Ep. 519 skewers Democrats as a "comedy show," mocking their Manichean worldview—like comparing Trump to bin Laden while ignoring 3.8% unemployment—and exposing double standards: Virginia’s pedophilia-supporting candidate Nathan Larson (reinstated voting rights) vs. Roseanne Barr’s firing for a tweet. The episode also dissects modern cinema’s lack of "Eros," praising The Greatest Showman as escapist art while trashing Starbucks’ 8,000-store racial bias shutdown as performative groveling. Ends with a preview of the Supreme Court’s cake-baker ruling and John Miller’s literary segment, framing leftist policies as hypocritical theater. [Automatically generated summary]
An off-duty FBI agent was dancing at a Denver bar over the weekend.
When he did a backflip, his gun fell out of his holster, and as he reached to recover it, he accidentally fired around into an onlooker's leg.
This is a true story.
Here's the video.
Sources say the hapless, accident-prone agent has been involved in a series of absurdly stupid mishaps and mistakes, including the time he failed to examine the Democratic National Committee's computer after it was phished by the Russians, the time he allowed Hillary Clinton's campaign to destroy evidence of her misuse of classified documents, the time he questioned Clinton without putting her under oath, the time he listened in to the phone calls of people working on the Trump campaign, the time he sent a college professor to spy on the Trumpers,
and the time he pressured Mike Flynn into a confession of lying, even though he knew Flynn hadn't lied.
After the Denver bar incident, the chuckle-headed agent was taken into custody by the police, but he was later released without charges.
The agent celebrated his release by doing a backflip, causing his gun to fall out of his holster, whereupon he reached to recover it and accidentally fired around into his head, blowing out his own brains.
In the aftermath of that accident, he was appointed to lead the investigation into Trump's collusion with Russia.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
There's a wing he also sing hunky-dunky-dicky.
Shipsha-tipsy-topsy, the world is it-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, we are back from Knowles' wedding.
We did everything we could to prevent it, but it was like watching King Kong take Fay Ray to the top of the Empire State Building.
There was nothing we could do.
Windows, you know, you want to, but windows change everything in a house.
You don't want to be the blind getting the blinds.
No, you really want to get them.
And they're hard.
It's boring to go shopping for them.
You can use blinds.com.
Blinds.com makes it really easy.
If you're not sure what you want or even where to start with blinds.com, you get a free online design consultation.
Just send them pictures of your house.
They send back custom recommendations from a professional for what will work with your color scheme, furniture, and specific rooms.
They'll even send you free samples.
And here's the best part.
If you accidentally mismeasure the wrong or pick the wrong color, if you screw up, blinds.com will remake your blinds for free.
I found this with my house.
Changing your windows changes the whole place.
For a limited time, you get up to 20% off everything at blinds.com when you use promo code Clavin.
But you say, my blinds are closed.
How do you spell Clavin?
K-L-A-V-A-N.
That's blinds.com, promo code Clavin for up to 20% off everything.
Faux wood blinds, cellular shades, roller shades, and more.
Blinds.com, promo code Clavin.
Rules and restrictions do apply.
All right.
The Democrats.
The Democrats are descending into farce.
Do you know what?
A farce is a comedy marked by buffoonery and crude, ludicrously impossible events.
And that's also the definition of the Democratic Party at this point.
I mean, one of the good things about traveling, when I travel, I get to see more left-wing media.
You know, I'm in bars and hotel lobbies and they play CNN because nobody would watch CNN if they didn't play it in public places.
And on the elliptical machine in the gym, I'll watch, I'll go switch back and forth between Fox and MSNBC.
And you get to see a party, the left, completely sinking into, they're now a parody of themselves.
They're a comedy show.
It's the Democrat comedy show because they've got a problem.
They live in a Manichean universe.
Manicheism was that philosophy that had some effect on Christianity until they declared it a heresy.
Job Numbers and Media Parody00:07:06
It's basically that there's two forces in the world, the force of light and good and the force of darkness and evil, and they're always battling together.
And because they think of politics that way, instead of just a series of policy discussions on how to solve problems, they think that everybody on the other side must be evil in their forms of evil or racism, sexism, homophobia.
But the point is evil.
That's what it comes down to.
And so now you've got Donald Trump, who just exemplifies this because he won't apologize.
He won't tiptoe around things.
He is brash and rude and crude sometimes.
Here, let me just play you, just to start the comedy off.
Let me just play you an ad.
Dan Helmer, who seems like a pretty decent candidate or veteran and all this, he's running for the Virginia House, right?
And here is part of his ad.
After 9-11, the greatest threat to our democracy lived in a cave.
Today, he lives in the White House.
So now Trump is Osama bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden slaughtered 3,000 people.
Then Trump, Donald Trump, you know, his stakes weren't that good, apparently.
I don't know.
So let me begin this discussion and show you how this works with a parable.
This is a parable from the good book, from the Gospel according to Matthew.
There was a man, it's very short.
There was a man who had two sons.
He went to the first and said, Son, go and work today in the vineyard.
I will not, the son answered.
But later he changed his mind and he went.
Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing.
The son answered, I will, sir, but he did not go.
Which of the two did what his father wanted?
And even the people who Jesus is attacking in that parable say, obviously it's the one who did, it didn't matter what he said, it mattered what he did.
So now you've got, over the weekend, I guess it was Friday, while I'm in New York, the May job numbers come out.
And they are extraordinary.
The economy is extraordinary.
The New York Times, a former newspaper, ran a story that said the real question in analyzing the May jobs numbers released Friday is whether there are enough synonyms for good in an online thesaurus to describe them adequately.
So for example, splendid and excellent fit the bill.
This is the New York Times talking about the Trump economy.
The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to an 18-year low of 3.8%.
I think it's tied going back like 50 years or something.
Employers hired more people than economists had forecasted wages, which is also a big deal.
Wages have been stagnating, although it's a question whether they've actually been stagnating, but the point is they haven't been rising as fast as we'd like.
Wages also grew faster than expected, assigned the tighter labor market as prompting employers to pay workers more.
And the black unemployment rate, because remember, this is the big thing.
Trump is a racist.
The black unemployment rate, whose decline Trump is celebrated, fell to a new low of 5.9%.
This is the biggest low in history.
This is most, it's almost full employment for the black Americans.
Okay, so just what do you do with this?
If you're living in a Manichean universe where Trump is the force of darkness, you now have to go after this great economy.
And you can only do this by descending into farce.
I mean, you have to become basically, I am an absurd person saying stupid things.
That's what happens to you.
So Trump had a tweet an hour before the job numbers come out.
He said, looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8.30 this morning.
Didn't say what they are, just said that.
That is a break in protocol, right?
You're not supposed to do that.
You're supposed to wait until the job numbers come out.
Although Obama did sometimes say something that could be taken as a hint that he was preparing you for his lousy job numbers, which were continually lousy, even though they kept touting them as going up.
I mean, these are extraordinary, and they're because of Trump.
They're because of Trump's policy, because of the tax cuts.
So the media goes nuts about this tweet.
And I'm on the elliptical in the gym and I'm watching TV and I'm watching Morning Joe, right?
And you can see that there's Chiron, you know, the bottom third of the screen.
And it's got these basically these incredible job numbers.
I'm reading the Congress and I'm going, wow, look at those job numbers.
The economy is going great.
And they're talking about this tweet, that the tweet went out early.
And they have this Princeton professor on, Eddie Gloud, I guess he pronounces his last name.
And he's talking about the fact that Trump violated a norm by tweeting this stupid tweet.
Listen to this.
One wonders, does his narcissism have any limit, any bounds?
It doesn't seem to be the case.
And then one has to ask yourself the question, can we survive this?
There's kind of this daily attack on basic norms, basic norms that guide how this democracy functions.
And it's not happening just simply at the presidential level.
It's happening all around him and how folks are complicit with this.
And this is just the latest in how he's trying to tip the markets, however we read it.
But there's something going on here.
So I'm just sitting here wondering as we debated the particulars, how will we bounce back from this, Joe?
I know you have undying faith, but I'm just wondering, how do we bounce back from this experience with Donald Trump?
If you can't see it, if you're not watching, it's just the Chiron is talking about these incredible job numbers.
Well, this professor, you know, it's like, professor, stick your head out of the television, look down and read the Chiron under you.
How will we survive?
What?
NBC ran the headline because all the liberal news outlets did this.
They obsessed about this tweet.
NBC runs a headline.
Listen to this English.
Economy added 223,000 jobs in May, but Trump's pre-market tweet is the focus.
It is the focus.
I love that phrase.
He is the focus to whom.
It's whose focus.
It's your Don Lemon.
Don Lemon, I swear, if he's so lucky, there's a Chris Cuomo in the world, or he would just be the dumbest guy on CNN.
Don Lemon says, there's no questions today's job report is good news, including the news that we're as close as we've ever been to full employment in the black community.
But what's full employment without full respect?
Well, Don, Don thinks that Americans don't respect black people, but it's just him.
He's extrapolating from the fact that we don't respect him.
I'm black.
They don't respect me.
Maybe it's all black.
No, Don, it's you.
It really is you.
I have this image in my head of a guy sitting.
He sits down to dinner and he says, honey, kids, I have some good news.
There will be Christmas presents this year.
This year we will have Christmas presents.
But I also have some bad news.
Trump sent out a tweet an hour beforehand.
And Don Lemon, he would then wait for them to stop sobbing about, no, no, I'm happy with Christmas, but the tweet.
And then he'd wait for them to calm down before he broke it to them that Don Lemon feels disrespected.
It's insane.
Parable Of Samantha And Roseanne00:15:18
It is an insane comedy show.
All right, before I got to go on with some of this, because there's some really funny stuff coming down, Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi says she issued a statement, strong employment numbers mean little to the families hit with soaring new costs under the Republican watch.
She's talking about Obamacare.
Nobody's on Obamacare.
And Trump says new plans are coming out.
Anyway, just hilarious stuff.
You got to say, at least the Democrats may not have anything to offer policy-wise, but they have the gift of comedy, the gift of laughter.
They give us the gift of laughter.
All right, Father's Day coming up.
You know what you never say?
You never say, hey, it's raining and I'm dry because there's a roof over my head.
Thanks, Dad.
But now you can with Omaha steaks.
I love this stuff, man.
And they deliver this right to your house.
All kinds of meats and other things, pork, poultry, veal, lamb, bison.
I haven't tried the bison yet, but I have eaten bison.
It's great.
Seafood, vegetables, all kinds of good stuff.
It is really, really tasty.
Take it out in the barbecue.
Barbecue season is just beginning.
Dad's barbecues, they kind of go together.
He will love this stuff.
And right now, Omaha Steaks is giving a limited-time offer to my listeners for Father's Day.
$49.99 allows you 50 bucks, a 78% discount.
Okay, this is an amazing deal.
Go to omahasteaks.com, type Andrew in the search bar, and you get this Omaha Steaks Father's Day package.
This is what it includes: two tender filet mignons, two beefy top sirloins, four chicken-fried steaks, two boneless pork chops, four all-beef Omaha steak burgers, four gourmet jumbo francs, 12 ounces of all-beef meatballs, one pound of steakhouse fries, four caramel apple tartlets, one Omaha steak seasoning packet, plus, get four more grill-ready Omaha steaks burger free with the purchase.
Again, get this limited time package for only $49.99.
When you go to omahasteaks.com, type Andrew in the search bar and add Father's Day package to your cart.
Don't wait.
The offer ends soon.
Go to omahasteaks.com, type Andrew in the search bar, grab your dad, and fire up the grill.
It's really, you will see.
It is really tasty.
So people are not going for any of this.
They don't buy into any of it.
I mean, the polls show, one of the trackers of the pulse of regular Americans is a poll question that asks if the country is headed in the right direction.
According to Rasmussen, 42% now say that this country is headed in the right direction, and 53% say it's headed in the wrong direction.
Now, that doesn't sound like much, except when you realize that the sentiment during the Obama years, people, at the end of July 2011, the numbers were 14% thought we were headed in the right direction, and 80% said we were headed in the wrong direction.
This is the thing about Obama.
People liked him personally because he was stylish and calm and all this, but they did not like his policies, including Obamacare.
Just continue on this idea of farce.
Here is, you know, I like human absurdity so much that sometimes my sense of humor strays a little bit into the unsavory.
And here is an example.
In Virginia, there is a guy named Nathan Larson.
Have you heard about this guy, Rob?
Nathan Larson.
He is running as an independent, but I'll get to how the Democrats figure into this, okay?
His policies, he lives in his parents' basement or something, and his policies support pedophilia, incest, the usual things, white supremacy, marital rape.
Here's an interview a local TV station does with this guy.
You only have to look in his eye.
The guy's like a felonious loon.
You only have to look in his eyes.
But here is a Virginia candidate for the Congress.
What about sexual relations with your own children?
Look, I would favor legalizing incest.
Why is that?
Just because personal freedom.
What about the children's rights?
Wouldn't that be rape to have sex with a child?
Well, like with girls, I mean, I just believe that it should be for fathers to make those decisions.
And you don't find anything wrong with that.
I mean, it's not for me to intrude on another family and tell them what they should do.
Wouldn't that be really dangerous for children?
I don't see how we know that.
Children are human beings.
They're not property.
What about their protection?
Oh, the law doesn't treat them as having the full rights of adults.
Yes, folks, he is that crazy.
I mean, it's horrible.
Like, on the one hand, it's like watching a guy who's been possessed by a demon, which is not that funny, but there's something about the guy just standing there running for Congress.
So, what's this got to do with the Democrats?
How did this guy get to be a congressional candidate?
Well, during the Hillary Clinton Trump election, Hillary Clinton's close friend, the Virginia governor, Terry McAuliffe, was afraid that she would lose the swing state of Virginia.
So he forced down the throat of Virginians, overriding courts, overriding the state Congress, everything.
He forced a law down their throats that allowed felons to vote and run for office.
Because who would felons vote for, right?
I mean, felon, you know, you know, it's kind of like they say, you know, you vote for the kind of people who are like you.
Felons are going to vote for Hillary Clinton, right?
Oh, a criminal.
Maybe she'll support criminals.
This is great.
So he gives felons back their civil rights.
Well, this guy had done time.
Big surprise, right?
The only surprise is that he's out, that he's free.
The guy had done time because he had threatened to assassinate the president.
And you say, which president?
He didn't care.
He was either George W. Bush or Barack Obama.
It was like, you know, whatever.
So they put the guy behind bars where he so very clearly belongs, but he gets out and then McAuliffe, Terry McAuliffe, in order to help his candidate, puts this guy in a position where he can run for Congress.
They are running a comedy show, so help me.
You know, I started this with a parable.
I will end with a parable, except this is, when I say it's a parable, it is a real-life story that is so clear that it is a parable.
I'm talking about what I've come to call the Barbie girls, Roseanne Barr and Samantha B, right?
The Barbie girls.
So Roseanne is a Trump supporter, and she puts out a tweet, kind of just on impulse, that could be interpreted as racist.
So they interpreted it as racist, of course, because a conservative said it, and all conservatives are racist, so it has to be racist.
And she's fired off her show within three hours, this popular money-making show.
She's fired within three hours.
You know what?
I don't care.
She sounds like an awful person.
It was an ugly, it was an ugly tweet, whether it was racist or not.
It was an ugly thing to say.
You know, ABC Disney has the right to do what they want.
Samantha B makes a comment where she used the C word about Ivanka Trump, which I just think is brutally ugly.
I got to say, you know, I can have a pretty foul mouth.
I'm working on it, but especially when I'm around guys, I can have a foul mouth.
Even I don't use that word.
I don't.
And I certainly would never use it to refer to, oh, this person that I just happen to disagree with or whatever.
That remark was not on impulse.
It was not on drugs.
It was not because she's mentally ill.
It was a scripted remark that went through all the vetting that it could possibly go through.
The station vets it.
The producer vets it.
She goes on and says it.
The audience cheers.
They tweet.
Oh, how wonderful it is.
It's trending on Twitter.
I think it was in some social media.
She kind of issues a kind of apology now that there's a lot of outrage.
She's kind of apologizing.
They give her an award.
The left starts having this conversation about, is it really bad to say this?
I mean, now the Democrats have become the party that thinks MS-13 sparkles with the divine spark.
And it's okay to call women this ugly word.
That's the party.
That's the party.
We hate the good economy.
We're not moved by the fact that you have a job.
We call women the C-word and we love gangsters.
I mean, that's their policy.
That's their policy.
And you look there and you say, like, you're joking, right?
No, no, that's really where we stand.
And then they start talking about there's no double standard.
They start saying there's no double standard.
Well, who is it?
Brooke Baldwin on CNN.
And good for her, Brooke Baldwin, no friend of, she's on CNN, so she's obviously a left-winger, no friend of Trump, you know, very, very hard on all things right-wing.
But she did call them out on this.
She called them out on the double standard, among other things, the fact that Disney, which owns this.
ABC on which Roseanne Barr was, fired Roseanne Barr, but hired back Keith Olberman to talk on ESPN.
And Brooke Baldwin, to her credit, and because he also went after Samantha B, I really admired her for this because, look, we're on different sides, but if you do it with integrity, you got to get some respect.
She put together this piece of Keith Olbermann, who says, now Disney is hiring as Roseanne Barr goes out the window, this guy is coming in through the door.
Donald Trump is a loser.
Trump is indeed effing crazy.
I'm setting aside policy for a moment because as mindless and as evil as the baboon's policy is, it can and will be rolled back sooner or later.
And his policies all hang together if you just keep asking yourself, what would have happened here in this country if the Germans had won World War II?
I'm talking about the man himself now.
His brain does not work correctly.
There is a myriad of possible explanations, and we have hit them all here.
Congenital disease, drug use, any of a dozen post-concussion traumas, Alzheimer's, senility, lack of common sense, lack of awareness of things in the world besides himself, and endless specific emotional or psychological or intellectual incapacities, or all of these things at the same time.
You said recently, via tweet, that Trump and his family have done more damage to America than bin Laden and ISIS combined.
Yes.
All right, we'll finish this up in just a minute.
First, we got to talk about Dollar Shave Club, which I have used for years and years, long before they became my sponsor.
I love their razors, but they don't just send razors.
They send you a razor, a pack of razors every month, or you can put anything you want in your box, but they send you anything you need to get ready in the bathroom.
So over the weekend, a lot of times I have so much real estate to shave, I don't use other things.
But over the weekend, I was trying out a lot of their shaving stuff.
I do use their shave butter, but I use some of their shave prep and their shave post stuff.
Really good stuff.
I mean, it made me feel, it really put a bounce in my step.
It was terrific.
And here's a great way to try a bunch of Dollar Shave Club's products.
For just five bucks, you can get their daily essentials starter set.
It comes with body cleanser, one wipe Charlie's, their amazing butt wipes, which I haven't used, which may be too much information as it is.
Their world famous shave butter, which is excellent.
Their best razor, the six-blade executive, which is what I use this morning.
Keep the blades coming for a few more bucks a month and add in shampoo, toothpaste, or anything else you need in the bathroom.
Check it all out at dollarshaveclub.com slash clavin.
How do you spell it?
I know you want to know.
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
That's dollarshaveclub.com slash clavin.
Try these things out because I'm telling you, it is a great club.
I really like it.
All right.
So let me just end by saying this, that the parable of Samantha B and Roseanne Barr is simply the parable of a group of people who have surrounded themselves with themselves, surrounded themselves with people who agree with them, and now see everyone else as evil.
And because of that, they feel that they can treat us like garbage, call us those horrible names while castigating us for using their names.
They should not be surprised.
They should not be surprised that we picked a man like Donald Trump to fight back because that is the way they have been treating us all this time.
Hey, speaking of Father's Day, we have a special treat for our audience in honor of Father's Day.
On Tuesday, June 12th at 7 p.m. Eastern, Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring will descend among us and host a roundtable discussion with Ben Shapiro, me, Andrew Clavin, and Michael Knowles.
And we'll discuss what fatherhood means, why fathers matter, and how fatherhood will stand up to an increasingly anti-male culture.
Subscribers will even be able to write in live questions for us to answer on the air.
Again, that's Tuesday, June 12th at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific.
You can find our special live stream on Facebook and YouTube, so don't miss it.
Hey, coming up, I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube, but coming up is a conversation with our own Jacob Airy.
Now, every time Knowles usually does this portion of the show, he's on his honeymoon.
I wanted him to call in, but he was busy doing something.
I don't know.
But Knowles, every time Knowles comes on and we get into it, we start dissing comic book movies.
I walk down the hall and Jacob comes out and says, let me come on and defend comic book movies.
Normally, I just call security and have him taken away.
And nobody's ever complained.
Nobody ever complains about dragging him away.
But today, I'm going to let him come on and give Marvel and all the other comic book movies his defense.
And then we're going to take him out in the parking lot and just kick the living daylights out of him.
All right.
All right.
We'll say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Come on over to the dailywire.com.
While you're there, doofus, subscribe for a lousy 10 bucks a month or a lousy 100 bucks for the year and get the leftist tears tumbler.
It looks like you're really going to need this leftist tears tumbler.
So you want to get it now by subscribing for the year.
All right, Jacob Airy.
Jacob, what the hell do you do around here?
You know, no one can really answer that question.
I just kind of walk in.
You're getting away with murder.
That's all I can.
Now I see you've assembled your characters in front of you.
It's pathetic.
I'm just ashamed to know you.
But listen, here's the thing.
As I've said many times, it's not that I mind a comic book movie.
I mind that all movies are now comic book movies.
That is what disturbs me.
And I do not understand.
In all honesty, it's as if, I mean, I know there's some people who don't like Westerns, and sure, they're homosexual communists, but that's okay.
All Movies Are Now Comic Book Movies?00:14:38
There's nothing wrong with that.
But I don't understand why this genre continues talking to people.
We have people, as you know, out in the hall.
I come in, Shapiro and Austin are in some fight about what happened to Han Solo, and I want to grab them both and say, he's not real.
Not a comic book movie.
Not a comic book movie.
Fair enough.
But I would like to know, let's talk about it personally first.
What is it that you, now, you've obviously been in love with comic books and so on since you were a kid, right?
I mean, yeah.
So what is it, you think, that grabs you personally about these films?
Well, for me personally, like you said, my first comic book, Adventure New Comic Books, was I collected Batman and Spider-Man comic books from the age of eight.
And for me personally, it's just being able to see all these characters that I saw in illustrations and in these graphic novels come to life.
And, you know, sometimes they're miscast or whatever.
But for the most part, I feel that Marvel in particular has been really good at casting the actors to play the roles.
And it's just, I have to say, it's about 55% nostalgia.
You love, you know, it's millennials have this thing about nostalgia.
I'm certainly a millennial.
And I think watching these characters come to life and I can take my nephew to see them.
I can take my friends to see them.
And it's something that I enjoyed and it's there for me on the big screen.
Well, unfortunately, that's not as idiotic an answer as I was hoping for.
But that actually makes perfect sense to me.
But now tell me this.
Look, I'm getting on.
I see this is that I talk to people when I go to universities.
I always say to them, because I'm a fiction writer and I write for the screen, I sometimes say to them, what do you do for entertainment?
Do you ever go to the movies?
Because they don't.
Millennials don't go to the movies anymore.
They'll say, well, no, but Marvel movies.
Yeah.
So what is it they're saying to people, aside from the nostalgia, what is the grander themes here that I seem to be missing?
I think that there is a part of millennials, and I've certainly fallen into this as well, where we want to be a part of something bigger, but we don't feel like we can be.
And so when we see these Marvel characters and like I said, and this kind of does slide into the nostalgia, but it's like, oh, well, this is a character that's spoken to me since I was a kid.
I understand this character.
And so I get to applaud this person doing the things that I would like to do.
I would like to be heroic.
And maybe this person can help me understand how to be heroic and why being heroic is important, why sacrifice matters.
Okay, but why then?
Why then not make movies about World War II or even science fiction movies about exploring the solar system, which your generation will probably start to do?
I mean, after all, there probably are people your age who will wind up living on the moon and you first if you're not careful.
But why not make, what bothers me about superheroes, why they become boring to me after time, you know, it's not like I don't like a movie, a superhero movie, but it's just one after another, is that they don't have the problems I have because they're super fast or super strong or they can't be killed.
I mean, Superman, it's used to, listen, I loved comics as a kid, but even then it used to bother me that Superman essentially was immortal, that he couldn't be killed.
And I would think like it's kind of an unfair advantage.
That's why I was a big Batman fan.
But why superheroes?
Why not soldiers?
Why not cowboys?
Why not things like even Star Wars guys?
Why these particular guys with these particular powers?
Well, I think it has to do with escapism, I think.
Whenever we go to a movie, and whether we like it or not, the movies are an art form that is meant to entertain.
And I think that when we go to the movies, we don't want to be, oh, I learned about this battle in history books.
I learned about this.
And I know I actually had a really good father.
He made sure that besides superhero movies, I was watching World War II films and Westerns and whatnot.
So shout out to my dad for that.
But even me watching Dunkirk, I'm like, this is a really fantastic film, but it gets this, this, this, and this wrong about history.
And so I feel like they just go into these films knowing that it's fiction and it's a way for them to just take a break from their daily lives and also get to see what their favorite characters are doing.
Because, you know, these movies, they move forward.
They're not a static timeline like the comics are.
They actually move forward in time.
So I think that, you know, it's a television show.
It's a better television show.
So I think that has something to do with it.
I can't say I'm 100% positive of it, but that's what I would say.
I have to bring up one of my big objections to this, and maybe this sounds funny, but I actually don't mean it.
It really does bother me is that because most of the women in these stories have superpowers, and because there's almost no sex in them, there's no sex in them in the sense of the sex lives we lead.
When I talk about sex, I'm not just talking about the sex act.
I'm talking about the fact that, as I seem to remember, a good, like, you know, 90% of my mental time as a young person was spent thinking about women and thinking about how to manage this incredibly powerful force that is always flowing through us and making it difficult to react to each other as human beings and making, and at the core of so many great stories.
I mean, sex is at the core of so, you know, maybe I should just say Eros, not sex.
Eros is at the core of so many great stories.
These stories seem to me almost devoid of Eros.
Am I wrong about that?
Am I missing something?
Well, I would say that you're not wrong in the sense that, you know, there's not a whole lot of it, but I would say it's toned down.
So like for certain, if you watch the Iron Man films, he certainly has this sexual tension with Pepper Potts, the main character, Tony Stark, Captain America, certainly every single one of his films has some sort of sexual tension to it.
So I think too, there are already so many things on television and in films.
It's kind of like, I do see your point a little bit there, Drew, but part of me is going, well, yeah, but so many other films have that.
Why does this one specific genre need to be filled up with it?
But like I said, you can definitely see it.
Certainly in the Dark Knight trilogy, Christopher Fernolan's masterpiece, you can see it in Black Panther just recently.
So I do think that you're partially right, but I think it's just more toned down than it is non-existent.
Does it tell me something about millennials that they actually want their escapism to be less sexy than I used to want my, you know, I kind of wanted to go to escapism that had hot girls and James Bond and that sort of thing.
You know, is there, does it tell me something about millennials that they feel that sex is one of the things they want to escape from when they go to escapism?
Well, I think certainly when you have third wave feminists screeching at you, you know, if you're a woman, have all the sex you want to.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't make any difference if you're a guy.
You looked at her wrong.
You're a rapist.
You know, it's so certainly for men, I can definitely see how that has a part to play in that.
So tell me that I think of Marvel and DC.
Is there any, what are the comic book universes that I'm supposed to know about?
Well, you have Wanner Brothers has what's called the DC extended universe, and that's, you know, Batman v. Superman, Justice League, Wonder Woman.
You've got the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which just released Black Panther and Avengers Infinity War.
And then Sony has, or excuse me, not Sony, but they have Fox has the X-Men universe, and they're all separate, unique.
They have their own storylines.
I believe that Dark Horse Comics, no, I'm sorry, Image Comics, they're actually thinking of launching a cinematic universe with their premier character, Spawn.
I believe Jamie Foxx has been cast to play him.
So that'll be, so now we have a fourth one we get to go to movies to see.
All right.
Well, listen, I hope one day you learn better and start partaking of more adult art.
I appreciate your coming on.
You actually, I got to say, Jacob, you actually made a fairly solid defense.
Get out and I never want to see you again.
That's fair.
Thanks a lot, Jacob.
That was actually very, very interesting.
It was worthwhile.
I mean, people, they love these films.
They love them.
And it's not that I dislike them.
I always feel like everything is black and white on the air.
Like if you say you don't love them, everybody thinks you hate them.
That's not it.
just think like enough, you know, like they're all the same.
Anyway, I loved Logan.
I thought that was a great one.
While we're talking about movies, I got to tell you about a movie I saw on the plane, which I want to recommend because the critics really dissed this picture.
And yet the people loved it.
When you go on Rotten Tomatoes, it's one of those things that gets like 50% from the critics and 90% from people.
But this musical called The Greatest Showman.
And I watched it on the plane and I'm going to watch it again, which I almost never do, but the sound was a little muddy on the plane.
It is a musical about the life of P.T. Barnum with Hugh Jackman.
If Hugh Ackman were any better at musical comedy, he'd have to be gay.
I mean, they would just have to say, I'm sorry, Hugh.
You know, it was just one thing.
He is really good at it.
Really talented guy.
Very talented actor, very appealing guy.
And P.T. Barnum, he wasn't just a con man.
They always quote that line, there's a sucker born every minute.
And I don't think there's any evidence that he actually ever said that.
But he did run a kind of a freak show, you know, with the bearded lady and the Tom Thumb, the midget, and all this stuff.
And they take that story and they make it about corny stuff, but still they make it about inclusion.
And he's giving these freaks, and he's including them in life.
He's giving them a purpose.
And he's giving them, taking them in.
And some of them are black.
And actually, Barnum was a fighter for rights for black people.
He went into politics later on.
And they take it and make it about that.
But it's also about the glory of bunkum, the glory of fakery and fooling people.
And what really struck me about this, I mean, there's a moment, there's a really, this has a couple of great moments.
And I got to remember to mention this one woman who's in, oh, Zendaya.
I've never heard, have you heard of Zendaya?
Yeah, because she's like a Disney girl or something like this.
Really talented, extraordinarily beautiful, very charismatic.
She could actually become a star if she doesn't blow herself out like all those other Disney girls always do, but she was really something else.
But there are a lot of really, there are a couple of really good numbers.
The songs are okay, but the numbers are great.
Zendaya has one with Zach Efron on the trapeze that is really entertaining.
And there's one number between P.T. Barnum and Zach Efron, who plays Philip Carlisle, who's kind of a stand-in for Bailey, you know, the Barnum and Bailey Circus.
But in this, Carlisle is a play producer, and he's a very upper-class play producer who believes in the arts.
And Barnum needs him to bring him into polite society.
And Barnum goes to him and says, what do you want to waste your time and the stuffy old arts for when you can be a bunkum artist like me?
And the film is with P.T. Barnum in this.
So here's this number.
I'll just play a minute of it.
They're in a bar together.
It's really cleverly done with them slamming the drinks down to catch the rhythm of the song.
And P.T. Barnum makes his pitch to this guy.
Don't be like you all stuffy and doing art.
No, you don't art.
Let's come on over and run the bearded lady in Tom Fom.
Right here, right now, I put the offer out.
I don't want to teach you down.
I know you see it.
You run with me and I can cut you free.
How would the truth also you keep in?
So trade that typical for something colorful.
And if it's crazy, live a little crazy.
You can play a tennis ball, a king of conventional.
Or you can just get on the scene.
Cause you can be like you do.
Or you can be like me.
Stay in the cage or you finally...
That's a good number.
But the point of it is, get away from the arts and civilized society and become a bunkum artist.
And I was thinking about this and comparing it to Mad Men, because I don't know if you've seen Mad Men, but the thesis of Mad Men was that America at its greatest was a fake.
The guy who is the star of Mad Men is living under a fake name.
He's stolen somebody else's life.
All he does all day is take American desires and turn them into sales, turn them into products.
The last scene of Mad Men is one of the truly great television scenes where he then moves into the 60s and he even takes the 60s and turns it into a Coke commercial.
You know, I mean, it's just everything.
In other words, everything that America does ultimately becomes capitalism.
But it's grim about it.
It's kind of scolding about it.
It's kind of like, you know, the advertising story.
That used to be a trope in the 50s and 60s.
Advertising was soul-killing, soul-destroying.
You want to break out and be an artist.
And this is basically saying the exact opposite.
And it's catching something about American life.
Advertising may be bunkum, but it also created industries.
It created wealth.
It created a fantastic, powerful powerhouse of an economy in a country that really led the world and raised the standard of living for everybody.
All those people who were always grim.
I always remember the socialists like Pete Seeger singing their country songs about your ticky-tack houses.
I thought people would cut their arms off to live in these little houses, these little suburban houses in Levitt Town.
Starbucks Employees Bristle00:04:42
And, you know, I mean, it was such snobbery about what it took.
And this actually enjoys American bunkum and American salesmanship and American showmanship.
And it actually enjoys it.
And it's a fun movie.
I'm not going to tell you it's a great movie because the music's not that great.
And the story is, you know, what's the word I'm looking for?
It's kind of corny, old-fashioned story, but it is just enjoyable every minute.
Like that minute I found that's a really enjoyable song, a really enjoyable number.
And it's enjoyable.
And there's something about the celebration of it.
And I have to say it, I hate to lead everything back to Trump, but I think Trump has a little bit of that spirit, that P.T. Barnum spirit, and it drives the scolders and the haters and the American grim faces mad that he is having such a good time and that he is bringing us through the economy such a good time.
But you know, that's part of the world, is part of the world, is advertising bunkum and having a great time.
And I just like this picture because it celebrates that.
All right.
Speaking of which, our crappy culture.
I am never going to stop attacking Starbucks for their reaction to this, to the social justice warriors.
I am so ashamed of them.
I like their coffee.
I can't bring myself to go in there.
I'm not boycotting them.
You know, I'm not going to say, oh, this is a political act.
But I actually, I'm in New York.
When I'm in New York, that's all I do.
I eat at Starbucks all the time.
I have a Starbucks gift card.
I walk in.
I buy my lunch.
I could not go in.
I couldn't go in.
I'm so embarrassed that they have allowed themselves to be taken over by these Black Lives Matter social justice warriors because they threw a couple of people who were misbehaving.
They weren't paying for anything and they were sitting on the property and then they refused the order of the police to go out.
They happened to be black, but they were also trespassers.
So Starbucks employees, I'm reading this, I think this is from PJ Media, Starbucks employees are bristling after being forced to sit through an entire day of training on racial bias on Tuesday following this April incident in Philadelphia.
In order to atone for the now fired manager, the manager who threw out these guys and called the police, Starbucks rolled out a new inclusiveness policy, shuttering 8,000 locations for a day of color-brave training, which included several documentary videos, notebooks for employees to record their private thoughts, and a 68-page employee guidebook, which teaches employees about topics such as institutional racism and the history of prejudice.
According to the Wall Street Journal, they also listened to a series of audio recordings of Starbucks employees describing interactions they have had with customers in which their own biases became their own biases became apparent.
And one of them said that they have turned, because now they have to allow anybody in.
They say anybody can come in and use the bathroom.
One of the employees said Starbucks is now becoming America's largest public toilet.
All they had to do is say, hey, you know what?
We're a business.
We're a friendly business.
We love everybody.
But we're here to make money.
So you've got to pay to use our property.
That's all they had to say.
This has nothing to do with race.
It's in Philadelphia.
You think they're not serving black people in Philadelphia?
I mean, you know, people, they work on you by not, by blotting out your imagination.
All you got to do is use your imagination for two minutes and ask yourself, wait a minute, are they not serving black and white and yellow and brown and all kinds of people every single day?
And they're going away going, that's good coffee.
Isn't it possible it's just these two guys doing the wrong thing?
You know, I mean, maybe the manager overreacted.
Maybe she didn't.
Maybe she was doing what they told her to do.
But why are they apologizing?
I'm telling you, I can't.
It's just like the NFL.
I'm not boycotting them.
I just cannot watch a bunch of billionaires, millionaires diss the flag in America's game.
It's the same kind of thing.
And I cannot go into Starbucks while they are groveling like Stalinist prisoners.
All right, that's all I have to say for today, but I have more to say tomorrow.
I really have some, really want to talk about the Supreme Court decision about the cake baker who refused to bake for days.
Want to talk about a lot of other things.
Plus, we have my friend John Miller here to talk about literature.
Should be a great show.
That's tomorrow.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Emily Jai.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.