we don't want you here.
We don't want, you know, it's kind of like now Trump has secured the OxyContin vote.
I mean, everybody on OxyContin, it's like, Donald Trump will stop the pain that I'm in when my Oxy prescription runs out.
And that is the election in a nutshell.
I mean, Cruz thought he was going to go out with the principles of the base, with the ideas of the base.
Socrates' Warning00:04:08
He didn't realize they don't want the principles.
They don't want the ideas.
They want their feelings personified.
They feel cheated.
They feel that America has lost its stature in the world.
And they want those emotions personified.
It doesn't matter why.
It doesn't matter what the idea, whether this ideal fixed it or that idea.
They just want that anger personified, and Donald Trump is going to do it.
You know, Andrew Sullivan, I'm not a big Andrew Sullivan fan.
He kind of paraded himself as kind of like was the old Milo Yiannopoulos.
He paraded himself as the gay conservative kind of.
He had this website, a blog that he did.
And he went crazy over Sarah Palin.
He had this obsessive thing about where her children came from and were their children really here.
It was really nuts.
But he's written a piece for New York magazine, which basically says, America is now ripe for tyranny because we've become too democratic.
And it's a very interesting piece because I always kind of suspected Sullivan's, I didn't really trust Sullivan's conservative bona fides.
He always just sounded like a sort of Democrat with a little bit of a wisp of good sense.
But this does sound pretty conservative.
He talks about reading Plato, the philosopher, not the colored clay.
And Plato didn't like democracy, first of all, because they killed his mentor, the Democratic Greeks killed his mentor, Socrates.
And he wrote his dialogues through Socrates.
He made Socrates a character and character, and Socrates would proclaim his philosophy.
And in the Republic, he takes on democracy, and he doesn't like it.
Plato asked a very simple and disturbing question, which is who is wise, the many or the few?
Obviously, few people are wise, not the many are wise.
And so he said, well, why should the many then have the right to vote and to decide the government?
Now, he didn't know about the wisdom of crowds, which is an argument against it.
But Sullivan has a take on Plato's Republic.
A little bit, I'm not sure how much of it.
You know, it's been a while since I've read The Republic.
It's a little more Sullivan than Plato, but still.
Here's Sullivan writing about it in New York magazine.
Socrates seemed pretty clear on one sobering point, that tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy.
That's a quote from the Republic.
What did Plato mean by that?
Democracy for him was a political system of maximal freedom and equality where every lifestyle is allowed and public offices are filled by a lottery.
And the longer a democracy lasted, Plato argued, the more democratic it would become.
Its freedoms would multiply, its equality spread, deference to any sort of authority would wither.
Tolerance of any kind of inequality would come under intense threat, and multiculturalism and sexual freedom would create a city or a country like, quote, a many-colored cloak decorated in all hues.
Sullivan goes on, the rainbow flag polity, Plato argues, is for many people the fairest of regimes.
The freedom in that democracy has to be experienced to be believed, with shame and privilege in particular emerging over time as anathema.
So shame and privilege are the worst things that can happen, which does sound very much like America today.
Sullivan continues, but it is inherently unstable.
This democracy is inherently unstable.
As the authority of elites fades, as establishment values cede to popular ones, views and identities can become so magnificently diverse as to be mutually uncomprehending.
And when all the barriers to equality, formal and informal, have been removed, when everyone is equal, when elites are despised and full license is established to do whatever one wants, you arrive at what might be called late-stage democracy.
There's no kowtowing to authority here, let alone to political experience or expertise.
And this is when a democracy has ripened as fully as this, Plato argues, a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment.
This is where the tyrant comes along and sort of says to people, you know, you have been abused by the authorities.
You have the right to do anything you want, and I will represent those feelings that you want.
So it's a well-written piece and worth taking a look at.
Tyrant's Moment00:13:41
And Sullivan was on TV.
He was on hardball with Chris Matthews.
And he pointed out that Bernie Sanders is a, you know, he says Trump is a demagogue.
He called Trump a couple of other choice things as well, language I don't usually hear on MSNBC.
But he said Bernie Sanders is a demagogue as well because he keeps saying, oh, you know, the billionaires, it's the fault of the billionaires.
Like the billionaires, you know, the billionaires haven't done anything to us.
They haven't taken anything away from us.
It's not the fault of the billionaires.
We have, you know, what's happening right now is we have an economy that is a tremendous transition.
It's becoming global.
It's very difficult.
Some people are winning, some people are losing, but we also have a government across the West, not just in America, across the West, that is doing the wrong thing by over-regulating that economy instead of letting it free so little guys can rise up through the ranks.
Okay, so people are angry.
He points out that Bernie, I mean, Bernie Sanders yesterday, he kind of pulled the same, he sounds just like Trump.
He pulled the system is rigged too.
He's going to push for an open convention too.
Let's hear what Sanders says.
It is virtually impossible for Secretary Clinton to reach the majority of convention delegates by June 14th with pledged delegates alone.
She will need superdelegates to take her over the top at the convention in Philadelphia.
In other words, the convention will be a contested contest.
We believe that we are in a very strong position to win many of these remaining contests, and we have an excellent chance to win in California, the state with far and away the most delegates.
Those superdelegates in states where either candidate, Secretary Clinton or myself, has won a landslide victory, those superdelegates ought to seriously reflect on whether they should cast their superdelegate vote in line with the wishes of the people of their states.
So there's Bernie making the exact same argument as Trump, which is that the people are being cheated.
He used the same words.
He said the system is rigged.
Exact same words.
That the people are being cheated.
And on the Democrat side, of course, he's right.
The machine, they use those superdelegates to lock in the machine politics of the Democrat Party.
How else could somebody like Hillary Clinton rise to the faith?
And by the way, speaking of demagogues, for some reason, Hillary Clinton always gets a pass.
These proto-Democrats, they can see everything that's wrong with Sanders.
They can see everything that's wrong with Trump.
But they can't see that Hillary Clinton is just as big a Democrat.
She tells each person, here she is.
Here she is speaking to the NAACP.
I mean, this is actually amazing when you think about it.
I'll tell you why afterwards.
Listen to her first.
WE CANNOT LET BARACK OBAMA'S LEGACY FALL INTO DONALD TRUMP'S HANDS.
WE CAN'T LET ALL THE HARD WORK AND PROGRESS WE'VE ACHIEVED OVER THE LAST SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS BE TORN AWAY.
We have to move forward together.
We have to bring our country together.
We have to keep working toward that more perfect union.
That mission feels more urgent than ever now that the Obama presidency is coming to a close.
We've been blessed to have this strong, thoughtful leader sitting in the Oval Office and an exceptional First Lady by his side.
They have made us proud.
They have represented America to the world with style and grace, and it is up to us to make sure that when they leave the White House, the concerns and priorities they champion, the hopes and dreams that Americans have entrusted to them, don't also leave.
What's insane about this, what's insane about this is she's in Detroit.
She is in Detroit.
Outside the walls of that room is the smoking ruin of every Democrat policy brought to life.
It is just a city that has been reduced to rubble, as Chicago is being reduced to rubble now, as New Orleans was reduced to rubble by Democrat policies.
And they're applauding.
We need to preserve the Obama legacy.
And it's the NAACP, so they're black people.
What has Obama done for black people?
What has he done for black people except be black?
Which, you know, I'll admit, that's actually something.
I get it.
I get it.
I get the symbolism of that.
But the crime is rising in their neighborhoods.
Their economics, their unemployment rates are skyrocketing.
He's done nothing.
They're in Detroit and they're applauding.
Give us more rubble.
Give us more destruction.
So they're all demagoguing.
We're getting this thing where it's like the people, the people have to have their voice.
And what's especially interesting, and it's especially interesting that Andrew Sullivan wrote about this, being a gay guy, it's especially interesting how in Plato's analysis of the fall of democracy, that sexual, that the increase in sexual and personal freedom goes hand in hand with a decrease in political freedom.
I mean, and this is, the founders all said this.
The founders all said that the Constitution is a document for a religious people.
If you're not a religious people, you can't be this free.
You cannot be this free.
The government has to control you if you can't control yourself.
And we're sort of seeing that.
And what is especially interesting to me about this is if in Indiana things go pear-shaped, if Trump and Hillary come out of Indiana as the presumptive victors, which right this minute it looks like they will, we don't know, but let's say this happens.
If Trump and Hillary come out, all the social questions are off the table for the next four years.
I mean, let's face it, obviously Hillary is a leftist, so she's just for doing whatever you want, and everybody's equal and everything is equal.
And Trump is a liar about this.
I mean, he certainly, you know, Cruz is right.
He's a guy with New York values.
He certainly believes, doesn't care anything about gays, gay marriage.
None of that matters to him at all.
And he says he's against abortion, but he's lying.
I mean, he's lying the same way Obama lied about being against gay marriage.
Now, here's the thing.
I'm a New York guy myself.
I have New York values too.
I don't care what people do sexually.
And in fact, it offends me when people link abortion and gay marriage in the same conversation, that those are all the social issues.
I mean, it seems to me quite different, quite different question about whether a baby has a right to live, to stay alive, and whether two guys have a right to declare that they're married.
But what is true?
What is true is that when you strip away any sense of right and wrong, when you strip away, when everything becomes about tolerating difference, I mean, because let's face it, a genius is abnormal, and so is a serial killer.
The only question is right and wrong.
You have to be able to ask those questions.
And if we can't ask the question about whether gay marriage is right or wrong, if that is an offense, if we can't ask the question about whether a guy going into a girl's bathroom is right or wrong, is that good or bad?
And we can't ask the question about abortion, whether it's right or wrong, if that's just an offense against freedom, if everything is an offense against freedom and nothing is a question of right or wrong, we eventually lose our humanity.
You know, there's a video, I'll show you this brief clip of a video of a pro, a right-to-life group.
I can't remember.
Oh, it's called Created Equal, I think, goes out to a college campus and interviews a woman who is protesting in favor of abortion.
And they ask this woman, at what point does it become wrong to abort a baby?
Eight months?
What about two minutes after the baby is born?
Okay.
So they ask this woman, and here's her response.
I'm not going to make a blanket decision that any woman that goes out and has quote-unquote casual sex and becomes pregnant uses.
I absolutely am not going to make that judgment call.
So would you make a judgment call like, I don't know, eight months pregnancy?
Would you say that's always wrong to have an abortion then?
It would depend on the circumstances.
What about...
I would want a doctor.
What about two minutes after birth?
Is it always wrong to kill that child?
It would depend on medical circumstances.
I don't think anybody can answer this question.
What medical circumstances?
No, it's not about two minutes after birth, so or post-birth, the baby's there.
But I don't know what kind of a medical emergency could arise within two minutes.
I'm not a doctor.
I wouldn't have to.
I like to take a look at the medical.
What medical emergency could make you need to take a born baby outside the womb two minutes and kill that child?
What medical emergency would cause that?
You're asking me to make a medical opinion.
I'm not a doctor.
If there was a medical necessity involved.
You cut the cord, take the baby away.
You would never need to kill that child after birth.
Are you a doctor?
You're asking me whether I blanketly believe it's wrong.
Wrong to kill newborn babies.
I'm going to kill a newborn baby after that baby's been taken from this woman.
I'm saying to you, I have no idea what medical necessities or what medical issues would arise that would necessitate that.
So I can't make a blanket statement that I would call it murder in every case.
I'm not in the operating room.
I have no idea.
She has no idea.
Let me ask you this.
Do you think when that woman was a little girl, if you showed her a baby two minutes born and asked her if it was right to kill it, you think she knew then?
You think she had an idea then whether it was right or wrong?
I think she did.
I think she would have known on the instant.
I think she would have told you without a second's hesitation that it is wrong to kill that baby.
What happened to her?
What happened to her?
Well, let me stipulate what happened.
Let me guess what happened to her, okay?
You know, the power of our desire to feel virtuous is huge.
When I'm talking about demagoguery, when I'm talking about the fact that people are going to the people and we've lost our faith in our elites, one of the reasons we lost our faith in our elites is our elites opted to feel virtuous instead of doing the right thing.
Our elites opt to feel virtuous about Mexicans coming over the border without thinking that maybe poor people suffer when illegal immigrants come in and take their jobs.
They don't think about that because they feel virtuous.
They feel understanding.
Elites feel virtuous when they say, oh, you know, yeah, sure, let a man who thinks he's a woman use a girl's bathroom.
You know, they're not the ones who are going to get attacked.
They're not the ones who are going to be assaulted or have their little girls.
You know, they're going to be protected.
They have the money and the status to be protected from their own decisions.
When you do something that's wrong, like have an abortion, the act of turning back becomes so difficult.
The act of saying, I did something wrong.
I am ashamed.
I feel guilty.
I need forgiveness.
That's a really, really tough thing to do.
And if people are standing on the sidelines, cheering you on to the next step, saying, don't feel bad.
There's nothing to feel bad about.
All interreactions to people, it's just about your freedom.
It's all about your freedom.
It's not about right or wrong.
It's not about the, you know, once, look, I want you to be free, but once you're free, you start to have to make decisions about what's right and wrong.
If you keep going down that road, that's what you end up with.
You end up with a woman who cannot tell whether it's wrong to kill a newborn baby.
She can't tell.
She said herself, I have no idea.
And like I said, when she was a little girl, she knew, but now she doesn't know.
And that is, we're in danger of that happening to our country.
When you are appealing purely to pure democracy, we're not supposed to be a democracy.
We're supposed to be a republic.
The people want what they want.
They want to be free.
They want to have pleasure.
They want to get more stuff.
They want to pay fewer taxes.
I mean, we have this in California where every law is voted on by the people.
Give us more stuff, but don't raise our taxes.
Give us more stuff, but don't raise our taxes.
And then when they raise the taxes and they tell us that everything is fine, as they're doing now, we don't get anything for it.
We don't get any new services.
I mean, we are just broke and our pensions are going to bankrupt the state.
It doesn't matter.
Give us what we want and don't make us pay for it.
That is what the people say.
When Plato was afraid of the many, when the founders of this country were afraid of the many, that's what they were afraid of.
And so now we are about to have, if Indiana goes sideways, if Indiana goes pear-shaped and Trump and Hillary come out as the presumptive nominees, that is what we're going to have for the next four years and is now going to become, it's now going to become our responsibility, the responsibility of those who said no, the responsibility of those who said, don't do it, don't go there.
It's going to become our responsibility to begin the very, very difficult process of teaching people again that there is no freedom without morality.
There is no freedom without God.
There is no freedom without religion.
And that is where we're going to start.
You know, if you wonder why guys like Glenn Beck, crazy guys like Glenn Beck and Ben Shapiro, I mean, guys, right, I mean, these guys belong in some kind of padded room, right?
You wonder why they're the ones standing up.
It's because they know the face of their God.
You know, and maybe you don't agree with their version of God, but at least they know that that morality is there.
It is not just an opinion.
It is written, written into the fabric of reality.
And we're going to have to begin the very difficult process of teaching to people that has been fed on its own freedom that they're going to have to learn how that fabric of reality works once again.
Should be an interesting day, folks.
And I'm starting, just a few more minutes of the show, and then I start drinking.
So it's going to be great for me.
We're going to have a good time.
Dishonest Energy Songs00:03:11
All right, stuff I like.
Now I am talking about Crazy Ben.
I've been stealing from Shapiro this week to do some stuff I hate, but I'm not just doing stuff that I particularly hate.
I'm doing stuff that everybody else loves that I hate.
And it's not that I hate it.
I just think it's bad.
I think it's bad.
And what makes a work of art bad?
You know, you say, well, work of art is just a taste.
I don't agree with that.
I don't agree that taste defines a work of art.
I think that a work of art is there to do something.
It is there to teach us about the inner experience of human life.
And if it lies to us, no matter how entertaining or convincing it is, it's actually doing us a disservice.
And so the picture I want to talk about today is Avatar.
This is to me the imagine of movies.
You know, the song Imagine, Imagine There's.
It's like such a popular song, such a big, it's just an awful, awful song.
The music is lousy.
The words are ridiculous.
Avatar is the same way.
People got so obsessed with this fake planet, this fake world in Avatar, that they would build websites and kind of yearn to be in this, among the Avatar people and all this stuff.
And basically, I mean, it's a movie that was an attack on the Bush administration.
It was the bad guys of these military guys come to the planet to steal their resources, as James Cameron was arguing essentially that we had gone over to the Middle East to steal their oil, which was absurd.
The movie is bad.
First, the plot is completely unoriginal.
It's dances with wolves and Pocahontas.
A guy goes into a native culture, a civilized man goes into a native culture, falls in love with the native culture, and becomes one of them and realizes he's got to fight against his own evil civilized culture.
It's the old noble savage routine, which is just absurd.
Savages are savage.
It's not a happy life.
But the other thing that is so dishonest about it is that it's about the need for energy.
They go to this planet to steal their energy.
And everyone on this planet is living at peace with nature.
They're at peace with nature.
You know, they have trees that light up and they fly on dragons and the women are treated with equality and the women are warriors.
Now, you can have things light up in the dark and you can fly and you can have equality for women, but you need one thing, one little magic thing to make all that happen, and that's oil.
You need oil.
You need energy to light the lights.
You need energy to make the planes fly, and you need technology to bring women up to the, you know, if everything is just about upper body strength without technology, men are going to be dominant.
If you want to bring women up to equality, you have to have technology that makes people more equal, to make more able to compete.
You need a world of the mind, and a world of the mind is created by energy.
So Avatar is just a dishonest picture that was showing you that you could have everything that oil gives you without oil.
And it was dishonest in the sense that it portrayed America's military as being rapists of the land.
Everything about it was dishonest.
It was also boring on top of everything else.
It wasn't really a good movie.
So that's stuff I dislike.
We'll only do one more of those.
We'll get back to stuff I like next week.
All right, on to Indiana, or Who's Your Daddy, as we say?