Andrew Clavin’s It’s Women’s Day, Let’s Have Sharia! pits Linda Sarsour’s defense of Sharia—despite its male guardianship rules—as feminist empowerment against Ayan Hirsi Ali’s critique of its oppression, while mocking CNN for ignoring Trump’s validated Sweden crime warnings. He ties this to LA’s homeless crisis, where $4.6B in voter funds may house half the street population in three years amid housing shortages and NIMBY resistance, then pivots to blaming feminism for "devaluing" traditional masculinity, urging women to seek dominant husbands over "weak" partners—a stance he frames as inevitable feminist backlash bait. [Automatically generated summary]
Standing on the corner, watching all the girls go by.
Standing on the corner, watching all the girls go by.
Brother, you don't know a nicer occupation.
Matter of fact, neither do I.
And standing on the corner, watching all the girls, watching all the girls, watching all the girls go by.
Maybe a little late for the trigger warning, but trigger warning.
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is ticky-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped topsy, the world is it-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hooray, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hooray.
All right, here we are standing once again on the very precipice, the precipice of the Clavenless weekend, struggling to make sense of things.
We are going today on International Women's Day, we are going to solve one of the great riddles of International Women's Day with the help of our friend Aristotle.
We moved him over front.
He's usually over there on the, on the, whatever, on the fireplace, on the mantelpiece, but we brought him over, Harry Aristotle.
Not many people know that his first name was Harry.
They used to call him Haristotle.
He hated that.
But we're going to solve a major, major riddle about International Women's Day.
And we have Gail Holland from the LA Times.
She covers homelessness and poverty.
And we're going to talk to her about homelessness.
We are going to solve this problem before I'm done.
We're going to have every expert on homelessness here because it's insane.
I mean, I don't know if you've seen the pictures of what is happening in LA.
It looks like Nairobi.
I mean, there are places in LA that now look like Nairobi.
Meanwhile, get ready for the conversation.
The next episode of the conversation is coming up on Tuesday, March 13th at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 p.m. Pacific, and it will feature the amazing Ben Shapiro.
I call him that, so it makes him happy.
Keeps him quiet.
Subscribe today to be part of this hour-long live Q ⁇ A. You can ask Ben questions about everything you ever wanted to know, his thoughts on politics, culture, comic books.
The list is endless.
The man has a capacious mind.
He even knows what capacious means, which puts him far ahead of me.
Ben's conversation will stream live on the Ben Shapiro Facebook page and the Daily Wire YouTube channel, and it will be free for everyone to watch, but only subscribers can ask the questions.
That will cost you a lousy $9.99 a month or $99.99 for the entire year.
Plus, you get the leftist tears tumbler, and every time Aristotle speaks, the leftist tears tumbler fills up.
That's why we put them together so I have a constant store of leftist tears.
To ask questions as a subscriber during the conversation, log on to our website, dailywire.com.
Head over to the conversation page to watch the live stream.
And after that, you just start typing into the Daily Wire chat box, and Ben will answer the questions as they are posted.
Read to him by the lovely Alicia.
Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by Ben Shapiro.
Tuesday, March 13th, 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 p.m. Pacific.
Join the conversation.
So before I solve the great riddle of International Women's Day, I just have to mention this.
You know, two things happened yesterday.
One was the press was building up these Texas primaries.
It was going to be the start of the blue wave.
It was all going to, and nothing, you know, nothing.
Just as many Republicans, even more Republicans showed up doesn't mean that there won't be a blue wave, but it certainly means that suddenly that story is going to drop.
What that means is suddenly that story is going to drop from the media.
If it doesn't support the narrative, it drops from the media.
The other thing that while we're talking about leftists not doing well, we have to talk about CNN.
This is from Amanda Presto on our own lovely Daily Wire site.
She writes, the disastrous ratings at CNN continue to trend downward, suggesting that their Trump-Russian conspiracy obsession is falling flat with the general public.
CNN is not only getting crushed by Fox News, which is par for the course, but the network is also taking a beating from MSNBC, Forbes reports.
CNN had significant declines in February with ratings dropping 19%.
So as much as the Oscars in total day and 16% in prime, where the network returned an average audience of less than a million.
It's behind MSNBC.
MSNBC has almost twice as many viewers.
And of course, Fox News has almost three times as many.
Now, why you, you may be asking yourself why?
Probably not.
You probably know exactly why.
But it is amazing to me that their viewership is falling down when they cover such important stories as a little girl who looked admiringly at a portrait of Michelle Obama, Don Lemon.
Don Lemon got to the bottom of this important story, Cut 10.
You said before that Parker believes Michelle Obama is a queen.
Does she still think that?
Parker, is Michelle Obama a queen?
Yes.
Yes, she is.
I guess that, Susan, she's a superhero.
She should have been, maybe she should be in the Black Panther movie because she's a superhero.
Right, right, right.
Maybe Michelle Obama should be in Black Panther because Michelle Obama's a superhero.
No.
She's a queen.
Nope.
Don, you stand corrected.
She's not a superhero.
She's a queen.
Now, listen, I got to say she's right.
Whatever Jessica says.
I mean, whatever Parker says is right.
So I'm totally fine with that.
How could CNN be losing ratings?
I'm surprised they didn't ask her about gun control.
Isn't that the usual thing they do?
Bring on children and ask them about gun control.
All right, here is the great riddle of International Women's Day, because I know you're all wondering about this.
What's the difference between me and Sharia law?
Right?
I am a sexist.
I come on here all the time.
I am an actual sexist.
I'm an anti-feminist sexist.
I believe that men and women are utterly, totally, completely different, body, mind, spirit, utterly, utterly different.
I think men are better at being men.
Women are better at being women.
I think, and Sharia law says, you know, basically the same thing.
I believe, for instance, that the happiest, most self-realized women I have ever met are almost all of them married homemakers.
I would take out the almost all of them married homemakers.
Sharia, that's where Sharia wants women in the home taking care of children.
I believe women would be wise to be chaste.
I believe it's actually more important that women are chaste than men are chased.
Sharia says the same thing.
I believe that women are happiest when they behave with some kind of modesty.
That the new world in which women basically are displaying themselves constantly and cursing and not behaving modestly, I think they're making a big mistake.
I think they would be happier if they were more modest.
Sharia, same thing, right?
Sharia and I completely agree.
I believe that home and marriage work best by my observation when men, the husband, has a leadership role in the family.
Sharia says the same thing.
So here's the riddle.
I am virulently opposed to Sharia law.
I think it is an obscenity.
I think it's an obscenity, not just for this country.
I think it's an obscenity in the countries where they have it because they're Muslim countries.
Yet, one of the biggest leaders in the feminist movement, Linda Sausser, believes, is pro-Sharia law.
She believes in Sharia law, and many, many feminists have stood up and basically supported her in this and have given Sharia law a pass.
Nobody in the American feminist movement, nobody is taking on Sharia law overseas.
Nobody is talking about it.
Nobody protests it.
Why am I protesting it?
The sexist, and the feminists are okay with it.
All right, so let's look at this for a minute.
Here is Linda Sarcer, who is pro-Sharia law.
She says this.
She says, oh, it's great.
Sharia law.
Okay, you can't drive, but you can do so many other things.
It's so wonderful.
Here she is at the Women's March last year to wild applause.
This was a really successful speech.
As-salamu alaykum, may peace be upon you, brothers and sisters.
My name is Linda Sarsour, and I am one of the national co-chairs for the Women's March on Washington.
I stand here before you, unapologetically Muslim American.
Unapologetically Palestinian American.
Unapologetically from Brooklyn, New York.
Sisters and brothers, you are what democracy looks like.
Sisters and brothers, you are my hope for my community.
I will respect the presidency, but I will not respect this president of the United States of America.
Now, I see no reason why Linda Sarcer should apologize for being from Brooklyn.
But as for the rest, as for the rest, she's pro-Palestinian, so that means she's anti-Israeli and she is anti-Israel.
She is proudly Muslim America, and she supports Sharia.
Here is her talking about the problem in America, being such an anti-Muslim country, how bigoted we are, how terrible we are.
And just listen carefully because in here she protests against there being anti-Sharia laws, proposals for anti-Sharia laws.
So listen carefully.
I mean, if we want to uphold our values and we want to show the rest of the world how wonderful we are, well, we need to start here at home.
While we're talking about partnering with Muslim communities and you are a partner, you are part of the fabric of our society.
Our government operates massive surveillance program, unwarranted surveillance in Muslim communities, chilling free speech, making people feel afraid.
I mean, a lot of Muslims have come to the United States to get away from regimes where they feel like their freedom of speech is infringed on, where some people don't have freedom of religion.
We come to the U.S., 22 states with anti-Sharia bills trying to ban us from practicing our faith, mosque oppositions, we're fighting zoning boards across the country.
Our kids are hearing this rhetoric.
We have people, mosques being vandalized, kids being executed, Islamophobia, leaders on national television saying that holy wars and these people want to take over America.
I mean, it's just, it doesn't for me reflect what we do stand for as a country.
And these very, the minority in our country who has are the loudest voices are reflecting what we are.
And that's not who we are as a country.
Linda Sarcer tweets, you'll know when you're living under Sharia law, if suddenly all your loans and credit cards become interest-free sounds nice, doesn't it?
Let me read to you an article today in the Wall Street Journal by Ayan Hersi Ali.
Okay.
This is in today's Wall Street Journal.
Now, in Saudi Arabia, the Crown Prince, Mohammadi Mohammed bin Salman, is making substantial changes, liberalization.
He is letting women do more things.
He's letting there be more entertainment.
He's visiting churches in Egypt.
She's in England now visiting with the women leaders, the Queen and Teresa May.
Aya Hirsi Ali writes this about it.
She says, in Saudi Arabia, governed by Sharia, Islamic law.
And you know who Ayn Hirsi Ali is, right?
She's the anti-Sharia activist.
She was thrown out of the Netherlands for, they said, you know, she's causing all the trouble.
It was actually the people trying to kill her who are causing the trouble.
She says, in Saudi Arabia, governed by Sharia, Islamic law, a woman must live under the authority of a male guardian, her Wali al-Unamr.
The Quran says, quote, men are the protectors and maintainers of women because Allah has given the one more strength than the other and because they support them from their means.
The General Presidency for Scholarly Research, an official body in charge of Islamic legal opinion, has issued a fatwa construing that verse strictly.
A woman should not leave her house except with her husband's permission.
Saudi women do not have freedom of movement and never become fully independent legal persons, regardless of age.
They need permission from a male guardian to travel overseas, apply for a passport, marry, or be released from prison.
The guardian is usually a woman's father or husband, but can also be a brother, cousin, or even son.
Imagine the humiliation, she says, of a middle-aged woman having to ask a young son's approval for important and mundane life decisions.
Guardian's reach doesn't stop at the border.
Listen to this.
This is amazing.
Last April, last April, 24-year-old Dina Ali Lasloom was held up by Filipino authorities as she changed planes at Manila International Airport.
Ms. Lasloum had left Saudi Arabia against her family's wishes.
Her Saudi uncles appeared and whisked her back to Riyadh.
An airline official told Human Rights Watch he heard Ms. Lasloum begging for help before being carried out in a wheelchair with duct tape on her mouth, feet, and hands.
The Saudi government said this was a family matter.
She has not been heard from since, but her credit cards are interest-free, so that's great.
So Linda, and Linda Sarser has said of Ayan Hirsi Ali that she needs her butt-kicked.
This was one of her tweets.
She needs her butt kicked.
Let's listen to Ayan Hursi Lee responding to Linda Sasser.
Ms. Sarsou is hostile to me, not because she knows me, but because she's a fake feminist.
Ms. Sarsou is not interested in universal human rights.
She's a defender of Sharia law and the principle of Sharia law.
There's no principle that demeans, degrades, and dehumanizes women more than the principle of Sharia law.
And Linda Sarsou is a defender of that.
She hates me.
She hates Brigitte Gabriel because of that.
Linda Sarsou is not a defender of universal human rights.
She's a defender of Sharia law.
She hates me because I expose what Sharia law is.
What Sharia law is, is what the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is doing.
So let's just broaden this out for a minute.
Let's not just stick it to Linda Sasser because the co-president of the Women's March, a woman named Tamika Mallory, remember she was the one who was thrown off a plane or something like that.
Defender Of Sharia Law00:10:37
She attended a speech in Chicago by our old friend Louis Farrakhan.
And at this speech, Farrakhan railed against the satanic Jew who works here, I think, doesn't he?
Oh, no, maybe he didn't mean Ben specifically.
He was raging against the satanic Jew, saying, powerful Jews are my enemy.
And she was attacked for this.
And she said that after two weeks of scathing publicity, Mallory issued a statement saying, yes, I've heard the pain and concern of her fellow activists, but she added, wherever my people are is where I must be because she is black.
I guess that's who she meant by her people.
Let's just listen, though.
Forget about his Jew hatred, which is virulent.
Let's forget about his anti-Semitism and his bigotry and his nastiness.
Let's listen to what he says about a woman's place and a man's place in the home.
Nature.
God gave man power and dominion.
Then men cannot be a man unless he has power in order to exercise dominion.
Yes, sir.
That's the nature of every man.
And whether you agree with me or not, in his nature, he knows he's supposed to have some power.
Yes, sir.
And he knows he's supposed to have rule, especially in his own house.
And therefore, if he does not have the knowledge of how to establish his rule, yes, sir.
And the woman see him weak and ineffective.
Help me out.
Then she look at him and say, I ain't bowing down to this.
Ain't gonna respect it.
Now, I agree with him.
I agree.
Men, I think, are the natural leaders in the house.
I don't do that imitation of women with the hand on the fist on the waist and all that.
I don't stoop to that.
But hey, again, so how come I despise this guy and she supports him?
How come these women march leaders?
And by the way, about Sharia law, you know, just in case you think it can't come here, in Sweden, in a landmark case, the Solna District Court has acquitted an Iraqi man suspected of abusing his wife by pushing her against furniture, pulling her hair, and hitting her face with a shoe.
The court called the credibility of the woman's testimony into question, stressing her lowly parentage.
In addition to stressing that the man came from a good family, unlike the woman, the court ruled that the fact that the woman turned to the police instead of the husband's family further undermined her credibility.
In other words, she was not obeying Sharia law.
This is in Sweden.
Do you remember when Trump talked about the problems in Sweden caused by Islamic immigrants and the press went after him?
Because what Trump said, he said something had happened the night before and it happened, hadn't happened the night before, it just happened earlier.
Let's just play, this is back in February of last year.
Let's just play Morning Joe reacting to those comments at the time.
This is John Heilman with Mark Halperin sitting next to him, who no longer works there because he harassed women.
So let's listen to him mocking Trump and what he said.
You mentioned Sweden.
Let's talk about that a little bit.
President Trump leaving one important and very nice European nation, a nation collectively scratching its heads after seemingly alluding to a terrorist attack in that country to justify his travel ban and other immigration policies during a rally in Florida over the weekend.
Who would believe this?
Sweden.
Unfortunately, there was no attack on Friday night in Sweden.
As one Swedish tabloid pointed out, the president, some incidents did occur across the country that night, but they range from a man setting himself on fire in Stockholm to a portion of a highway being closed due to weather.
Also, there was a popular Swedish singer.
His name is O. Thornquist, one of my favorites.
Oh, he's great.
He experienced some technical difficulties during rehearsals for a competition.
But besides that, it was a quiet evening in Sweden.
The embassy there also released a statement on the matter saying, quote, we don't have any information regarding what President Trump was referring to in his speech, and we don't want to speculate.
We have asked U.S. officials for an explanation.
Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bilt was also among those seeking answers, tweeting out, quote, Sweden, terror attack?
What has he been smoking?
Questions abound.
That's silly, Donald.
Silly Donald.
Trump was absolutely right, and they're mocking him.
What could be possibly wrong with Sweden?
The other day, the New York Times finally, finally caught up with Donald Trump.
They finally piled together enough New York Times reporters to match the IQ of Donald Trump, and they got this story right.
They wrote this whole thing about gang-related assaults and shootings are becoming more frequent.
The number of neighborhoods categorized by the police as marred by crime, social unrest and insecurity is rising, and then said crime and immigration as if those were two separate matters in Sweden, which they are not.
Crime and immigration are certain to be key issues in September's general election alongside the traditional debates over education and welfare.
Rapes in that country have gone up.
This is Sweden, right?
This is a place that's supposed to be like a Christmas card and was like a Christmas card, and now it's crime-infested, rape-infested, dangerous for women.
Why?
Immigration, Islam coming in, Islamification coming in.
Trump was with the Swedish president the other day, and he turns to him and says, oh yeah, I got this right.
Some reporter was calling him out on it, and he got it right.
This is cut number four.
Mr. President, I know that you've followed the development in Sweden closely, especially when it comes to immigration politics.
Now that you've spent some time with our Prime Minister, how do you view Sweden in general?
What is your take and also on our immigration politics?
Thank you.
You have a wonderful Prime Minister, I have to say.
We've gotten to know each other.
Certainly you have a problem with the immigration.
It's caused problems in Sweden.
I was one of the first ones to say it.
It took a little heat, but that was okay because I proved to be right.
But you do have a problem, and I know the problem will slowly disappear, hopefully rapidly disappear.
But as far as our relationship with Sweden, it's going to be only stronger, only better.
So this is real stuff.
I mean, this is real stuff.
This is really happening in Europe.
They've now admitting, the Germans are now admitting there are no go zones in Europe.
You know, I mean, Jeff Sessions is suing California to make sure that we start to enforce border laws.
The left wants all the people to come.
You know, they want no borders, but they don't care about Sharia law.
They don't think it's a danger.
They got so upset when Donald Trump was trying to ban people from dangerous countries.
So why am I, a sexist, opposed to Sharia law when basically, you know, I think women will be happier, you know, as homemakers.
I think women are happy.
Marriages are happier when men have a leadership role.
So what's the problem?
Let's bring in our first guest, Harry Aristotle, Aristotle.
He always, he really, he hated that.
He always said, don't call me Aristotle, except he would say it in Greek, which was a little bit more difficult.
Let me talk about Aristotle's view of ethics just for a minute.
Let's say you've got two guys, and both of them are faithful to their wives, okay?
One of them is faithful to his wife because he's got a wealthy wife.
He lives off her money.
He knows that if she catches him, she's got people watching him all the time.
She hires private detectives to follow him around.
He knows that if he cheats on her, she'll dump him and he'll lose his meal ticket.
So he's faithful to her.
The other guy is faithful to her because he believes that he promised fidelity in marriage.
He believes in keeping his promises.
He believes that it would hurt her if he cheated on her.
He believes that he himself will be ennobled by being faithful in his marriage, and so he doesn't cheat on his wife.
Which one of them is faithful to his wife?
Only one of those people is exercising the virtue of fidelity.
Only the guy who is doing it out of belief in the goodness of what he is doing.
The other guy is just a louse who happens to be exercising his lousiness in terms of fidelity.
See, I'm a sexist, but I'm opposed to Sharia law because I want you to be free.
I want you to choose your best life.
And if your best life is not what I think it should be, I don't want you to agree with me.
I want you to disagree with me.
I want you to go out.
You say, you know, hey, I heard your opinion.
You're a beautiful guy.
You're really attractive.
If you weren't married, I'd go out with you.
I'd rather be a combat Marine and I can pass all the tests and do it.
Go with God.
Go with God.
The feminists support Sharia law because both identity politics and Sharia are forms of slavery.
See, I don't see a woman.
Obviously, I see a woman as a woman, but that's not her identity.
Her identity to me is with God.
Her identity is in God.
It's in her spirit.
It's in her individual spirit.
And only you, only that woman, knows what, and God knows what that individual spirit was made to be.
I tell a woman exactly what I would say to a man.
Don't let, don't let the politicians of any strike tell you who you are.
Let God tell you who you are.
And God will do that.
He will do that in prayer and in reading.
He will do it.
And if you find that your happiness is not in what the feminists say it is, as I believe a majority of women will, then don't do what the feminists say.
Don't do it, right?
And if in your meeting with God, your connection with God, you find that he does say, yes, your happiness was to be a combat marine or president of the United States.
Hey, if you support the policy, I'll vote for you.
I will.
No, skin off my neck.
I am not here to control your life.
They are.
The feminists are.
And that's why Linda Sarser and that other woman fit so well into the feminist system, right?
That's why Sharia fits so well into the feminist system.
That's why feminists aren't fighting Sharia law.
And I, a sexist, I'm fighting Sharia law because I want you to be who God made you to be.
Now, I may have opinions about that, but my opinions don't matter.
They don't even matter to me.
All that matters to me is the development of your individual life and your individual spirit.
Have we got Gail Holland?
Thank you, Aristotle, for coming on.
But now we have Gail Holland, who is not an ancient Greek philosopher.
She is an award-winning journalist, however, who covers homelessness and poverty for the Los Angeles Times.
She won a 2012 Investigative Reporting Award from the Nieman Foundation for a series about college construction abuses that she wrote with colleague Michael Finnegan.
Shelter System Struggles00:15:26
Her latest piece at the LA Times deals with the LAPD's rising arrests of homeless people.
And in addition to the Los Angeles Times, Gail has worked for USA Today, LA Weekly, and more.
Gail, can you hear me?
Yes, I can.
Hi.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Certainly.
I have written for the LA Times.
I know they have a different political stripe than I do, but they've always been incredibly fair to me, which is not true of every paper I've published.
And so I've always admired them for that.
I've read your pieces.
I'm very glad to hear that.
No, it really is.
It really has been amazing.
I've been reading your pieces on homelessness.
And more than that, of course, I've been seeing what's going on in LA.
I was in New York for Christmas where the temperature was down below zero and there were people out in the street wrapped up in blankets.
And I just, I was sitting there just thinking, this ain't right.
Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
So let's start with this.
The reason this bothers me so much is because it wasn't always like this.
I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't like this.
In one of your articles, you follow this back to the 80s.
What happened?
Well, there was disinvestment and closure of mental institutions.
But the effects of that from the 80s are kind of over.
There was more importantly, I think there was a huge disinvestment and actually urban renewals, slum clearance of public housing.
And there just is a segment of the population that has never been able to compete in the regular housing market.
And that's just super accelerated now because coming out of the recession, the rents here and in other places have shot way up.
And while there are a lot of people who never recovered from the recession from losing their homes or their jobs or medical bills or other things.
So first, before we go on with this, what's the situation now?
I mean, it seems to me just by the evidence of mine eyes, it seems to me that homelessness is now epidemic in L.A. Is that fair to say?
Definitely.
It's epidemic, and I think people, there are people here who've been involved in trying to solve the problem since the 80s, and they all, to a man and woman, say that it's the worst it's ever been.
So is that true?
There's one line in one of your articles where you say that if you removed California, homelessness would be down in the rest of the country.
Is that true?
Right, like the national figures for the first time went up this year nationally, figures of total homeless population.
But if you took LA out, the growth in LA, it actually wouldn't have gone up.
It would have stayed steady.
So L.A. is a huge contributor driver of the whole national problem.
And we also have the most homeless veterans, which has been, you know, there was a lot of effort made to deal with that as a national problem.
But so far it's helped, but it hasn't worked.
So before we isolate this in California, you said that you felt that the closing down of the mental institutions from the 80s, that the effects of that had passed.
Why do you feel that?
Are the people that are in the world?
What I mean by that is that there are people, and there's a lot of them actually who say Ronald Reagan closed mental hospitals and that's why we have homeless people.
Well, the people who were in the hospitals at that time are not with us anymore, by and large.
So to look at one action or one politician like that, I think, is way oversimplifying.
I mean, at the same time, it's still a contributor because there was never, the funding never went into the alternatives for mental health.
And Los Angeles has an unusually high homeless population.
An unusually high segment of it is mentally ill people, which could be related to the fact that we also have, I believe, the most people who've been in the streets for a long time or been on and off the streets for a long time.
I interviewed somebody last week who lived originally in a hole in the ground in a camp that they shut down last week for 30 years.
So in other words, if he wasn't mentally ill when he started, he would be now.
Is that what you're saying?
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
So why LA?
Why California in general?
I mean, what is going on now here that's making this difference?
I think what's going on now is that L.A., more than other cities that have similar rents, such as New York and San Francisco, has always been more of a working class or even poor people city.
So the gap between the incomes here and the rents is the most extreme.
More people here are paying what's considered an unacceptably high portion of their income for rent.
Also, this city has never gone into too much shelter development.
And so we have 75% of the people who are homeless in L.A. County live outdoors.
And that's not the case in other cities.
So that's why the problem is just so extremely visible and also just extreme, because, of course, living outside is terrible for everyone, for the people who are living like that and for the people who live around them.
I remember it was a long time ago back in the 80s, there was a movement by people who fancied themselves rights activists saying that people had the right to live on the streets.
They shouldn't be taken off the streets by police.
They shouldn't be rounded up and put in shelters.
Is that still going on?
Well, I think that the people in LA who are involved in services or trying to solve the homeless problem don't believe in forcible removal to shelters.
The thinking now is that a lot of the problem with the shelters was that they were extremely unattractive to anyone.
And I know one person said to me, I thought it was a good point, what kind of a shelter system do we have if people would prefer to lie in a doorway with a blanket to entering the shelter system?
There's something wrong with the shelter system.
Now they're trying to do a different kind of short-term housing while they try to get people into permanent housing.
That's taking a long time to develop.
There's going to be, or and there already is, objections in various neighborhoods to having the shelters there.
People who are way out in the suburbs, which they are, there are camps all over the far-flung suburbs of LA County, are not going to go to Skid Row and go in a shelter.
They're just as afraid of Skid Row as everybody else, or it's repelled by Skid Row, depending on how you feel about Skid Row.
But so there's, I don't think anybody anymore that I know of feels that people should be need to be forcibly removed to shelters, that if they're provided without the barriers that kept people out of them in the past, and that's the thinking and the strategies that they're working toward.
Like they're trying to get places for people, for example, to be able to bring their pets, because that's a huge barrier for some people, or to go into as a couple, because shelters and much of the housing is gender, you know, is either all men or all women.
And people in a couple don't want to split up.
And then in the past, you had to kind of earn your way into housing by sobriety and following various rules.
And now more and more there are the ideas get people into housing or shelter and then work on their sobriety and their other issues.
So we'll see how that works.
So the idea is you wouldn't have to force people into shelters if the shelters were not so awful?
Yes.
Okay.
And if the shelters were not all centrally located in a place such as Skid Row, which is the most concentrated single homeless area in the country, there's like, can be like 2,000 people sleeping on the streets.
So I understand when people talk about this, they want to build more housing.
That makes perfect sense.
You've got somebody on the street without a roof.
You want to build a roof.
But is there some larger systemic problem here that didn't exist before the 80s besides the mental institutions?
Is there something?
I mean, unemployment is virtually non-existent right now.
I mean, it's so low.
Is there something we're not dealing with systemically that we should be?
Well, there's not enough, because there's not enough housing generally, the housing prices are so high and people's wages do not match those.
So it's just a gap.
It's a huge gap.
And part of it is that as a society, we rejected public housing as an alternative.
But I mean, you know, I've lived in LA all my life.
I know what my parents paid for their house, and sure, wages are higher now, and you'd have to adjust.
But the cost of housing is so extreme in relation even to a professional income such as my own and such as my parents had.
And I just am like one of the lucky L.A. people, and we all walk around talking about it all the time, who bought long ago, long enough ago, that my house is worth a lot of money and my rent, my mortgage is such that I can pay it without a real problem.
But again, because LA has always been, it's not like San Francisco and New York, where there's like huge, I mean, the city itself, especially in the downtown areas and the neighborhoods around downtown, there was lots of rental housing that was available to people at rates that were even like seven years ago, at rates that were not all that much higher than 17 years ago.
But in those past years, since the recession ended, the rates are just phenomenal.
They've gone from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars.
So there's all this money, right?
I believe that, I can't remember the numbers, it was a huge amount of dollars being poured into this problem.
Have I got that right?
Wasn't that something that was voted on?
Yeah, the voters approved two different measures that in aggregate are going to create $4.6 billion to build housing and provide services to homeless people.
And basically right now, what's going on is that the thought is that that's going to take three years to really make any impact.
So now they're kind of desperately trying to get some interim measures off the ground, including more shelter space.
But again, trying to make the shelters such that people will want to, will prefer them to sleeping on the street.
And they need to go out and find all these people.
They're living in these camps.
And because we have, LA County has, you know, has a lot of riverbeds, believe it or not, even though we're always in a drought.
It's a really vast and varied kind of landscape.
So if you had to guess, and I won't obviously hold you to this prediction, three years from now, do you think it's going to be any better?
I think it'll be better, but I don't know how much better.
Well, their goals, I think, are to get 50% of the people living in the streets off the streets.
And that would be huge.
Right.
So in that sense, I mean, it's also what's better?
Like, is better people not having to see camp encampments?
That's certainly better for the people who are, and everybody in LA is extremely, extremely bothered by having camps in their neighborhoods.
There's camps in Bel Air.
There's camps in Beverly Hills.
Well, not camps, but there's people living in their cars in Beverly Hills.
There's nobody who's untouched by it right now.
I know.
And, you know, I do believe in the rights of the people in homes to not have these camps there, to not have to suffer from the crime, the disease, the filth that comes out of them.
I do believe in their rights.
But I'm also, you know, I'm concerned.
I mean, this shouldn't be happening here, it seems to me.
I remember flying through this, actually passing through the slums of Nairobi many, many years ago and thinking there's, wow, there's nothing like this in the U.S.
But now when I look at these places, that's what it looks like to me.
It looks like Nairobi.
And I think there's got to be this, you know, this is probably outside of your bailiwick.
And if you can't answer, I totally understand.
But if you're an ordinary person and you want to do something about this, is there any systemic thing that you would be looking at?
I mean, is there an approach that an ordinary person or a church should take to this?
Or is it just kind of starfish, throwing starfish back in the sea, finding shelter for this one and that one?
Well, I think that the thing that the people that are in charge here right now are emphasizing, in fact, today they're doing this, is that neighborhoods have got to see, in their opinion, have got to see that allowing a shelter or an apartment for homeless people in their neighborhood, no matter how nice of a neighborhood they have or whatever, is a much better alternative to having a camp,
a sidewalk camp, when you walk to the bus or whatever.
And that's what they think will help is if everybody in the city and county see that in their interest.
And thus far, in the past year, there's been a lot of pushback and delays for housing projects because of people's objections.
Sure.
There's also a big issue about where to put them.
And again, that the idea being they're not all going to be in South Los Angeles, which is like where the poorest of the, or many of the poorest people in LA live, that they should be different places because the people, again, who are in the camps in these neighborhoods, it's amazing when you talk to them how that they actually come right from that neighborhood.
Like you go to a riverbed in a zoozo and you go, well, where did you grow up?
And they're like, well, I grew up four blocks away.
Domestic Man vs. Outlaw Man00:05:20
Ah, right, because the problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I think that's the biggest thing.
And also just to co-they're trying to coordinate and organize the whole thing because it has been, as you said, the starfish methodology of, you know, there's a lot of people who, it's an amazing amount of people in Los Angeles who drive around with food and hand it out to people and bring, you know, warm clothing and all kinds of things.
But that doesn't really, that doesn't get people off the street.
It doesn't solve the problem.
Gail Holland, I'm glad you're covering this for the Los Angeles Times.
I hope you'll keep at it.
And I really appreciate your coming out to talk about it.
And I hope you'll come back.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Thanks a lot.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
That's so frustrating, this thing.
And it's like this vicious cycle because once they're out in the streets, she's right.
That contributes to mental illness, contributes to drunkenness.
Who wouldn't drink if you're out in the streets?
But I also understand why somebody buys a house in Bel Air and says, you know, I paid a lot of money for this place.
I don't want these.
You know, I'm going to meet with a guy who today, I'm going to have coffee with a guy who has an association in West Hollywood where basically I am and talk to him about it too.
I just think it's amazing.
It doesn't make, it doesn't entirely make sense to me.
I don't feel like I have a grasp on this.
I understand that the housing situation is bad, but it seems to me that there's a social situation here that is also a problem.
All right, stuff I like.
Stuff I like.
So in honor of Women's Day, in honor of International Women's Day, I'm going to ask the biggest and most important question that women have.
How do you find a nice man?
You know, because here's another Sharia thing that I believe.
I believe it is your happiness is far more connected.
A woman's happiness is far more connected to who she marries than it is to her job.
I believe that is true.
20 years from now, if you're a young woman, 20 years from now, you will be more happy if your relationship is good than if your job is great.
You know, I'd probably be hit by lightning for saying that in some places.
Stories, there are a lot of stories that talk about, that pit two men against each other, each one of them representing a kind of manhood.
And one of the things about feminism is I feel that feminists have so eunuchized, castrated the domestic male, the father male, the male who runs a household.
They have so taken away from him his authority and his manhood that men have started to identify with the outlaw male more than the domestic male.
And, you know, I look back on older stories, a famous movie called The Desperate Hours with Frederick March and Humphrey Bogart, in which Bogart plays this gangster who with his mob breaks in to the most anodyne, you know, whitebred suburban home.
And Frederick March, whose only claim to tough guyhood is that he was in World War II, the two of them face off.
And it's this wonderful, wonderful battle that they fight for the family.
They fight it over the loyalty of the son.
They fight it over the safety of the wife.
They fight it over everything.
Here's just this little, little clip of the only thing I could find.
I took this out of the trailer for the film at which Bogart just expresses the rage he feels that Frederick March gets all the respect.
You can't turn this into.
I got my guts good and full of you, Mr. Hilliard.
Guys like you, smart-eyed, respectable suckers.
So, I mean, that is a perfect expression.
It's a great moment because he's calling him a sucker, but obviously he envies him the respect that he has in the world.
And the whole thing is about, you know, he keeps saying to me, I can hear you thinking clickety, clickety, click.
And the whole thing is whether Frederick March's civilized manhood can outdo Bogart's gangster manhood.
Shane, you know, the movie Shane is really dated, but you should read the book.
The book is just about the greatest Western ever written by Jack Schaefer.
It's takes you about an hour to read it.
It's like 70 pages, a novella really, 70 pages long.
But Shane is the gunfighter who runs in and wins the love of the little boy, and it's suggested the love of the woman on the ranch who already have the man who is the father.
And the thing about this is, is in both of these cases, what you discover in both of these stories, what you discover is that the domestic man is not the outlaw man.
He's not the wimp man.
He's not the man who's not tough enough to be the outlaw man.
He's the man who is so tough that he has mastered the outlaw man to become the father, to become the husband, to become the man at home.
So ladies, on International Women's Day, if you are looking for a good man, you do not want the man who is weak enough so that he is willing to hide in your home.
You want the man who is strong enough that he is willing to forego and master the gangster man and be the leader and the husband and the strong man in your home.
Strong Man, Leader Man00:01:39
And you will not hear that from feminists, and you probably, I will probably hear from the feminists before the day is over.
However, the feminists have it all to themselves.
The Clavenless weekend has now begun.
And so on International Women's Day, we say to you, be safe through the Clavenless weekend.
And survivors gather here on Monday.
Lots of things in life are beautiful, but brother.
There is one particular thing that is nothing whatsoever in any way, shape, or form like any other.
There is nothing like a day of world.
There is nothing you can name that is anything like a day.
Nothing else is built to save.
The Andrew Klavan Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring, senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
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