Ep. 251 – Black Attack skewers "hoverboard nation" with satirical jabs at misleading labels, bureaucratic absurdities (like $20/hour jobs counted as employment), and Obama-era racial politics, framing Democrats as manipulators exploiting black dependency. Guest Michael Knowles dissects MLK’s Christian roots—contrasting his gospel-driven forgiveness with Malcolm X’s militant Islam—while critiquing modern media for erasing King’s faith-based activism. The episode argues civil rights became a partisan tool, urging black Americans to "forgive the past" and reject divisive narratives, culminating in King’s Nobel Prize speech as a counterpoint to today’s racial grievance culture. [Automatically generated summary]
Why do they call them hoverboards if they just roll around?
If I sold you a flying car and all it did was drive down the street like any other car, wouldn't you come to me and say, this is not a flying car because it doesn't fly.
Now give me my money back or I'm going to hit you over the head with this stupid non-hovering rolling board.
I mean, if a man put on a dress and had breast implants, would you call him a woman?
Wouldn't you just call him a strangely shaped man in a dress?
And what if he was on a hoverboard?
Would he suddenly become a woman flying around?
Wouldn't he just be a dressed up man with silicon in his chest, standing on a wheeled board in the women's bathroom, making all the real women uncomfortable by rolling around shouting, look at me, I'm hovering and I'm also a woman.
Or let's say there was a religion and let's say almost every terrorist on earth practiced this religion.
And let's say almost every war on earth involved this religion.
And let's say almost every country where most of the people had this religion was plagued by violence.
Would you call that the religion of peace?
Of course not.
If a man from that religion who was strapped with dynamite came up to you on a hoverboard and said, hi, I'm a man hovering off the ground from the religion of peace.
Wouldn't you run for your life because not one word he said was true?
Plus he was strapped with dynamite?
You bet you would.
Or think about this.
If a highly paid engineer loses his job and after months of searching he finally finds a menial job working one hour a week for $20, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says, congratulations, that man is employed.
Then the unemployment rate goes down and Barack Obama says, look, I brought down the unemployment rate.
I'm a great president, and by the way, I'm floating above the ground on my hoverboard.
Would you call that engineer employed?
Would you call that low employment rate?
Would you call that president great?
Or would you say, if that's employment, then I am the queen of Romania, flying on my hoverboard and swallowing prescription opiates by the handful because I'm making $20 a week.
And when you look around at a country where the president passes laws without Congress, where unelected bureaucrats can tell me whether I can cut down a tree in my own yard or if I have to bake a cake for a wedding I don't agree with, and where anyone who is not in favor of those things is shouted down and knocked off social media, would you call that country America?
Or would you call it stinky Obamaville or nasty Washingtonland or stupid elite world?
I know what I'd call it.
I'd call it hoverboard nation.
And I'm looking forward to coming back down to Earth.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm so hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Ship-shaped ipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hooray For The Show00:04:02
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
Hooray, hurrah!
It's the last week of the Obama presidency.
Yay!
A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship.
But it is not this day.
Yay!
Mr. Bleedbird's on my shoulder.
It's the truth.
It's actual.
Everything is satisfactory.
Happy days are here again.
The skies above all clear again.
Gonna sing a song of cheer again.
Happy days all here again.
Forget your troubles, come on, get happy.
You're better to chase all your cares away.
Shout hallelujah.
Come on, get happy.
I'm ready for the judgment day.
Hey!
That's the happiness montage.
We haven't had that in months.
The happiness.
We haven't had any cause to have the happiness.
You know, people look at the news and then they look at this show, and we're all having a good time.
And they say to me, what sort of underwear are you wearing?
It's a good question.
And I will tell you, I am wearing Mac Weldon underwear.
And I am not joking.
I don't know what they put in this stuff.
But this is, oh man, they don't just make underwear.
I ordered this zippered hoodie, I guess it is.
I wear a lot of zippered sweatshirts.
This thing is so soft.
And it is, I don't know what, I do not know what they're putting in it.
I assume it's just cotton, but it's just made a different way.
They use smart design, premium fabrics.
And by the way, getting it online, because, you know, guys, we don't want to shop a lot.
You know, I'm not a big shopper at all, but it was very, very simple.
This stuff, whatever you're wearing, whatever you are wearing now, I'm telling you, this is more comfortable.
Mac Weldon underwear.
It's the most comfortable underwear, socks, shirts, undershirts, hoodies, and sweatpants, and more than that, that you will ever wear.
And they even have a line that is antimicrobial, which means it doesn't, it makes you not stink.
Which in my case, I probably overwhelmed it.
But like, anyway, go online.
And listen, we'll give you 20% off if you use the word Clavin, my name, Clavin, K-L-A-V-A-N.
Use the promo code K-L-A-V-A-N.
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All right, enough about my underwear, I think.
I think I've probably spoken about my underwear as much as I have.
One more piece of business before we get going.
I have to say congratulations to Hannah Michael and Jonah Oswald, who have gotten engaged.
And the reason I mention them is because they have been listening to this show and it is this show that helped them come back to Christ, back to Christianity.
This is a full-service podcast.
We not only give you the headlines, we will save your soul.
And they're getting married.
Jonah is studying to be a cop.
He's about to graduate from police academy.
And Hannah wants to make a home and be a wife and mom.
And we wish them the best.
Be excellent to each other, guys, because you will be happy if you are.
All right, it's Martin Luther King Day.
And you know what that means?
Black Politics on MLK Day00:15:39
It means the Democrats are cynically going to play racial politics all day long.
And we will have Nobel Prize winning cultural commentator Michael Knowles here to talk about one aspect of Martin Luther King that the left doesn't want to talk about at all.
I think Michael shared the Nobel Prize with Martin Luther King.
I think it's the same year, yeah.
All right, so John Lewis is leading the charge.
As we now have to call him, we can't just call him, you know, Representative John Lewis.
We have to call him civil rights icon, John Lewis.
Now, the guy, I want to be fair, the guy actually was a civil rights leader during the MLK days, which is now a long time ago, a lifetime ago, but he has been playing this up to use this politically ever since.
And he did this thing last week that I just thought was appalling, where he testified against the appointment of Senator Sessions as Attorney General.
And he made this speech about all the old days being attacked with dogs.
And, you know, we gotta don't let us go.
You know, he gets this little tremolo in his voice.
Don't let us go back.
You know, and I think like, what is Jeff Sessions?
You know, that guy's been a senator for 20 years.
What is he?
You know, what is he going back to?
He's like the guy.
The guy has a good, solid, sound civil rights record.
He's the pick for attorney general.
So now, Sessions, MLK Day, he pushes the envelope he's on with Chuck Todd, and he pushes it even further.
Do you plan on trying to forge a relationship with Donald Trump?
You know, I believe in forgiveness.
I believe in trying to work with people.
It's going to be hard.
It's going to be very difficult.
I don't see this president-elect as a legitimate president.
You do not consider him a legitimate president.
Why is that?
I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
I don't plan to attend the inauguration.
We'll be the first one that I miss since I've been in the Congress.
You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong.
That's going to send out.
That's going to send a big message to a lot of people in this country that you don't believe he's a legitimate president.
I think there was a conspiracy on the part of the Russians and others to help him get elected.
That's not right.
That's not fair.
That's not the open Democratic process.
Okay.
I mean, by the way, if a Republican did this to a Democrat, they'd go nuts.
But they're comparing it to Trump questioning Obama's birth certificate.
That's what the Democrats, that's the Democrat argument.
And of course, Trump, who never met a buzzsaw that he didn't walk into face first, he responded with a tweet, a series of tweets.
One tweet is never enough.
Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart, not to mention crime-infested, rather than falsely complaining about the election results, all talk, talk, talk, no action or results.
Sad.
Now, of course, just to be fair, pardon me, that is a little unfair.
Lewis's district, which I think is Atlanta, basically.
So it's got all kinds of people in it and all that stuff.
But, you know, obviously very offended.
But the point is this.
Martin Luther King Day, this is going to be huge.
The fact that they are going to marshal the black, what they feel is their black support, their African-American support, not just in politics, but also in the media, which is, of course, just the Democrat, you know, they're just Democrat spokesmen.
The reason this is important is listen to this.
This is the Obama record, okay?
The seasonally adjusted labor force participation rate for black Americans across the board has slipped from 63.2% to 61.7%, down 2.4%.
The seasonally adjusted labor force participation rate, these are people in the labor force for black teenagers, also sagged.
During Obama's tenure, the percentage of black Americans struggling below the poverty line has advanced, according to the most recent Census Bureau data, from 25.8 in 2009 to 26.2 in 2014, up 1.6%.
Real median income among black households during those years, according to the Census Bureau, sank from $35,954 to $35,398, down 1.5%.
The number of black food stamp participants has exploded.
It's up 58.2%.
Also, from Obama's oath of office through the fourth quarter of 2015, the percentage of black Americans who own homes foundered, down 9.1%.
On top of this, in a recent Washington Post ABC News poll, 63% of Americans think race relations are generally bad.
Shortly after Obama took office, the number was 22%.
This presidency has been disastrous for race relations and it has been disastrous for blacks.
And don't think black people don't know it.
Now, listen, they love Obama.
Of course, they love Obama.
That's human nature.
When John Kennedy was the first Irish Catholic elected president, there were Irish people in this country who had pictures in their household.
They had Jesus, they had the Pope, they had the Virgin Mary, a saint maybe having his head cut off, and John F. Kennedy.
That was the panoply of pictures they had.
And of course, that's human nature.
I mean, everybody's like that.
I don't think that blacks are supposed to exempt themselves from human nature.
But the important thing is, because of this, now the Democrat Party knows they've lost this as Obama walks away.
They are betting their, the Democrats are betting their future on demographics, okay?
They are betting it on race.
They are betting it on the fact that there are going to be more and more minorities in this country as the years go by, and they are trying to make sure that these people never become e pluribus unum out of the many one Americans.
They are convinced.
Remember, this is an incredibly racist strategy.
This is saying that these people will never vote their economic interests.
They'll never vote as Americans, you know, side with a white guy who's their fellow American.
They're betting on this.
They're betting on it, and that means they have to make it happen.
They have to keep black people angry.
They have to keep them feeling like victims.
And by the way, you can bet that the media are going to jump on this and pile on this, and they already have.
Let's listen.
Rand Paul went on with, I think he was on with, I'm not sure who was interviewing.
Oh, it's Jake Tapper.
Okay, and Tapper is giving him the whole thing.
He's giving him the whole Democrat parade of the icon John Lewis.
You know, I've worked with John Lewis, met him several times.
One of the things people are taking issue with is not the question about whether John Lewis is immune from criticism.
Obviously, he's a partisan Democrat, and he said presidents like Trump is illegitimate.
Certainly lots of room to criticize there in terms of what he's saying a few days before the inaugural, but the question of describing his district as crime-infested, urging him to focus on burning inner cities, and referring to this man who you refer to as an icon, accurately, as all talk, no action.
I think on Martin Luther King Day weekend, I think that struck a lot of people as a little tone-deaf, including many Republicans.
Yeah, but I think it gets one-sided sometimes.
In Jeff Sessions' nomination hearings, there were three African-American legislators, Corey Booker, John Lewis, and I think Cedric Richmond came forward and decided to testify against Jeff Sessions.
But there were also three African Americans who had worked with him and known him for years and years who testified in his favor.
So I think we shouldn't, when things involve race, it gets very, very sensitive.
All of us, or none of us, actually, want to be considered to be the racially insensitive.
And so it's a very, very important subject.
But I think we shouldn't ignore that people are partisans.
So John Lewis is a partisan.
I mean, that is the key thing.
John Lewis has been using this stuff.
I'm not saying he didn't do a good thing back in the day.
He did.
There's no question about it, and all credit to him.
But he's been using this stuff for partisan purposes.
You want to hear the press going full bore on this.
You have to listen to this from the New York Times.
But before we do, I have to say goodbye to Facebook and to YouTube.
Come and listen to the rest on thedailywire.com because Nobel Prize winning cultural commentator will be here.
Michael Knowles will be here to talk about the aspect of Martin Luther King that the left doesn't want you to know about.
So listen to the New York Times, a former newspaper, covering this story.
And I call them a former newspaper.
We have to give them credit where credit is due.
They pack more dishonesty and hostility and bias into this few paragraphs than really, I think it takes an enormous amount of skill.
Blacks around the country have reacted to Mr. Trump's remark with fury.
And the subject has dominated social media and discussions among black activists.
Okay.
Mr. Trump said on Saturday on Twitter, okay, we talked about that.
He says, the angry reaction is driven not only by Mr. Trump's Twitter posts, but by what many blacks say they reveal about the president-elect's lack of understanding of the reverence with which the civil rights movement and its leaders are viewed by African Americans, the reverence he lacks.
Trump is lacking reverence.
And here comes the quote: I don't think we have ever had a president so publicly condescending to what black politics means, said Mark Anthony Neal, an African and African-American studies professor at Duke University.
So they didn't go out into the street, they didn't talk to actual black people, they talked to themselves, they talked to a professor, okay?
Now, listen to this quote is great.
He, Trump, doesn't care what people think the civil rights movement was important.
He doesn't feel the need to perform some sort of belief that it is important.
So, in other words, the civil rights movement has now become a Democrat tool.
Because let's face it, the civil rights movement is over.
It's done.
The thing that it was meant to accomplish, thank God, it accomplished.
It's over.
This is nothing that the government is going to do now is going to help black people.
Black people are going to have to help themselves.
And let me just, I want to be really clear about one thing about this: that what whites are asked, what white conservatives are asking blacks to do is hard.
We are asking them to forgive the past.
You know, life, you know, conservatives are always pointing out life is unfair, and that is true.
Life is more than unfair.
Life is unfairness.
If you are alive, you are living in a state of unfairness.
Life is unfairness.
But one of the most unfair things about life is that it's easier to accept the unfairness of life if you're on the good end of it.
Okay, so if you're not the person who was brought over on a slave, if you're not the race that was brought over on a slave ship, if you're not the race that suffered segregation, if you're not the race that was excluded and called names for 100 years and kept out of all the positions that are open to white people, it's a lot easier to say you're going to have to forgive this stuff.
We know, we know that you have to forgive, you have to let it go.
The past cannot be fixed.
Tanahese Coates is a fool.
The past cannot be fixed.
It can never be fixed.
You cannot penalize a white man born today for something that was done before he was born any more than you can penalize a German for something that happened before he was born.
The past is past.
If the past isn't past, what is?
But the thing is, it is easier for us to say that than for them to do it.
And don't think to yourself, oh, if it were me, I would forgive, because no, you wouldn't.
You know, C.S. Lewis said, everybody loves forgiveness until there's something to forgive.
Well, the blacks have a lot to forgive.
They're going to have to do it.
It's the only way forward.
But I'm saying it's not easy.
And Obama doesn't make it any easier.
I mean, this is what Obama had to say about this.
See, he's a lame duck.
It's the last week.
I love it.
You know, I do want to play, before we go to a Nobel Prize-winning cultural commentator Michael Knowles, I do want to play one last quote from Obama in his human form that he was on 60 Minutes, his last interview.
Play this cut.
Didn't that make the seeds for the election of Donald Trump?
But you guys, what if, hey, would you guys stop overusing that joke?
Everything from talk radio to fake news to negative advertising has made people lack confidence in a lot of our existing institutions.
I think it indicates, at least on the Democratic side, that we've got more work to do to strengthen our grassroots networks.
In some ways, the Democratic Party hadn't constructed itself to get that message out to the places it needed to get to.
The Tea Party, I have huge disagreements with, obviously.
But I give them credit for having activated themselves.
I just wanted to point, we always make fun on the right of the fact that Obama is always blaming the messaging.
Never mind the statistics I just read to you that show that black life is actually worse under Obama, that he didn't do anything for them.
And he didn't do it not because he doesn't want to do it, it's because his policies don't work.
His policies, leftist policies, don't work.
They do not help the poor.
The only thing that helps the poor is capitalism, is going forward, building things themselves, taking responsibility for yourselves, all those things that people do.
And I know it's hard, and I know it's hard to ask people to forgive, but that's the only thing that works.
But what Obama knows, what Obama knows is the message matters.
He has always known that.
And when Republicans figure that out, they're going to be in much better shape.
And that's what's been so interesting about Donald Trump.
You know, we have stood by and taken this racist garbage, you know, being called racists and having to subscribe to their stupid policies, their stupid harmful policies in the name of race for so long.
It's going to be interesting to see whether actual black people as opposed to professors listen to Trump.
You know, whether they say, yeah, he's not talking the way these guys usually talk, but I hear what he's saying.
You know, when Trump was on the campaign trail, he went out and he made that appeal that you remember to black voters.
And he said famously, what have you got to lose?
Your neighborhoods are crime-ridden and all this stuff and it's terrible.
Have we got that?
Can you play that cut, Jay?
No group in America has been more harmed by Hillary Clinton's policies than African Americans.
No group.
No group.
If Hillary Clinton's goal was to inflict pain on the African American community, she could not have done a better job.
It's a disgrace.
Tonight, I'm asking for the vote of every single African American citizen in this country who wants to see a better future.
Look how much African American communities have suffered under Democratic control.
To those I say the following.
What do you have to lose?
Lee Habib On MLK00:09:04
All right.
There was a wonderful, wonderful article by Lee Habib, a friend of mine, about Martin Luther King, about an aspect of him that has been ignored.
I'm going to let cultural correspondent Michael Knowles talk about it.
Michael, I want to congratulate you on the Nobel Prize.
I know you shared it with Dr. King back in the day, but it's still a major achievement.
Michael, start from the beginning.
What is it that is being left out of the story of Martin Luther King?
Well, what's being left out of the story of Martin Luther King is the essential and animating aspect of Martin Luther King, which is his faith in Christ.
And the left, I notice, does this frequently.
These days, they want the thing, but they don't want the essence of the thing.
So they'll say, I'm sending you positive energy, but they can't say I'm sending you a prayer.
They'll eat meatless sausages.
They'll have decaffeinated coffee.
They want the thing that we have, but not the essence of the thing.
And the essence of Martin Luther King Jr. is his faith in Christ.
This is an excellent article by Lee Habib.
It's called The Secularization of Martin Luther King Jr.
Here's how the media strips faith out of his life and how he and Malcolm X battled for the soul of America.
Those two men are representatives of two visions of race in the United States and two visions of America.
And those two visions are represented by Christianity and by Islam as expounded on by the Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammad.
When Martin Luther King Jr. speaks, he infuses all of his speeches with scripture, with quoting and the church fathers, with quoting St. Augustine of Hippo.
He grounds his political activism in the natural law and the natural rights that were born of Christianity.
And when Malcolm X would speak, he often joked after he broke with the Nation of Islam that he was a puppet.
He couldn't say anything without prefacing it by saying, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad tells us.
And do we have that clip of Martin Luther King's final speech before he was assassinated?
Like anybody, I would like to live.
A long life, longevity has its place.
But I'm not concerned about that now.
I just want to do God's will.
And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain.
And I've looked over and I've seen the promised land.
But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.
I'm not worried about anything.
I'm not fearing any man.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Oh, man.
Hours later, he's assassinated.
It's impossible to watch that without getting chills and goosebumps.
But he fears no man, and he fears no man because his God conquered death on the cross.
And Paul writes in Philippians, he says, cupio dissolvi, I wish to dissolve.
It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
And he also says, there are many walking even now, and I tell you weeping, who are enemies of the cross of Christ because Martin Luther King's God paid his debts for him.
A God of pure logic paid his debts.
And his sins are forgiven insomuch and only inso much as he forgives his debtors, as he forgives those sins which have been made against him.
And this has been an aspect of the civil rights movement since abolition days.
This has been an aspect.
Abolition is all of the early abolitionists were Christian zealots.
And that vision contrasts starkly with Malcolm X's vision, which is a vision of a God of wrath and vengeance, and even until a week before his death, of getting what you want by any means necessary.
Those two visions are radically different.
And it's a wonderful thing for America that Martin Luther King Jr. won, and we're celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which was signed into law, by the way, by the GIPR.
So if you're having a day off today, unlike Drew and I, then thank the great St. Ronald.
But that message won out because that is an American message and that is a Christian message.
And it's a wonderful thing, and it's too bad that none of the mainstream outlets today, because Lee Habib's prediction was correct.
If you look at all of the headlines, you hear my favorite one.
You know, a lot of them talk about these controversies.
Trump is meeting with Martin Luther King Jr.'s son.
A lot of them talk about how awful racial division still is in America.
And my favorite is the New York Daily News.
Martin Luther King was a labor leader.
Quite a demotion for the good Reverend, but leave it to the Daily News.
But you hear a lot about Dr. Martin Luther King, but you don't hear a lot about his doctorate in theology.
Yeah, and his more appropriate title, which is Reverend.
All right.
Well, this is civil rights icon and cultural commentator Michael Knowles.
Thank you.
That's the best title I have yet.
Thank you.
What an honor.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Excellent commentary.
I'm going to end just to put a tag on that.
I'm going to end with stuff I like.
One of the things about Martin Luther King Jr. is he was a spectacular writer.
His writing is very beautiful.
We play a lot of his speeches, a lot of I Have a Dream, but you rarely hear his Nobel Prize speech, which actually drives home the point that Michael and Lee Habib were making.
Let's just listen to a little bit of that cut eight.
I refuse to accept despair as a final response to the ambiguities of history.
I refuse to accept the idea that the is-ness of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal aughtness that forever confronts him.
I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere floatsome and jetsome in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war, that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.
I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear annihilation.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.
See, that's a man preaching the gospel.
When you say that right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant, that is the gospel.
That is the gospel.
That is the story of the truth crucified and risen again.
And when he says that man is not just flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, that is the gospel.
He is preaching the gospel.
Every word he said was infused with the gospel.
I've said this before, but it's worth repeating.
If the gospel were just a story, it would still be a true story.
Every indication is it's also history.
But it would still be true, even if it was just a story.
That is Martin Luther King.
Remember that on this day, what you are celebrating is a man who brought the vision and life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to bear on not just the fight that he fought, but on the way he fought that fight.
It's an amazing thing, and do not let the press, which they will do all day long, do not let the press edit that out, because when they only edit it out to give power, take power away from the individual and give it back to the government.
It's only the individual who are going to solve the problems that we have all along the line.
All right, that's Martin Luther King Day.
You have a day off.
We don't, but we were happy to be here, happy to talk to you, and we will talk to you again tomorrow.