Ep. 223 dissects Hollywood’s anti-Trump satire—Attack of the Hateful Orange Monster—as elitist, mocking its demonization of white Midwestern voters while contrasting media chaos narratives with Trump’s organized transition, citing his $1B+ fundraising and FOIA abuses under Obama. It critiques Harry Reid’s moralizing over Bannon and Nancy Pelosi’s leadership amid Ellison’s Muslim Brotherhood ties, then pivots to gay marriage, arguing for legal neutrality while defending traditional relationships. A listener debate on C.S. Lewis vs. J.R.R. Tolkien highlights Mere Christianity’s intellectual rigor over Lord of the Rings’ density, before recommending Falling Down as a raw, misunderstood portrait of economic despair—proving art often outpaces political correctness. The episode ends by framing leftist backlash as proof they’ve learned nothing from Trump’s rise. [Automatically generated summary]
It's time to take our minds off politics for a while and turn to the glittering, glamorous world of entertainment.
Let's have a look at some of the wonderful productions Hollywood has planned for our amusement in the year to come.
Scheduled for release in theaters next fall is the exciting horror flick, attack of the hateful orange monster who really sucks and is hateful.
A studio press release describes the picture as, quote, the thrilling story of how climate change deniers cause a massive upsurge in radiation, which forges much of the world's clay into a gigantic orange beast who tramples on all our hopes and dreams,
encouraged by a mob of fat, ugly, stupid, white, stupid, fat white people who come from places in the Midwest or somewhere like that that you wouldn't even want to visit, let alone live in, and who suck just as badly as the monster and are fat and white, unquote.
The director of the film, Jacques Destain, said he felt sure audiences would turn out in droves because, quote, people are so stupid they don't even know when they are being insulted.
That's why my last picture, Up Yours, You Right Wing Pieces of Garbage, pulled in nearly $1,400 at the box office, a major step toward making back its $200 million production budget, unquote.
On television, Fox and CBS are teaming up for a storyline that combines Madam Secretary with The Exorcist.
According to network press materials, the multi-part tale will, quote, dramatize how the steely-eyed, frosty-haired Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord moves to save the nation by running for president, only to have a demon out of hell take possession of all the voters outside of New York and California and force them to vote for a gigantic orange monster created by global warming deniers and cheered on by fat, white, ugly, stupid, white,
fat people who are also possessed with horrible demons so that their faces rot and they become hideous and fat and white, unquote.
CBS TV producer Manny Clueless told TMZ, quote, I feel certain the new series will score big ratings among the key demographic of viewers who enjoy having their most cherished beliefs trashed by a bunch of rich showbiz moguls, unquote.
Fox TV producer Sammy Clueless, no relation to Manny Clueless, they just both happen to be clueless, added, quote, if my show can score with the hundreds and hundreds of left-wing viewers across America, I feel certain I can score with the cute hippie chick in accounting, unquote.
Finally, on the music scene, Miley Cyrus is planning to release a new album called You Stink America, I Hate You, which will include the hit single A Canada of the Mind.
To excite interest in the album, Cyrus has pre-released the lyrics to the song beginning, I'm going off to find a Canada of the Mind.
I'd have gone to Canada for reels, but it's too far from Beverly Hills.
Ms. Cyrus said she would sing the entire song while twerking naked to distract her audience from the fact that she can't carry a tune and that she despises them.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Years are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunkity-dee-doo.
Ship shape, tipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
Hoorah, hooray, it's mailbag day.
Woohoo, yay!
So the mailbag, if you want to be in the mailbag next week, you've got to subscribe to the Daily Wire.
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I hope, are we on Facebook?
We've been having such troubles.
Yay, okay, we made it yesterday all through the show.
So you think I'm joking about this Hollywood stuff, you know, that you think that like Hollywood would start to say like, hmm, you know, all these people turned up is sort of saying that they don't care what we think and they don't care about our celebrities.
And maybe they're just trying to stick it to us a little bit.
Here is a show, I think it's from Fox.
It's called Lucifer.
It's about the devil, right, Lucifer, and he's walking the earth for some reason.
I've never seen the show.
He's walking the earth for some reason.
He goes to see a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist starts to ask him about how hell works.
Is there a special room for tyrants where he tortures tyrants?
And here's his response.
So we can talk about Caligula, Stalin, Trump.
I mean, I know he's not dead, but he's definitely going.
Lucifer, I owe you an apology.
Thank you so much, Hollywood, for your input and your wisdom.
You know, you're sitting, I mean, really, in all seriousness, you're sitting there.
You've had a long day.
You know, you come back, you turn on Lucifer to watch some TV, and it's like some guy in Hollywood who's taken so much cocaine, he doesn't know how many times he's been divorced, is going to tell you that your guy is going to hell.
You know, it's like shutting up, you know, entertain me.
You know, show me, show me, tell me a story.
You know, there's a story in The Onion.
I love this.
I mean, it's almost too real to be an onion satire.
Trump's Black Voter Appeal00:14:59
It says, DNC aiming to reconnect with working class Americans with new Hamilton-inspired Lena Dunham web series saying the new effort would help them vote, make critical inroads with low-income rural voters following a stunning election loss last week.
The Democratic National Committee announced the launch of a new Hamilton-inspired web series Tuesday, starring Lena Dunham, intended to connect with working-class Americans and address their most pressing concerns.
We're hoping to make up the ground we lost with white working-class voters and union members who once made up our base with a new 10-part hip-hop musical set in rural Wisconsin, featuring a down-on-er-luck manufacturing worker played by Lena Dunham, said DMC interim chair Donna Brazil.
It's funny.
It's only funny because it's absolutely true.
They have learned.
It's like Jon Snow in Game of Thrones.
These people, you learn nothing, Jon Snow.
You know nothing.
These people know nothing.
So, you know, what's going on now in the Trump transition team?
Mike Pence has taken over, and he's tossed out the lobbyists, which is a good thing.
That's a great thing, right?
I mean, you'd think even left-wingers would be celebrating that.
He has purged the transition team of the Chris Christie people.
Apparently, Trump was unhappy about Bridgegate and the way he handled it.
So now, I mean, New York, here's the New York Times, a former newspaper.
President-elect Donald J. Trump's transition was in disarray on Tuesday, marked by firings, infighting, and revelations that American allies were blindly dialing into Trump Tower to try to reach the soon-to-be leader of the free world.
One week after Mr. Trump scored an upset victory that took him by surprise, his team was improvising the most basic traditions of assuming power.
This is utter garbage, utter garbage.
Every transition team is in chaos.
This is a very difficult job.
They're on schedule for appointments.
I mean, they're actually a little ahead of schedule with appointments.
So, like I said, oh, what I like is Trump is tweeting back.
You know, here's good Trump.
You know, Ben is always talking about good Trump, bad Trump.
Here's Trump tweeting back.
He says, the failing New York Times story is so totally wrong on transition, transition.
It is going so smoothly.
Also, I have spoken to many foreign leaders.
Very organized process taking place as I decide on cabinet and many other positions.
I am the only one who knows who the finalists are.
So it's the apprentice.
You know, I mean, it's easy.
He's been doing this for years.
You know, it's going like, no, you know.
So anyway, you just can't believe, you cannot believe the reporting.
This is from NBC News.
Yesterday, Trump snuck away from the press and went out to have dinner with his family, the steakhouse, right?
This is from NBC News, right?
NBCNews.com.
As Trump leaves press behind for steak dinner, incoming admin already showing lack of transparency.
I can't believe I'm not actually making this up.
I'm not.
In a highly unusual move, President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday night left his Manhattan residence without notifying the reporters covering him or giving any indication of where he was going.
The maneuver seemed to deliberately limit access to the media.
The only way the press eventually ascertained his whereabouts was after a Bloomberg reporter who happened to be dining at the 21 Club tweeted a photo of Trump and some of his transition team in the Midtown Steakhouse.
Trump spokesman Hope Hicks later told NBC News he is having dinner with his family.
Wife Melania, daughter of Vanka, her husband Jared Kushner, sons Donald Jr. and Eric Trump are all at the restaurant with his Tuesday night actions.
I swear I'm not making this up.
I'm reading this off the page.
With his Tuesday night actions, the Trump administration is shaping up to be the least accessible to the public and the press in modern history.
So let me just remind you, here's an AP story from last year.
The Obama administration routinely makes a mockery of its long-ago pledge to establish itself as the most transparent administration in U.S. history.
Now comes another blow via the Associated Press.
They report that more often than ever, that the administration more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
In about a third of instances, the government conceded that initial decisions to withhold or censor documents were improper under the law.
The backlog of unended, it goes on and on.
This has been, the Obama administration has been acknowledged by even the left-wing press to have been one of the least transparent in history.
Trump had dinner.
Trump had dinner.
You know, this is, I mean, you know, this is the press, academia.
Ben Shapiro was almost arrested.
They threatened him with arrest.
Where is he?
He was DePaul, right?
In Chicago.
He went to make a speech.
They had 30 security guards, because you know how much Shapiro resembles Schwarzenegger, right?
You know, like, I am Ben Shapiro.
I will take 30.
I can take 29 security guards, but 30, I have not, you know, I must retreat.
They were threatening him with arrest for speaking on campus.
Do these people see themselves?
You know, just, I don't know if this was a coincidence.
Tucker Carlson on his new show had a DePaul journalist professor on and basically asked her, does she know what, does she understand what she's doing?
Listen to this.
Isn't it time for some sort of affirmative effort to bring people who disagree from other walks of life into your world?
Well, we certainly try to foster discussion, debate, and have dialogue about the role of free speech on college campuses, the role of free speech in society.
And certainly I think that this election does bear out that we need to find ways to reach across partisan divides and speak with those who do not share our own views.
Well, fostering a conversation about free speech is different from allowing free speech.
I noticed, unfortunately.
You know, I have to pay tribute to the lady for coming on Fox News.
She actually put herself, and Carlson did a great job interviewing, but she didn't, she wouldn't admit.
She wouldn't admit that there were no Trump voters in the academic administration.
She wouldn't admit that they don't let people talk.
You know, people are being fired for supporting Trump, boycotted for supporting Trump, all this violence.
Here's Jamel Bowie, I think, the chief political correspondent from Slate.
And the reason they call it Slate is to write for it, you have to be as dumb as a paving stone.
That's why they call it Slate.
You have to be as stupid as Slate to write for this.
There's no such thing as a good Trump voter.
There's no such thing as a good Trump voter.
People voted for a racist who promised racist outcomes.
They don't deserve your empathy.
That's the tip of the hat to Slate reaching out, reaching out across the aisle.
You're all racists.
You all suck.
You know, Jason Riley, who is a terrific reporter from the, he works with the Manhattan Institute, my friends, and he writes for the Wall Street Journal.
His pieces appear in the Wall Street Journal.
He did something I have not seen a single other reporter do.
Jason's black.
This guy who wrote for Slate is also black.
Jason walked out into Harlem and started interviewing people on the street, okay?
And he found none of them would admit, and by the way, I believe a lot of black people voted for Trump.
I believe Trump got a large number of the black voters who would not tell largely white pollsters probably that they voted for him.
I really do believe this.
But Jason goes out and he talks to him.
He says, this may come as a shock to the political left, but not everyone who opposed Donald Trump is as angry or despondent as the demonstrators who grabbed headlines nationwide over the past week or the pundits who intellectualized the Democratic hissy fit.
On Monday, I took a stroll around New York City's Harlem neighborhood and asked a couple of dozen black residents to respond to the election and subsequent protests.
I didn't come across any Trump voters, or at least any who admitted it, but many told me they had expected Hillary Clinton's defeat.
No one thought it was the end of the world.
And then he gives quotes of people saying, well, if he does this, I'll be happy.
If he does that, I won't be happy.
These are the things I'm looking for.
Jason goes on at the end of the piece, he says, anti-Trump demonstrations are in many cases organized and supported by people who make a living manufacturing outrage.
Al Sharpton's National Action Network, MoveOn.org, Showing Up for Racial Justice, the Equity Coalition.
And this, by the way, is a parenthetical thought.
These are the people who get interviewed as if they're ordinary people.
They get interviewed in the press.
He says the protests are likely to continue off and on, at least until the president-elect's inauguration.
But Mr. Trump should understand that some of the minority voters who opposed him are open-minded, even swayable.
They are more tolerant than the Democratic partisans and professional protesters would have him believe.
The people I spoke with want to see their president succeed, not to deny his legitimacy because they preferred candidate can't win, didn't win.
They're keeping things in perspective.
They haven't written him off.
As one man put it, if Trump can go in there and shake things up a little, he ain't got to complete everything but shake things up and make things a little better.
I'd like that.
Why?
Because they're Americans.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah, they're not just black people.
You know, it's like they're not professional black people.
They're American citizens.
They want the president to do well.
And many of them, I'm sure, I'm sure many of them voted for Donald Trump and won't admit it.
Hey, we've got to say goodbye to you on Facebook and YouTube, but come on over to the Daily Wire.
You can hear the rest.
If you subscribe, you can watch the rest.
And you can be in the mailbag, which is coming up.
And, of course, when I say the press and the academy have learned nothing and then say, and the Democratic Party has learned nothing, I'm repeating myself.
Because the Democratic Party is now trying to figure out, because you want to know who's really in disarray, who's really in disarray.
It's not the Trump transition, transition, it's not the Trump transition team, say that three times fast.
It's not them because they're just acting the way transition teams act.
I mean, it's all kind of chaotic.
It's the Democrats.
The Democrats have been destroyed.
And, you know, you can keep saying that Hillary One seems to have won the popular vote, and that's true, but all those votes came out of this little sliver of California and the Ocela corridor between New York and Washington, D.C. If there's an earthquake, that majority goes away.
If there's a sudden earthquake, that majority is gone.
They're all clinging to this little piece of coastal property on the West.
So you can say that, but they have been wiped out everywhere.
It is not just the presidency.
And one of the things about our press is it focuses and focuses and focuses on the presidency, but it's not just them.
So Harry Reid, one of the worst people in America, I mean, you know, let's face it, there are mobsters and really bad people, terrible things.
Once you get past the evil people in America, you get Harry Reid, this horrible, horrible guy, stands up in the Senate and starts going after Steve Bannon.
And now it's become very clear, I think, that we can say of Steve Bannon that he is not himself a racist, he is not himself an anti-Semite.
He has, in my opinion, made a mistake by catering to those people in Breitbart, by giving them a voice, some of them a voice at Breitbart.
I think that's an error.
He thinks he has said that he thinks they're going to go back into the box once the populism and the economic ideas take hold.
I think don't let them out of the box.
Keep them in the box.
It's like that.
No, no, no, no, we don't like those people.
Keep them in the box.
But look, Bannon's been very successful at what he's doing.
But here's Harry Reid with this incredible story about a seven-year-old black child.
I guess all the eight-year-old black children were busy.
So it's a seven-year-old black child who wakes up and can't sleep at night because it's so scary to be a woman of color in America.
This is in the Senate.
Here he goes.
By placing a champion of white supremacists a step away from the oval office, what message does Trump send to the young girl who woke up Wednesday morning in Rhode Island, afraid to be a woman of color in America?
It's not a message of healing.
If Trump is serious about seeking unity, the first thing he should do is rescind his appointment to Steve Bannon.
Rescind him.
Don't do it.
Think about this.
Don't do it.
As long as a champion of racial division is a step away from the Oval Office, it will be impossible to take Trump's efforts to heal the nation seriously.
So I say to Donald Trump: take responsibility.
Rise to the dignity of the office of President of the United States instead of hiding behind your Twitter account and show America that racism, bullying, and bigotry have no place in the White House or in America.
It's just what Donald Trump needs: advice from Harry Reid.
I mean, that's like, hmm, that's a good person to take advice from.
Meanwhile, just to point this out, I just want to say this because I thought it was really cool.
The senator from Texas, John Cornyn, he blasted him.
He got to play that clip, too.
Surely he's entitled to his opinion, but he does nothing to contribute to the healing of our country after a very polarizing, hotly contested election by continuing to pile on the president-elect and his team.
We had an election.
The American people voted.
The American people chose their next president.
But to come here after the election, after the American people have spoken and made that choice, and continue to disparage their choice for the next president, as well as the leadership in the House and the Senate, really just smacks of, Well, we used to call people like that sore losers.
But frankly, what he does is also contribute to the coarsening of our discourse and debate here in the United States Senate.
So just anyway, going back to this thing about the press reporting on, oh, the disarray, Paul Ryan, I think it was yesterday, yeah, it was yesterday, Paul Ryan was unanimously nominated to once again be the Speaker of the House.
That has to be confirmed, of course, by the full House when they're in session.
But that looks like he's going to go, well, meanwhile, nobody knows whether there's going to be a rebellion against Nancy Pelosi.
A lot of people stepping up want to get her out of there, maybe bring in somebody, and they're not even sure.
They're not even sure whether to go to the left or the right.
They're not even sure whether to play to the Bernie Sanders guys or to play to the rest of the country who wants, you know, who tend to be center-right and can be convinced to go a little center-left.
Unanimous Nomination00:13:39
And they're talking about Keith Ellison, the guy from the Muslim guy from Minnesota.
I'm not sure whether this thing with Keith Ellison has put himself up for the DNC to head the DNC.
Far, far left guy with associations.
I mean, if we're going to give Steve Bannon a so, if we're going to talk about Steve Bannon's associations with the alt-right, let's talk about Keith Ellison's associations with the Muslim Brotherhood and with Farakin, you know, Farrakhan.
You know, you say, well, that's guilt by association.
Yes, it is.
That's right.
That's why you shouldn't do it to Bannon.
But, you know, if you're going to talk about Ellison, he's the guy who made this speech.
I can't even remember.
It was Atheists for Social Justice or something.
He was giving this speech, and he compared 9-11 to the Reichstag fire.
And just for those of you who are younger and don't know what the Reichstag fire was, the Reichstag was the governing building in Berlin.
It was set on fire, apparently, the best historians know, set on fire by this kind of crazy communist guy.
Hitler, who had just been elected chancellor, used it to cause a panic, used the Reichstag fire to cause a panic to say that the communists were trying to overthrow the government and suspended all civil rights.
So in other words, it's usually thought of as a fake.
The Reichstag fire is usually thought of as a staged event.
They're not quite sure it was actually staged, but it was certainly used.
And here's Ellison comparing it to that.
Listen to this.
I mean, 9-11 explains why we're in this war.
We could never be in this war but for 9-11.
We could never be tolerating torture but for 9-11.
Because when they argued for torture, they said, well, if you knew that somebody could stop a bomb if you tortured them, would you go for it then?
Because remember 9-11, right?
You would never have all this discrimination against religious minorities, but for 9-11.
I mean, you had it, but you didn't have it to the degree that we have it now.
9-11 is this juggernaut event in American history, and it allows, I mean, it's almost like, you know, the Reichstag fire kind of reminds me of that.
Does anybody know what I'm talking about?
They do have benefited from 9-11.
Well, I mean, you know, you and I both know.
Yeah, of course.
But the thing is, is that, you know, after the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the communists for it, and it put the leader of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.
So Bush crept into the, you know, the Twin Towers and blew them up after, you know, two planes crashed into them.
But never mind, that was a good cover for him.
All I'm saying, look, I'm not excusing anything that happens on the right by anything that happens on the left.
I'm simply talking about the fact that this unequal press, this lying, corrupt, ideologically, ideological, unbalanced press, pardon me, and when I say unbalanced, I mean like a ship that's sinking into the sea.
Is the reason people are so frustrated, so angry.
It's the reason they can't think about issues without just blowing up.
You know, it's because of this media.
It's always been because of this media, and they have not learned a thing.
Will they learn anything?
I think the question answers itself.
Although, if Donald Trump ever goes to dinner again, I think we really have to make sure that never happens again.
All right, the mailbag.
Hooray.
Woo!
Yeah!
She was so good at that.
All right.
From, it looks like Ilan Cloud, Dear Supreme Leader Clavin, and as always, I appreciate the proper use of my titles.
Dear Supreme Leader Clavin, how can you hope to convey conservative viewpoints to people who live in left-wing bubbles like my family does in Los Angeles?
How much of where you stand on an issue is determined by where you sit?
Every time I get into a conversation with my family, it degenerates into them hurling every liberal conspiracy and talking point at me until they're convinced I'm a terrible person.
I've realized their worldview is completely based on their surroundings and it's impossible to get through to them.
How do you do this?
I will tell you.
I can tell you the answer to this.
It's difficult.
It takes, it's not dishonest.
It's not a trick.
It does take mental discipline.
When you are talking to people like this, disallow conversations about individuals, about Obama, about Bush.
You have to disallow it from them and you have to disallow it from yourself.
You have to not do it yourself.
That's what takes the mental discipline.
It's really hard to do.
Don't let them say, well, George W. Bush did this and he lied and then he did that.
Don't let them do it.
And don't strike back by saying, well, what about Obama?
He did this.
Only talk about principles.
Because the thing about people who live in these bubbles is they don't know what you think.
You know, you start with freedom.
You think people have the right to make their own decisions not to be told by the government what they think.
That means if you're free, you have the right to say whatever you want.
You have the right to associate with whomever you want.
And you have the right to use your own time.
And the thing about using your own time is time is money, right?
You spend time at work to earn money.
When the government takes that money away, you're not being greedy to hold on to it.
They're taking your time.
They're taking your life.
And they're telling you that they can do with the fruits of your labor what they want.
Only talk about principles.
It's really difficult to do.
And of course, they'll keep slipping off and say, but Bush did this.
Well, what about Bush?
And just admit, all people do bad things.
Guys on both sides do bad things.
But what do we believe?
What are we fighting for?
And what we are fighting for is freedom.
And one of the things about this is they don't know.
They don't know what you believe.
You know what they believe because Hollywood is selling it, the press is selling it, the Academy is selling it, but they don't know what you believe.
They just think you hate black people.
They think you hate gay people.
That's all they think.
So just stick to principles.
And when you say, by the way, that where people stand depends on where they sit, that is doubly true because a lot of people, you know, people grow up with parents who say things or might be hateful or might have taught them things that they, and maybe they don't want to reject their parents.
Maybe they do want to reject their parents.
Maybe a lot of personal stuff may be involved.
If you talk about principles, you can cool the conversation down.
If you stick to it, you can cool the conversation down and at least make them realize that you're not a terrible person.
You want many of the same things they do.
You don't want the poor to starve.
You don't want the country to go up and smoke.
You want many of the same things they do.
You just think you get there by a different road.
It doesn't mean you can't mention issues, by the way.
It doesn't mean you can't say, well, if left-wing policies worked, there wouldn't be a Detroit.
But just don't get into an argument in the high grass over individuals and over individual incidents.
Talk about principles.
All right.
From Al Ippalito, General Lissimo Andrew Clavin, I am reading The Great Good Thing, which is my memoir, The Great Good Thing, A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ.
It is still on sale for another week or two on e-books for $2.99, but it makes a good Christmas gift if you get the spring for a little bit more.
All right, I'm reading The Great Good Thing.
The chapter where you describe your epiphany at the birth of your daughter was amazing.
It was amazing.
It is the single mystical experience of my life, the one time when something magical and absolutely inexplicable happened to me.
It is a good story.
However, it left me wondering, how can you square that revelation about the order of God's love with your position on gay marriage, which is so at odds with natural and biblical revelation?
My position on gay marriage is I don't care whether gay people get married, and I don't think the government should have anything to do with marriage anyway.
That's basically it.
Your don't judge lest you be judged answer seems like a flimsy excuse and a violation of the law of non-contradiction.
Many thanks.
Okay.
So what I do point out and what I would say to any gay people, a gay person, I know many gay people and I would say it to their faces and most of them agree with me, is that obviously in human life, the male-female relationship is central.
It is at the center of human life.
It is the center of human life.
It is the yin-yang.
There is no culture that has a yin-yin symbol or a yang-yang symbol.
The yin and yang of male and female, masculine and feminine, is the totality of experience.
The creation of children is the purpose of the human body.
It's obvious that this is at the center of natural life.
That does not mean that things that are not at the center are evil.
And by the way, right now, I'm not talking biblically at all.
I'm not making a theological point.
I'm making a legal point.
I'm only talking about the government.
We don't live in a theocracy.
We live in a republic theoretically.
And I'm not talking about the Bible on this at all.
I'm just talking about my position on the law.
Just because things are not at the center, not central, doesn't mean they're bad.
In fact, some things that are not at the center are better.
Some things that are not at the center are just different.
Some things that are not at the center are worse.
You know, serial killers are different.
So are geniuses.
I mean, all these things that are not at the center, that's not a moral position to have, to be at the center.
It is just an important position.
And I agree it's important.
I believe it should be protected.
I believe it should be cherished.
So I don't see why the government, a government that can tell you who to have sex with is just too strong.
It's just too strong.
It should leave you alone.
I mean, government should have nothing to say about marriage as far as I'm concerned.
You know, live with who you want to.
Do what you want to do.
When it comes to the Bible, the Bible, to me, is somewhat unclear about this.
There's certainly a lot of stuff about homosexuality.
There's nothing about loving gay relationships in it.
Those don't exist, and I don't think people thought about them or maybe even knew they existed.
But let me not talk about this.
My point about this is this.
If homosexuality is a sin per se, a sin in and of itself, it is not a sin that hurts me.
It is a sin that would only damage the person doing it, and only the person doing it would know the nature of the sin and would know his relationship with God.
And that is what I believe that judge not lest you be judged means.
It doesn't mean that I can't say, oh, a murder is bad.
It means I can't say whether the action that you're taking that hurts no one else is degrading you or separating you from God.
I can't.
I would recommend to every gay person, the same thing I would recommend to every straight person, pray to God.
Talk to God.
Find out what he thinks.
He will tell you.
He will tell you.
Find out what he thinks.
You don't have to report back to me.
It's not about me.
That's all I'm saying.
And I can live very well.
Oh, okay.
I'll get to that question.
We got a live question, our first live question coming in.
But anyway, my point of view on this is not a biblical point of view.
It is a legal point of view.
And in terms of whether it's a sin or not, my answer is it's not my sin.
I have other sins to deal with.
And I don't see people parading in the street to get people from eating too much, which is also a sin, or drinking too much, which is also a sin.
I don't see people throwing people out of church for being fat.
I mean, I think it's a terrible, terrible thing to ban people from their communion with God and with other believers because you don't like what they are doing.
I don't think that's the right way to approach it.
Here is a live from Taylor.
This is not our Taylor, is it?
Oh, okay.
All right.
Dear Drew the Dome Claven, that's what, what happened to Supremo Generalissimo?
Do you prefer Tolkien's or Lewis's body of work?
Okay, good question.
We're talking about C.S. Lewis, obviously, or Tolkien.
C.S. Lewis, I think, was one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century.
I mean, usually Freud is elevated to the place where I think C.S. Lewis should be.
C.S. Lewis' answer to Freud is far more brilliant than anything Freud had to say.
C.S. Lewis's essays are unbelievable.
If you've never read The Weight of Glory, if you've never read The Abolition of Man, these are some of the best things I've ever read.
I'm rereading Mere Christianity just because I read it like a dozen years ago.
Right now, rereading it, it is like walking into a quiet room where all the noise of the world goes away and suddenly you're talking to common sense.
So in that sense, I much, much prefer C.S. Lewis.
I don't really like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that much.
Neither did Tolkien.
He said it was too on the nose.
It was too obviously representative.
You know, I haven't finished the series, but I'm actually reading it now.
I've read about four of them.
And they're okay.
You know, it's not my, his fiction is not my favorite thing.
I found The Lord of the Rings almost unreadable.
I've tried three times and finally got through it on the last time.
I just think the density of information about peoples and races that don't exist is crushing to me.
I loved the movies.
So I love his stories.
I really like The Hobbit.
I thought that was really good.
So in terms of fiction writing, he was clearly a much more imaginative, interesting, original fiction writer.
And so many people love the book that I'm willing to grant that it may be a greater book than I know.
One more.
I'll do one more and then we've got to get to stuff I like.
From Sean Nicholas, question, what is the most important general life advice you would give to a teenager?
Make sense.
Try to make sense.
Seriously.
I would give that advice to anybody, but mostly to a teenager.
You know, as teenagers try on many different personae, they try on many different points of view.
That's perfectly natural.
You know, they walk in the shoes a little bit.
And what I would say to you is try to have your philosophy of life make sense as far as you can.
Go back, ask yourself, why is that true?
Why is that true?
Does that fit in with that?
Does this fit in with that?
You know, try and make sense.
If you try and make sense, you will get to the truth because the truth makes sense.
And that's where you should go.
Don't listen to, you know, listen to people, listen to what they have to say.
But in the end, make sure that what they're saying makes sense and make sure that what's coming out of your mind makes sense.
And yes, don't take drugs because they will mess you up forever.
They will mess you up forever.
You know, it's unfair, by the way, especially with boys, because it's unfair that boys have the maximum strength at the moment when they're most stupid.
You know, that's just not a fair system.
All right, that's the mailbag.
Michael Douglas' Briefcase Dispute00:04:22
Stuff I like.
Hey!
How'd I miss her?
All right, stuff I like.
Here is a movie.
You know, the left, the loudmouths on the left have been calling Trump's election whitelash, which I just think is horrible.
But it is true that a certain segment of our white working class Americans did turn up for Trump, and he did speak to them in a way that I don't think had to do with their whiteness.
I think it had to do with their economic discomfort.
There is a movie.
Has anybody seen the movie Falling Down?
No.
That's amazing.
This movie made, it was such a controversial movie, 1993.
It is such a controversial movie.
It is, Michael Douglas stars as a guy who has lost his job.
He's been laid off from his job at like an aeronautics company in L.A.
And he has to get home for his daughter's birthday.
And things start to go terribly wrong.
And it's this odyssey that he takes across LA, which all of us have taken.
It can take forever, right?
And things just get worse and worse and worse.
And when this came out, the idea that a white man was fighting back against the forces that were against them, which included gangs of people of color and all kinds of other people.
It's not a racist film at all.
It's made by Joel Schumacher, one of the most flamboyant gay directors in Hollywood.
He really is.
I mean, I'm not giving anything away.
I'm not outing him.
He was like, but it was just, it caused a furor, and it predicted this movement to the life.
And it's great.
And Michael Douglas is great, and Robert Duvall is in it, and he's great.
Here is a scene where Michael Douglas was just having the bad day to end all bad days.
Did you guys see that there was profanity in this?
You got it.
Thanks a lot.
All right.
So he sits down on a piece of rock in the middle of a grass field.
And two gangsters who look like they're Latino, they're some kind of brownish color.
And he's got the pen guard, you know, the pocket guard with his pens.
He's a scientist.
You know, he's got the glasses, the rimless glasses, and all this stuff.
And these guys start to bug him, telling him to move on.
And this is a bit of that scene.
Wait a minute.
Wait, hold on.
Hold it, fellas.
We're getting off on the wrong foot here, okay?
This is a gangland thing, isn't it?
We're having a territorial dispute.
I mean, I've wandered into your piss and ground or whatever the damn thing is, and you've taken offense with my presence, and I can understand that.
I mean, I wouldn't want you people in my backyard either.
This is your home, and your home is your home, and I respect that.
So if you would just back up a step or two, I'll take my problems elsewhere.
Okay?
Fair enough.
What do you think?
I think it should be a toll.
Good idea.
You should be a toll.
Listen, fellas.
I've had a really rare morning.
I'm not in the mood to come.
Where should he be?
How about that briefcase, man?
Good idea.
Give us your briefcase, man.
I'm not giving you my gut briefcase.
Motherfucker, give us your motherfucking briefcase.
Okay.
Okay.
I mean, I was willing to mind my own business.
I was willing to respect your territory and treat you like a man, but you couldn't leave it alone, could you?
You couldn't let a man sit here for five minutes and take a rest in your precious piece of shill.
Okay.
Got my briefcase?
I'll get it for you, all right?
You can have my briefcase.
Here, you want my briefcase.
Here's my briefcase.
Get my briefcase.
All right, wait, wait, here, here.
Get out here.
He takes out a small baseball bat and starts beating them.
And it's just a white man who's just had it.
That's what it is.
If you haven't seen this, it's a really, really good movie, Falling Down from Michael Douglas, directed by Joel Schumacher.
It is just an exciting movie, and it's also funny.
It's really a satire.
It's funny.
It's not funny like a comedy, but it's funny like satire because it really does make fun of the things that just drive all of us, white people, black people, all of us crazy.
Falling Down Fury00:00:36
And these are people, you know, I mean, these are people who haven't been heard, who haven't been listened to, who've been excoriated by the press.
And this was a movie they the press went nuts when this film came out.
It was so controversial.
And it's still worth watching.
And of course, it's never on television.
It is never, ever, ever on television.
So you have to find it.
I'm sure you can get it on DVD.
All right, that's it.
Is tomorrow Thursday already?
Jeez, fast week, fast week.
All right, all right, hang on, hang on, because the Clavenless weekend is looming like a great black cloud over us, but we still have one more day to go, and we will do the best we can.