Andrew Clavin mocks Lena Dunham’s unverified claims and "thought police" persona while framing Trump’s 2017 "fire and fury" threats against North Korea as overblown, comparing them to Clinton’s 1994 nuclear deal and Obama’s 2015 Iran accord. He praises Google’s firing of James Damore as "virtue-signaling" thought-policing, dismissing media distortions while citing internal employee tweets as proof of intolerance. In the mailbag, he advises conservative Christian values in relationships, praises America’s rapid rise via westward expansion, and argues faith can coexist with homosexuality—criticizing rigid doctrine while defending Trump’s legal presidency despite personal clashes. The episode ends with a dig at Ashley Judd’s "performative" airport harassment narrative and a call to out-review Michael Knowles’ podcast. [Automatically generated summary]
It's time for another exciting episode of Lena Dunham Thought Police.
Now, some of you may be asking, wait, who's Lena Dunham?
After all, if you're like most Americans, you've seen her name in news articles and you've heard she once had a television show, but you've never watched the show and you've never read any of the articles because you've been busy doing more important things like braiding the hair around your navel or trying to see how far you can shoot a booger by blowing it through a straw.
Well, to bring you up to date, Lena Dunham is a dumpy and unattractive woman who enjoyed taking her clothes off on the HBO series Girls.
Dunham's nakedness ensured that girls would have an audience restricted to about 17 New York City journalists who declared the show a tremendous hit before admitting that they weren't really watching it either.
Dunham claimed that the audience's unwillingness to look at her naked body was due to their sexist, bigoted privileging of beauty over ugliness.
She said she looked forward to building a world in which she could take off her clothes without men trying to claw out their own eyes while screaming for God to kill them now, right now.
But in our latest exciting episode of Lena Dunham Thought Police, Lena Dunham was recently making her dumpy, unattractive way through the arrival hall of JFK International Airport in New York.
This is actually a true story.
Ever alert, Lena Dunham, Thought Police, overheard two American airline flight attendants having a private conversation about so-called transgender children.
Luckily, Lena Dunham, Thought Police, was able to listen in on this private conversation lest two Americans exchange ideas on the events of the day without being monitored by Lena Dunham, Thought Police.
Lena Dunham Thought Police reported these attendants on Twitter, saying they did not express opinions about transgender children that were approved of by Lena Dunham, Thought Police.
Lena Dunham Thought Police then explained to American Airlines that having two of their flight attendants have a private conversation disapproved of by Lena Dunham Thought Police created a bad impression of the company with Lena Dunham Thought Police.
American Airlines investigated the horrific incident and could find no evidence that these flight attendants even existed.
Which is another thing about Lena Dunham Thought Police.
Not only is she dumpy and unattractive, but a lot of stuff she says turns out to be what is technically called untrue.
Like that time she claimed she had been forced to have sexual intercourse with a Republican named Barry, and no one could locate a Republican named Barry or any other man who was interested in having sexual intercourse with Lena Dunham Thought Police.
Now, at this point, some of you may be asking, why are we even talking about this horrible person?
And okay, I don't actually have an answer to that question.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety boo.
Birds are winging, also singing hunky-dunky.
Shipshaw tipsy topsy, the world is ippity zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing!
Oh, hoora!
Hooray!
Oh, hooray!
All right, it's mailbag day.
Hooray!
North Korea's Nuclear Escalation00:13:25
Hey, whoa!
And you know, we've got a lot of really interesting questions, personal questions, religious questions, all kinds.
But you can also send in questions live while we're here if you are a subscriber.
You cannot be in the mailbag without being a subscriber.
It's a lousy 10 bucks a month.
And if you subscribe for the year, it's only a lousy $100 a month plus.
You get the leftist tears.
What is this?
I keep calling it a mug, but it's a tumbler, the leftist tears tumbler.
So you can tumble your leftist tears into the tumbler and drink them there.
Also, listen, this has come to my attention, and Ben Shapiro was kind enough to point this out to me.
You know, Michael Knowles' show is getting all these big ratings because people are engaging with it on iTunes.
They're giving it big ratings and all this stuff.
Now, I'm a competitive guy, but I'm only competitive in terms of quality.
In terms of quality, I don't have to worry, obviously, about Michael Knowles.
But I mean, the man, he's, no, I'm joking.
It's a great show, but the man is a man of no words, right?
He wrote a book with no words in it.
I know all the best words.
I know all the best words.
So go on iTunes and give us good reviews and give us likes and all that stuff, and you will push the show up and we can humiliate Knowles, which is, let's face it, isn't that why we're all here?
Of course it is.
All right, we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about Google again.
I'm going to go back and talk about Google and Bjorn Lumberg, the interview we did with Bjorn Lumborg about the environment.
Of course, we have to talk about North Korea because we probably won't get through the show without a nuclear strike on Los Angeles.
You know, I always say that my generation, the boomer generation, I wish they could die without taking me with them.
I wish they could get rid of Los Angeles, except that I'm here, so I'm a little worried about it.
Meanwhile, though, that doesn't mean that while we're waiting for the nuclear war, we can't eat well.
I think this is an important spiritual point, that as the world comes to an end, we should be eating well.
And one of the ways to do that is Blue Apron, because a lot of us send out for stuff.
I send out for stuff, I'm sure you do.
And you say, what do you send out for?
You send out for garbage, basically, for pizza and stuff like that.
Blue Apron delivers to your door these gourmet meals that you cook yourself.
So it's not only does it enhance your home cooking, but it is like you are cooking a restaurant-level meals.
Let me read you some of the stuff that's on, because it keeps changing.
They change it up, and you go on and you select the meals you want.
This upcoming meals include basil pesto chicken with summer vegetable panzanella.
Now, I got to be honest with you, I might cook myself an omelette, but basil presto chicken with summer vegetable panzanella is not in my wheelhouse.
But this stuff is really simple: sauteed shrimp and green beans, whole grain pasta and summer vegetables.
They send you the ingredients all measured out for you.
They send you these very simple instructions.
It's about 10 bucks per person a time, so it's really cheap.
And when you're finished cooking, you will have a restaurant-level meal.
It really is good.
And this week, you can go on and get this week's menu.
Your first three meals are free with free shipping if you go to blueapron.com/slash Andrew.
How do you spell that?
Never mind.
They know how to spell Andrew.
You love how good it feels and tastes to create incredible home-cooked meals with Blue Apron.
So do not wait.
BlueApron.com/slash Andrew.
Blue Apron is a better way to cook.
And it really is.
It's good, good stuff.
And the kind of meals, it's just the kind of meals you don't make at home.
I mean, who does that stuff?
But you can do it now.
All right, let's start.
We will start with this stuff going on in North Korea.
And obviously, this is kind of escalating.
But what happened was, you know, they're testing all these missiles, making all these threats, and there is now some information that they may possibly have reduced one of their nuclear weapons to the size where it can go on a missile, which makes them, obviously, a lot more dangerous.
And we have responded.
Nikki Haley was the UN ambassador, went and got the Security Council to vote 15-0, including China and Russia, to put these incredible sanctions on North Korea.
But, you know, I mean, it cuts like, I don't know, something like a third of their, it's the eighth set of sanctions, 11 years.
It's intended to cut the country's annual export revenue by 1 billion, about a third of its current total.
You know, they still can fund their nuclear weapons program.
We don't know how they get it.
They have a lot of illegal money.
Their economy seems to be doing fine.
I don't know if it's helpful, but it drove Kim Jong-un a little crazy, and he started throwing out these threats.
So yesterday, they go to our president, who's supposed to be on vacation.
He was announcing a new program to help with opioid addiction.
And they said, well, what about North Korea?
And here was Trump's response.
North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States.
They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.
He has been very threatening beyond a normal statement.
And as I said, they will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.
Thank you.
So, you know, of course, Kim Jong-un immediately responded, remembering his relationship with the old dictator, his father, Kim Jong-il.
I don't need my father.
I am strong.
Okay, that's not, actually, it was something a little bit more on the order of I'm going to bomb Guam.
Okay, that was what he said.
He's going to respond a thousand times with power and fury.
So they're all screaming at one another.
I just hope that Trump comes across as so nutty that like Kim Jong-un is going, oh, that man is like me.
He's crazy on me.
I'm not going to bomb those people.
But anyway, what I loved about this is I have to talk about the coverage.
I mean, obviously, this is a situation without a lot of good options.
You know, we can wipe them off the face of the map with our arsenal, but South Korea is there.
And of course, who wants to let loose with these kinds of weapons and all this stuff?
So not a lot of good things.
Rex Tillerson is trying to damp down the rhetoric and trying to make it say that because we've now got this UN security resolution, maybe China and Russia will actually pitch in and get this clown.
I mean, the guy's a clown.
He's a nut.
And North Korea is terrible.
But I just want to comment a little bit on the coverage, right?
Trump has that way of talking.
We all know this Trumpian way of talking.
I'm fire and fury and all this stuff.
And as far as I'm concerned, let Kim Jong-un worry about him.
Let him strike some fear into the guy's heart.
But the press reacts to everything Trump does as if no one else has ever done this stuff before.
And it's always different when Trump does it.
My favorite is Brian Williams, right?
He had just returned.
I think he had parachuted into Pandora where he was helping the Navi restore the umgalunga tree or something.
Why is this guy even still on the air?
I mean, it's like, you know, being a leftist means never having to say you're sorry.
I mean, this is the guy who bowed to the president of the United States.
He bowed to Barack Obama.
You know, he actually bowed as if the guy were the satrap of an Eastern country.
He told all these, made up all these stories.
He's still on there.
And this is how he sees the press's job in covering North Korea and Donald Trump.
Our job tonight actually is to scare people to death on this subject so the talk isn't as free as it is about a preemptive or surgical military strike.
You know that part of the world.
The population centers, Andrea and the general have talked about, South Korea, the Japanese, and so on and so on.
Well, it's very true, as Andrea and the general put just so succinctly.
This is not a viable military option.
This is not Syria.
This is not Iran.
This is a hard rock of a military target.
Like he not only tells it, it's our job to scare him to death.
He not only does that, but he tells the guest what to say.
You know, it's like, they do this on CNN too.
It's like, how is the guest going to say, it's not really that bad, Brian.
You know, I think you're acting a little out of control.
But Brian Williams and the rest of the press have decided that this is very different than when Bill Clinton said.
Bill Clinton said the same thing.
Bill Clinton said that if they developed and used an atomic weapon, we would quickly and overwhelmingly retaliate.
This is Bill Clinton.
It would mean the end of their country as they know it, the end of their country as they know it.
And of course, North Korea reacted the same way with threats, and the rhetoric got all ramped up and all this stuff.
But more importantly than that, more importantly than that, what we are dealing with is the failure of years that Donald Trump has nothing whatsoever to do with, do with.
And I just want to remind you of Bill Clinton in 1994.
He made this pact with North Korea that was going to bring peace in our time.
It was going to increase our time.
And it was going to completely eliminate the nuclear weapon program.
And we were going to give them money to help them with their energy.
And they used the money to build their nuclear weapon program.
And here's Bill Clinton talking about this in 1994.
This is a good deal for the United States.
North Korea will freeze and then dismantle its nuclear program.
South Korea and our other allies will be better protected.
The entire world will be safer as we slow the spread of nuclear weapons.
South Korea, with support from Japan and other nations, will bear most of the cost of providing North Korea with fuel to make up for the nuclear energy it is losing.
And they will pay for an alternative power system for North Korea that will allow them to produce electricity while making it much harder for them to produce nuclear weapons.
The United States and international inspectors will carefully monitor North Korea to make sure it keeps its commitments.
Thanks ever so much, Bill.
Thanks ever so much.
I mean, and nobody, it's like suddenly this happened because Donald Trump is elected and the press doesn't like Donald Trump, and suddenly Donald Trump's rhetoric is worse than everybody else's rhetoric.
Obama had rhetoric like this.
He said we could destroy them and all this.
Also, while that's fresh in your memory, this is a little off the track, but while that's fresh in your memory, that's 1994, Bill Clinton telling us how great it's going to be that he's made a pact with North Korea, right?
And the press was cheering and, hey, we've solved this terrible problem, and now we see that it only exacerbated the problem, only made it worse.
Let's skip ahead to 2015.
Barack Obama.
Remember, Bill Clinton said this is a good deal for the American people.
Here's Barack Obama announcing his deal with Iran.
And I want you to just remember this five years down the road.
Today, after many months of tough, principled diplomacy, we have achieved the framework for that deal.
And it is a good deal.
A deal that meets our core objectives.
This framework would cut off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon.
Iran will face strict limitations on its program.
And Iran has also agreed to the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history.
I just want you to remember this, that this is the way the Democrats roll.
Look, there's not a lot of good options here.
We keep saying this.
Tomorrow we're going to have Sebastian Gorkha on, the deputy assistant to the president of the United States, and he will talk about this more.
He has a lot to say.
I've been listening to what he's been saying.
And he'll talk about this more.
But I mean, you know, there aren't a lot of good options.
I get it.
But this is the end of years and years of fiddling around and not knowing how to handle this and not really taking a strong tack and not being able to get China off the dime.
It obviously, some of the answer lies in getting, in saying, starting to threaten that we're going to allow Japan to go nuclear as well, because that's the thing that China doesn't want.
And if we ever got serious about that, China might actually step in and stop this guy.
I mean, you know, all China wants is the threat to us and us being tangled up in this so they can do what they're doing in the South China Sea.
The mailbox is coming up, but we've got to say the mailbag, the mailbag is coming up.
But we've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
You've been watching us for free, but if you come on over to thedailywire.com, you can listen to us for free, or for a lousy $10 a month, you can subscribe and not just watch us on the site, but you can also be part of the mailbag.
All your problems solved, answers guaranteed 100% correct and will change your life.
on occasion, on occasion, for the better.
And, and listen, unless you want to see Michael Knowles walking around here smirking, you have to go on iTunes and give us good reviews and give us likes, and that will help us to humiliate Knowles.
I think we should all, all of us, as we wake up each day, as we go about our business, we should all be thinking about humiliating Michael Knowles.
I think it's just important.
Of course.
What else would you think about it?
It's even in the Bible, I think.
Why Humiliating Michael Knowles Matters00:15:15
Maybe I read that wrong.
Come on over to TheDailyWire.com.
All right.
I wanted to go back.
Before we get to the mailbag, I wanted to go back.
And I should have mentioned this before, but we're going to go to the mailbag.
You can send in questions live, too.
So please feel free to send in your questions live, and we will try to get to those as well.
I want to talk about the two things because they're kind of linked in my mind by one big idea, which is yesterday we saw this guy at Google, James Damore, got fired.
And he got fired for sending out this perfectly reasonable memo that talked about the problems with a monoculture, the problems with having a culture that excludes conservative thought, that has people going to classes that are only available to one gender or one race.
So in other words, if you think about it, it's so sexist to do that because even though men and women are different, you know, most men are taller, men are taller than women in general, right?
But there are women who are taller than men, right?
I'm about, I don't know what I am now because I shrink over time.
I used to be about 5'11.
So that makes me taller than the next 30 women.
But if you're 6'2, you're taller than the next, I don't know how many it is, thousands of women, actually.
So, but of course, there are women who are taller than me, and there are women who are taller than men, and there are men who are short, and there are men who are more emotional and all this stuff.
And so if you just say, well, only one gender is allowed to come here, only one gender has this concern, unless it is a biological, immediately biological concern, you're excluding these people.
So he's talking about this stuff.
And he says, listen to this quote, which was in his report.
I value diversity and inclusion.
I am not denying that sexism exists, and I don't endorse using stereotypes.
When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population-level differences and distributions.
If we can't have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem, and you're fired.
That was right there.
And here is how the media responded to that.
Let me remind you of the quote, just the top sentence of this.
I value diversity and inclusion.
Here are the media outlets blatantly lying about the Google memo.
The Washington Post, a Google engineer, said women may be genetically unsuited for tech jobs.
He never said that.
He did not say it.
He said that there are differences in what women like to do and some differences in what women can do, but they're general, obviously, and there's going to be individuals who go outside of that box.
CNN, Google CEO, cuts vacation short to address controversial memo that argued women aren't biologically fit for text jobs.
And Time magazine, Google has fired the employee who wrote an anti-diversity tirade.
The Atlantic calls it a screed and a Jeremiah.
Googlers' complaints assume that all is well in the world of computing technology, such that any efforts to introduce different voices into the field only risk undermining its income.
It's just nonsense.
Forbes, Google Fires anti-diversity memo writer.
Huffington Post, Google Fires male engineer behind anti-diversity memo.
ABC News, Google Fires employee behind controversial anti-diversity memo.
I mean, it's just lies.
It is just lies.
And what is so dangerous about this, I mean, so dangerous, is now Google is it perverts people's minds, all right?
So you have people now who feel that they have become the thought Nazis at Google, who think they think that they're being tolerant, right, by being thought Nazi.
Here are some tweets that were put out by a tweet site called Political News Forever, Political News Forever.
So here's a guy, I won't name him because I'm not going to dox this guy.
He says, you know, there are certain alternative views, including different political views, which I do not want people to feel safe to share here.
This is a Google employee, right?
My tolerance ends at my friend's terror.
Here's a woman.
She says, I am considering creating a public inside Google document of people who make diversity difficult.
Please share here any suggestions, criticisms, or words of warning.
Another guy, he's a manager.
He says, one of the great things about Google's internal communication mechanisms is that as a manager, I can easily go find out if I really want to work with you.
I mean, this is what these guys are turning into.
Here's a woman who says, he's talking to a guy who says he read the original memo and it wasn't, that basically he's right, that ideas are being suppressed.
And the woman replies, your reply ignores the many women, Googlers, who have expressed the frustration they feel as a result of this.
F off.
And thanks for using your real name, though.
It makes it easy to update my spreadsheet of people with bad opinions.
I mean, this goes on.
These people are being turned into Nazis and they can't see themselves because they're in, you know, they're in this culture.
And yesterday we talked also to Bjorn Lumborg, who is just a guy who basically says, yes, global warming, yes, people are contributing to it.
But the things that they do, he talked about the Paris Accord.
Remember this hysteria that went on when Trump dropped out of the Paris Accord?
And he said, if everybody did everything that they promised to do in the Paris Accord, which has a possibility percentage of 0%, everybody, it would be like a fraction of 1% of nothing that would do, they would accomplish nothing and cost trillions, where if you put much, much, much less money into research, how to store energy, how to use different kinds of energy and fracking and all this stuff, you know, it would achieve so much more.
And I said to him, well, what's the difference?
And he said, well, it's virtue signaling.
You know, I said, why don't they do the sensible thing?
Why do they do the crazy thing?
And he said, it's virtue signaling.
This is the point I want to make about this, very quickly, and then we'll get to the mailback.
You know, there has been a movement for the last, oh gosh, it's over 100 years, to anatomize people's motivations, to make people's motivations physical.
Freud, of course, was the great pioneer in this.
All your motivations come from your sex drive.
Every word you say really is related to your sex drive.
You say this, but you really mean something about your sex drive.
Everything is related to Eros.
You know, it's this physical thing that is just being expressed in fake spiritual terms.
Even your belief in God, it's just a new, you know, it's just an expression of your sex drive.
Now it's moved on, now that Freud has been not totally debunked, but a lot of this part of it has been debunked.
We've moved on to evolutionary biology, right?
This idea that everything is because of something that you developed as you were going from being a monkey to being a human being.
And by the way, some people don't believe in going from being a gorilla to being a human being, but it happened to me just this morning.
So I think I have to say it must be real.
But the point is now they say, oh, well, I've heard people say, oh, art developed because we had to learn about the savannah.
So we learned to paint landscapes.
I mean, nonsense, just so stories about how things come to be.
And we talk about all motivations now as if we say, oh, that girl is beautiful because you can see that she is, you know, fertile by the way she looks.
And anybody who's ever been around women for a long time knows that women become more beautiful the nicer they are.
I mean, the more you like them, the more beautiful they become.
It has nothing to do with their fertility.
It has to do with the spiritual relationship between you and the woman that you're talking to.
The spirit comes first.
You know, I was reading Discover Magazine.
I should really talk about this in another section.
But I just, just briefly, it was about a guy who wanted to get rid of his religious feelings.
And so he started talking about how, oh, this is what happens in the brain, you know, when you have religious feelings, and therefore it's just the brain doing this stuff.
And I thought, well, something happens in the brain when it's raining out too, and I see that it's raining.
Something happens to the brain.
That doesn't mean it's not raining.
Just because something happens to your brain when you experience God doesn't mean there's no God.
That's silly logic.
So everything is bent on eliminating the spirit, on eliminating spiritual methods.
But let me tell you something.
I don't think there's one motive for human actions, but certainly one of the largest motives is the display of virtue.
And that comes from the fact that we are fallen creatures who know that we are not what we're supposed to be.
There is not one of us on earth who thinks he is what he is supposed to be.
Not one, no, not one.
Unless he's a psychopath, unless he's a serial killer or something like that.
You know, the people who are saying no, they are not what they're supposed to be, and they spend, I would, if you listen to the way people talk, if you listen to the way you talk, like maybe 85% of what you say is meant to signal to other people that you are a good person because you know you're not.
And the delusion is that you can sell yourself to a good person when he knows you're not too.
I mean, he knows you're not as well because he knows what he is and he knows what you are.
This thing about virtue, if we looked at virtue the way people look at evolutionary biology and Freudian nonsense about your sex drives, if we thought about that as a motivation, a key motivation, we would understand so much more of the world and why people are doing this stuff.
I think it is a sin, a sin that Google is turning its staff into these thought Nazis instead of teaching them tolerance for disagreement.
By removing this guy, by firing this guy, they have given credence and encouragement to the worst in humankind.
Not that these people are the worst people, but simply one of the worst things we do is signal our virtue instead of turning to God in truth and saying, I'm a sinner.
You know, I am a broken guy.
And then, by the way, one of the wonderful things about coming to Christianity for me is understanding myself in those terms made me see other people realistically and more forgivingly.
Mailbag.
There it is.
I think we finally edited out that little space.
There always used to be that little lag there.
All right.
We're on top of it now.
Good.
We got to get right to the woohoo.
Let's see.
From Mace.
Dear Lord Clavin, bringer of shininess, leader of the Alopeans.
It means the bald, the bald ones, and first of his name.
I'm 26 years old, and my soon-to-be wife and I just bought a home.
We are both first-time homebuyers.
Finances aren't an issue.
But I was wondering if you have any words of wisdom for me.
You know what they say, happy wife, happy life.
Right, thanks from your fellow Alopecian Mace.
No, that's not right.
Happy wife, happy life.
You know, obviously, I've said before, if you're newlywed or you're, even if you're not, the key, one of the key secrets to a happy marriage is being polite to one another.
It's such a stupid thing to have to talk about.
But I hear people say things to their wives and to their husbands that they would never say to a person in a store or a waitress.
You wouldn't say, you know, like, you brought me the wrong thing.
You know, you're always doing this.
You're always, you know, you're always making it.
You know, you don't talk to people like that.
But then you go home and you talk to your wife or your husband like that.
And it's, you know, if you think about it, just a little bit of kindness, a little bit of politeness goes a long way.
But the other thing, the reason I say that happy wife, happy life is a stupid saying.
It just has the virtue of rhyming, basically, is that you're the leader in your house.
You're the leader in your house.
If you're the husband, you're the leader in your house.
And sometimes you're going to have to make decisions that make your wife unhappy in order to make her happy.
You should be pouring out your soul to make, you should be pouring out your soul to make her happy, but that doesn't always mean making her happy in the moment.
And a lot of times you're going to have to do things, maybe hopefully not a lot of times, but sometimes you're going to have to do things, make decisions for the family that she isn't going to like, and she'll hold it against you.
I can tell you, she will.
I mean, I think it's natural to do that.
But what I would say is if you are the leader in your family, accept that role and understand that sometimes doing the best thing for your family is not the thing that they want you to do.
It's the same thing with your kids, not comparing women to children, but it is the same thing with your kids.
Sometimes you have to do things that make your kids very, very unhappy in order to get them the stuff that is going to make them happy over time.
Oh, High Priest Clavin, praise be unto you.
I met a girl who shares all the same values I do.
She is Christian and conservative.
She is beautiful, and I think she may be the loveliest woman I have ever met.
So far, I'm not seeing the problem.
She's moving to Texas in a month, and I live in Virginia.
I feel it is extremely rare to find someone with these beliefs in 2017.
I believe there is an unspoken attraction between us, and I am unsure whether to say anything or not, since she will be moving a good distance away soon.
I would like to pursue this further, but it seems in vain since we will hardly ever see each other.
What should I do, Kyle?
Kyle, congratulations.
You have asked me the easiest question I've ever received.
Make your move, Gamboon.
Go for it, dude.
If this is the right woman, it will all work out.
If it's not, it won't.
You know, I mean, that's the thing.
But do not, do not let her get away.
Do not let her get on that plane without telling her how you feel.
You don't have to make a big show out of it.
Just talk to her.
Just say what you said, basically to me, to her.
You know, I mean, that I felt there was something between us, and I think you are terrific and a lovely person.
And, you know, we share a lot of values, and I would like to stay in touch.
You know, distance, you know, I won't say that love conquers all, but distance is not the biggest problem.
We actually, they have invented this gigantic thing, flies through the sky between Virginia and Texas.
You will be able to visit.
They've invented the internet.
You will be able to see one another.
But don't let her get away.
I mean, come on.
That's an easy, right?
I mean, that's an easy one.
I'm sorry.
All right.
Would you say that it is impressive that America went from a colonization to a world power in such a relatively short time?
Yes.
I mean, you know, I always remember this scene.
There are these novels.
I've recommended them, I think, in stuff I like.
These novels are the Flash Man novels.
And they're really wonderful if you've never read them.
They're written by a conservative and they're a conservative view of history.
They're about a coward who is accidentally in every battle of the Victorian era, both in England and in America.
So he's in every battle, even though he's a coward and he keeps being promoted because he seems to be a hero, even though he's a dastard and a coward and all this stuff.
And there's just one scene in one of the Indian ones where he goes out to fight the Indian wars and then he goes out a little bit later.
I can't remember if it's the Civil War or whatever it is.
And he's looking out the window of a train and he can see the wagon trains wheel tracks.
So in other words, the people who went out there to settle it, to settle the West, left their tracks, and he can see that now that the train has opened it, the advancement of America from nothing to a global power was predicted, but it was rapid, very rapid.
And the final part of this question is, is our Western philosophy unique to all of other Western civilizations?
If so, is America still in an experimental phase?
Let God Worry About Who You Are00:05:37
I'm not sure I quite understand that.
We are a unique version of the Western philosophy, obviously.
And we are, I don't know, experimental.
We are a revolutionary country.
And yes, we're still experimental, but we're a revolutionary country.
And some of the problems we have, some of the things that we get angry at with the left about is because we have that revolutionary attitude.
You know, when you go to Europe, it's funny.
They have feminism there.
They have all these things there, but they just do it.
They retain their common sense.
You know, they know women are different than men.
They don't suddenly sit around and say we're all the same.
People do, but it's not with the same kind of virulence and it doesn't get the same kind of spread in the media, at least in my experience, that it does here.
And that's partly because we're a revolutionary, experimental country.
We remain that way, and we think anything goes when, of course, that's just not the way it is.
All right.
Hello, Mr. Clavin.
So my life in faith has always been very important to me.
I grew up in a very religious household, which taught me the happiness that a life in faith can give you.
The only problem is a couple of years ago, I came to the realization that I am gay.
My question is, based off your knowledge of the Bible and God's words, do you think there is any way that a person can be gay but still live a life of faith from Oliver?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
All of us are at variance.
As I just said, we're all at variance with some perfect version of ourselves, every single one of us.
Let me put it to you this way.
Let me put it as simply as possible.
I, Andrew Clavin, sitting behind this microphone, I accept you as you are.
I am not the king of the universe.
I am a Shmo.
It is very, very likely that the king of the universe has a much broader sense of acceptance and love and fulfillment.
And you know that insurance company, I can't remember the name of the insurance company, they have an ad where they say we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two.
God knows everything because he's seen everything.
He is as close to you as your skin, as close as your breath.
He knows all that squirrely stuff, and God loves you.
This is the thing.
You know, they keep saying this.
God loves you, but nobody thinks about it in real terms because the priest, the guy, the pastor who's saying it frequently doesn't want to release his own authority.
He doesn't want to let go of his own power and just let God love you.
But God loves you anyway.
He really does.
Not kidding around.
And it's like he doesn't love you because he's loving.
He is loving.
But he loves you because he's lovable.
He made you lovable.
He knows who you are.
You have no secrets from him, and he loves you.
There is no reason you can't live a life of faith.
Look, if you go to God as I do every day, as I hope you do every day, he's going to change you.
He's going to change.
He's going to make you better.
I mean, I have to say, he has made me much, much better than I was.
There's no question about it.
He's going to make you better.
I don't know how he's going to do that.
I don't know what he's going to tell you what to do and what he thinks degrades you and what he thinks uplifts you and what he thinks needs changing and what doesn't.
And neither does anybody else.
You know, neither does anybody else.
Look, if you're doing things that are hurting other people, stop.
Okay, that's a bad thing to do.
Stop because it's bad.
But in your life, if you are a certain person, bring that person to God.
He'll tell you where to go and what to do.
And I think that there's nothing, you know, Jesus never mentions this.
And he never mentions homosexuality.
And I'm not arguing at all that that means he thinks it's great or he thinks it's bad.
All I'm saying is he is the word.
He used words well.
He knew what he meant to say.
He never mentioned it.
And the fact that this is what churches talk about all the time, and this has become synonymous with Christianity, seems to me a diversion from a guy who had a three-year ministry and never talked about it.
He never talked about it.
So bring yourself to God and let God worry about it.
Let God worry about who you are.
Stop you worrying about who you are.
I mean, if there's nothing, if there's one thing that God says over and over again, stop worrying.
Don't be afraid.
Let not your heart be troubled.
Neither let it be afraid.
Of course you can live a life of faith.
Of course you can.
That's my answer.
And now you can write your angry letters to me.
I know.
I know I'm going to get those angry letters.
I know you're probably already waiting, writing them off.
All right.
Can we do one more?
You have a live one if you want.
Oh, all right.
Let me, did you send me a...
It's about what?
Pat Buchanan.
Pat Buchanan.
All right, read it to me.
Okay.
So all-conquering, a knower of words, and humiliator of Knolls.
Trumpism seems to me like Pat Buchanan's views.
What do you think of Buchanan?
I am not a fan of Buchanan.
I think that his nationalism has shaded over into bigotry at times.
I think that he is sometimes a catastrophist who always sees disaster coming.
And I think that kind of talk really makes people make bad decisions.
I think there are elements of him in Trump.
Trump, well, you know, we don't have time to talk about Trump today, the way I've been seeing him and kind of experiencing him.
The thing about Trump is, look, there's a lot of reasons not to like Donald Trump.
But so far, so far, he's acted within the law.
He has done some really good things.
He has done some things that I don't like, but he hasn't done anything catastrophic.
So I'm only going to judge him as Judge Trump as President of the United States and what he does and how it affects my life.
Buchanan, I judge by his words because that's what he does.
He talks and he writes.
And I've never really read anything by him that really made me stand up and think, wow, that has really increased my insight.
I've always found him to be a bit of a bombastic guy.
Setting Boundaries00:06:18
So that's where I'll leave that.
All right.
I have to just, we started out with Lena Dunham.
I have to end with Ashley Judd.
Ashley Judd, Lena Dunham is patrolling our airports, making sure that nobody says anything mean about transgenders.
Here is Ashley Judd.
What is this with these rich white, privileged, I mean, these are the most privileged people on earth, rich white actresses.
Can you get any more privilege?
What would you have to be to be more privileged?
Here's Ashley Judd telling the nightmarish story of what happened to her in the airport.
I was coming through security and a guy said, hey, sweetheart.
And I said, I'm not your sweetheart.
I am your client.
So I was already setting a boundary.
And then when I was setting my things out, he said, hey, nice dress.
I didn't hear him saying anything about the attire of any of the other folks in the entire line.
And I am in one of the most traveled airports in the world.
I'm surrounded by lots and lots of other people in lots of different kinds of dress.
I set my stuff on the doohickey, you know, the doohickey that rolls.
And I was speaking with one of his colleagues.
She was saying, do you have on high-heeled shoes, whatever.
And guess what happened next?
He touched me.
I didn't see him touch anybody else.
And I turned around and I said, that was unnecessary.
By the time, you know, my skin is burning, my feet are burning.
It's so hard to continue to set these boundaries when someone continues to push.
And then for good measure, he just said one more time, have a good day, sweetheart.
So I have plenty of time.
I'm really early for my flight and I caught my breath and I said my prayers and my intention is to put principles above personalities.
I'm not here to be controversial.
I'm not here to be combative.
But I asked for a manager and I introduced myself and I shook his hand and I asked for his name and I explained the situation.
And I also explain that there were lots of other people who saw it.
The struggle is real, folks.
You know what I wanted to bring in?
I wanted to bring in a mashup of every sex scene that she ever did in movies.
I mean, the reason she is who she is is because she's an attractive woman and that was part of her acting stuff and that's why you put her on screen.
And it's just, I mean, that's her problem.
The other thing about this, by the way, is I don't know, this could be a guy-girl difference, but I fall crazily in love with any woman who calls me sweetheart or baby or anything like that.
You know, I go down when I buy my wife flowers at this shop, there's this lady, she's got to be, I don't know, 70 or something like this, and she's a black lady and she calls me boo all the time.
And I always go home and say to my wife, you almost lost me, you know, like all you have to do is call me boo.
I'm so easy.
You know, all you have to do is call me boo.
And I'm going, all right, stuff I like.
The struggle is real.
Stuff I like, we've been celebrating the centenary of Robert Mitchum, one of the great tough guy actors, and this was one of his later films, The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
First of all, if you have never read the novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, you remember the show Justified?
Did you watch Justified?
At the end of Justified, I think on the last show, the star is packing up his stuff to leave, and he takes out The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and he says, I've read this book like a hundred times, and he leaves it behind for one of the other officers to read.
It is one of the truly, truly terrific tough guy novels by George V. Higgins, who was an assistant United States attorney in Boston during the Whitey Bulger crime spree.
So what he did is he took the tapes of people being interviewed and he used that dialogue to create this story about Eddie Fingers, Eddie Coyle, who's an aging delivery truck driver for a bakery, but he's also a gun runner and he runs guns for the mob.
Robert Mitchum played a terrific film by Peter Yates with a script, the screenplay by Paul Monash, who was the guy who brought me into the movie business.
He bought, yeah, he was a director and he bought my book, The Scarred Man.
And that changed my life because they paid, they bought it outright.
So they paid what for me was a mountain of gold for it.
And it sort of meant that I didn't have to work at another job anymore.
I could just write full time.
And Paul Monash did that.
He died quite a long time ago.
But a really good guy.
I remember I made, I could tell stories about all the stupid things I did because I'd never dealt with Hollywood before.
But anyway, he wrote the screenplay.
Great screenplay, great film.
Here is Robert Mitchum as Eddie Coyle explaining why they call him Eddie Fingers, which is one day he got some guns for somebody and the guns were traced and the guy he sold them to went to prison and this is how they punished him.
You put your hand in a drawer and somebody kicks the drawer shut.
Jeez.
What makes it hurt worse?
What makes it hurt more is knowing what's going to happen to you, you know?
There you are.
They just come up to you and say, look, you made somebody mad.
You made a big mistake and now there's somebody doing time for it.
There's nothing personal in it, you understand, but it just has to be done.
Now get your hand out there.
You think I'm not doing it, you know?
When I was a kid in Sunday school, this nun used to say, stick your hand out.
I stick my hand out, whap, she knocked me across the knuckles with a steel-edge ruler.
So one day I says, when she told me, stick your hand out.
I says, no.
She whacked me right across the face with the ruler.
think they put your hand in a drawer somebody kicks the drawer shut their bones breaking just like a man snapping a shingle hurts like a that's robert mitchum as eddie coil and the friends of eddie cole the novel is great too uh the sequel digger's game is also a terrific novel by george higgins um that's it so let me remind you that if you want to fulfill your purpose in life,
which is humiliating Michael Knowles, make sure to go on iTunes and give us a five-star review and give us some likes and push us up past his show because, I mean, let's face it, really.
A Steel-Edge Ruler Incident00:00:08
I mean, you know, there has to be some justice in the world.