Ep. 569 dissects how left-wing tactics weaponize racial accusations—like Florida’s DeSantis-Gillum "monkey" feud—to distract from socialism, exposing media hypocrisy in scandals (e.g., Trump Tower hype vs. Pope Francis). Heather McDonald argues affirmative action’s low-SAT admits (e.g., MIT’s 650 math scorers) trigger STEM dropout crises, fueling campus grievance culture, while "one in four" assault stats are debunked as politicized. The episode ties these trends to corporate diversity mandates and Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, framing identity politics as a tool of cultural decline. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, summer is coming to an end and the political season is about to begin and you know what that means.
You're racist.
That's right.
If you're a constitutional conservative who believes in the principles of ordered liberty handed down to us by our founding fathers, that's an obvious dog whistle because it causes leftists to make a high-pitched whining noise that can only be heard by unattractive Democrats.
So you're racist.
You see, leftists like to call conservatives racist during election times and during the run-up to election times.
and also during the period after elections and the period between elections and during elections.
Because otherwise, they'd have to tell you how they're planning to steal your money and buy voters with it.
And that's not a very good campaign slogan.
So you're racist.
To see this strategy in action, you only have to tune into the Florida gubernatorial race between Democrat Andrew Gillum, a socialist black man who wants to take all your money and buy votes with it, and Republican Ron DeSantis.
Democrats declared DeSantis racist within 12 hours of his becoming the official candidate because DeSantis used the word monkey.
Apparently, Democrats think black people are like monkeys.
So when a Republican says the word monkey, they feel he's being racist because monkeys remind Democrats of black people.
So you're racist.
Other reasons Republicans will be called racist include trying to win elections when everyone knows that Democrats like black people better, so that's racist.
And of course, protesting when Democrats allow dead black people to vote over and over again.
That's racist against dead black people.
And everyone knows dead black people earn only 38 cents on the dollar for the same job done by a living white person.
Now, you may say that's because a living white person will actually do the job he's given, whereas a dead black person will just sit there because he's dead.
But that's because you're racist.
Enjoy the election season, racist.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also sing.
Hunky-dunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped tipsy-topsy, the wind is a bitty zing.
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My friends, I greet you on the edge of the cliff, the verge of the great Clavenless weekend that will go on for days and days, Friday through Monday.
I do not know how you will survive, but if you do, you can crawl back here.
And on Tuesday, we will still be here handing out little food packets and Red Cross things for you.
And today, to tide you over, we have the great Heather McDonald, one of the best reporters in the country.
If the Pulitzer Prize were the Pulitzer Prize, she would have several Pulitzer Prizes.
She is just great, and she has written a book called, let me make sure I got the title right, The Diversity Delusion.
Diversity Delusion, How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.
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Pope's Socialism Talk00:14:35
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
So I'm going to go back to that little kerfuffle in Florida that I was talking about in the opening.
But I want to first, I want to just continue a little bit what I was talking about yesterday.
I was talking about the fact that when you watch the news, now the story is not the story.
The story is the agenda.
But that really goes on in this Florida story.
Racism isn't racism.
Racism is socialism.
Racism is there selling socialism.
They know you don't want socialism, so they're going to shout racism.
The racism is not racism.
Racism is the agenda.
And morality is not morality for the left.
It's the agenda.
You know, this is kind of a minor story, but still kind of interesting.
You know, a comedian Louis C.K., who I think is a really, really funny comedian, he made an appearance on Sunday night at the comedy cellar in New York, right?
And this is after he was accused of exposing himself and masturbating in front of women and, you know, doing all this kind of disgusting stuff.
And so the Me Too thing happened and he was thrown off out of the world.
We ejected him from the planet.
He's been orbiting out in space, but he came back and did a 15-minute set.
And in the New York Times, this woman said, you know, she was attacking them for doing this.
She said, I have to believe there's a path to redemption for people who've done wrong, but nine months of self-imposed exile in financial comfort is not a point along that path.
It is far too soon for any of the men who have faced the marginal consequences born of the Me Too movement to think about redemption.
People love a comeback narrative, and all too often they yearn for this narrative at the expense of victims who are only beginning to reconcile with their suffering.
Now, the owner of the comedy club, a guy named Noam Dworman, he issued a statement.
He said, we're living in the dark ages of people having things they believe that they know that they can't say out loud and feeling that you have to come to a conversation with already the correct point of view.
You're not allowed to discuss it, be wrong, be informed by someone else's opinion.
Conversation is meaningless.
Conversation in this day and age is just for two people to agree to talk about what they agree about.
So he's saying he wanted Louis C.K.'s voice in there to include him in the conversation.
Now, all this is fine.
What Louis C.K. did, if he did it, I mean, he did admit to it.
He said he had done this stuff.
So what Louis C.K. did was disgusting, inappropriate, whatever you want to say, immoral.
But what I want to ask is, like, what are the rules?
What are the rules?
If Louis C.K. exposes himself, I mean, it's not like we're living in a world of chastity where everybody agrees that the only proper sexual relationship is between a married man and his wife.
That would be one thing.
If we all agreed to that, then I could see why we would be censorious about people who didn't follow those rules.
But it's not.
I mean, right now, out in the desert, right, they have Burning Man.
Everybody's taking drugs and screwing everybody.
And oh, that's wonderful.
That is wonderful.
Louis C.K. exposes himself, that's bad.
But if a gay pride parade comes down the street and the guy isn't wearing any pants, ooh, that's wonderful.
If a feminist parade comes down the street and they expose their breasts because that's their protest, that's terrific.
That's excellent.
But if Louis C.K. does it behind the scenes, that's bad.
I'm not saying it's good.
I'm not making excuses for him.
I'm just saying, what are the rules?
I mean, you know, I think about Kevin Spacey all the time.
Kevin Spacey, accused of like, you know, harassing young men all over in all of his sets and all this stuff, and he was bounced off House of Cards.
Every single person on House of Cards, especially the people in authority, every single person knew that he was doing that.
Every single person.
It was only when the Me Too accusations came to light that it suddenly became an issue.
Why is Kevin Spacey the only guy who has to quit?
Why is Kevin Spacey the only guy who has to quit?
I mean, now they're talking about this guy, I think his first name is Andrew Lack, who let Matt Lauer do what he was doing.
You know, why is Matt Lauer the only person?
All the people in power knew about Harvey Weinstein.
Everybody knew why is it only Harvey Weinstein who goes down.
So I'm just asking, what are the rules?
Because the people who argue for chastity, the people who say the only right sex is between a man and a woman who are married, they make sense.
That makes sense.
I know what that means.
My own point of view is a little bit more loosey-goosey.
I think the world is very, a lot of variety.
I think chastity is a good thing, but I kind of define it a little bit more loosely.
I think we should treat each other excellently.
We should make sure that our bodies are expressions of the true feelings of our hearts and not just being using people, especially using women, because I think that's the truth of it.
Using women for our own personal pleasure as objects.
But I know that people have a lot of variety, and I just don't want to worry about what other people are doing.
That's not part of my life.
But even in this Pope scandal, I mean, it is unbelievable the way the New York Times is covering this priest scandal and the fact that it has now involved the Pope.
Now, I want to just make sure you understand that the New York Times, when conservative Pope Benedict was the Pope, they went after him if he walked by a house where somebody had been abused that was like, the Pope, that scandal is coming closer to the Pope.
At one point, Ratzinger's brother, the Pope's brother, who was directing a choir that was connecting to a boarding school where two ex-students had come forward with abuse claims, that somehow embroiled the Pope.
This is the New York Times.
They said, oh, well, that embroils, it's already coming close to the Pope.
The scandal is coming close to the Pope because his brother directed a choir associated with a school where two former students had said they were abused.
That involved the Pope.
But now, with this letter from the Archbishop Vigano, I think it's pronounced, Vigano, who says Pope Francis knew that there was an abusive priest and he covered up for it.
That suddenly is a problem because Pope Francis is pro-gay, or basically, you know, has hinted that he's pro-gay.
So suddenly, suddenly, we're getting from the New York Times these hit jobs on Archbishop Vigano, known for his short temper and ambition, they say.
Vigano has clashed with superiors who stunted his assent in the church and has played a key role in some of the most stunning Vatican scandals of recent times.
While Archbishop Vigano, who was once criticized by church traditionals as overly pragmatic, has aligned himself with a small but influential group of church traditionalists who have spent years seeking to stop Francis.
Many of his critics think his personal grudges are central to his motivation.
So it doesn't matter.
Rape children, doesn't matter.
You know, seduced young men, doesn't matter.
Disavow, you know, put your religious vows at naught, doesn't matter.
Louis C.K. is the problem.
Again, not giving any quarter to Louis C.K., but what are the rules?
The rules are not the rules.
The moral rules are not the rules.
They are the agenda.
These people have absolutely no moral authority.
You know, the Pope, I have to say this, the Pope tweeted this morning: We Christians are not selling a product.
We are communicating a lifestyle.
And I thought to myself, Yeah, that's what some of us are worried about.
I don't think it's a Christian lifestyle that you're communicating.
It's like, you know, we're communicating a lifestyle.
Dress up really fun and then you get the boys.
You know, I mean, what the hell?
You know, then, by the way, he changed that tweet that we're, I forget, we're modeling life or something like that.
He changed it.
But the minute I saw that, I thought, write your own jokes, folks.
I'm not going anywhere near that.
We're not selling a product.
So, you know, so here again, we see with Donald Trump, you know, yesterday I played this hilarious clip that suddenly Stormy Daniels is being rehabilitated, and she's just a fun working mom.
Can we play just a little bit of that clip again?
This is from a Vogue thing.
It's basically the leftist media has gotten together and decided they're going to make her a hero.
Remember the New York Times, she was a feminist hero, and then Vogue had this, and Amy Chosek said this about Stormy Daniels.
Your biggest takeaway after sitting down with her?
I think just how fun she is.
I think people have a perception about porn stars and what their kind of sex-fueled lives are like.
I mean, she's a working mom.
She's a working mom.
She's got her horses in Texas.
A gun.
She's got a gun.
She's a fun-working mom.
So just to be sure about this, just so we get a clear, if you're a porn star, so you're making degrading videos that we've heard for years, for decades from the feminists are degrading toward women.
You know, you're making those pictures, and then you sleep with another woman's husband, and then you extort money from him, and then you agree to take the money and be silent, and then you're not silent.
You are a feminist hero and a fun, you're a fun-working mom.
You know, you're a fun-working mom.
This is not, again, not letting Trump off the hook, but what are the rules?
What did he do?
So he cheated on his wife, and then he paid her off.
He did essentially the other side of what she did.
Why is he to blame?
What's wrong with him?
You're going to say it's a campaign finance violation?
First of all, no, it's not, probably.
But so what?
You know, so what?
He did the same thing.
So if she's a hero, he's a hero.
What are the rules?
Doesn't matter, right?
Because morality is not morality.
Morality is the agenda.
So with that, let's go back to this Florida race and let's take a look at this because it is absolutely unbelievable that what they're doing here.
This was a very surprising race, right?
Ron DeSantis won big in the primary for the Republicans because he had Trump's backing.
Once again, Donald Trump showing that he has a lot of power with the conservative, with the Republican base.
And then Andrew Gillam came out of nowhere, the mayor of Tallahassee, Bernie Brough, right?
Bernie's supporting is a socialist.
He is a socialist, says he definitely wants to see Trump impeached.
And he wins out of nowhere, showing that the polls can't pick up.
They can't pick up who's going to show up for these offbeat elections.
They do not know who's going to show up.
So the polls mean absolutely nothing.
And it means you should show up in November.
Do not stay home in November if you do not want to see Donald Trump hounded out of office by crazed Democrats.
If you do not want this hatred that you see in the media to be realized and instantiated in our politics, you better show up in November and let the pollsters not know you're coming and vote for whoever is your local Republican because you're going to want to hold the House.
But so that came as a surprise.
Ron DeSantis then comes on TV, I think on Fox, and he makes the following statement.
So let's look at him first.
This is cut seven.
Florida elections are always competitive.
And this is a guy who, although he's much too liberal for Florida, I think he's got huge problems with how he's governed Tallahassee.
He is an articulate spokesman for those far-left views.
And he's a charismatic candidate.
And I watched those Democrat debates.
None of that was my cup of tea.
But I mean, he performed better than the other people there.
So we've got to work hard to make sure that we continue Florida going in a good direction.
Let's build off the success we've had on Governor Scott.
The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state.
That is not going to work.
That's not going to be good for Florida.
So I have to say, the way that some of the press reported this was absolutely disgusting.
The Hill CNN, they had headlines that said, you know, DeSantis says it's monkeying things up to vote for a black candidate.
Now, you just heard it.
I just played it.
You saw it come out of his mouth.
He was talking about socialism.
He was praising Andrew Gillum.
He was saying what a talented guy he was, but he was saying that his philosophy, it's really clear what he was saying.
He was saying his philosophy was no good.
But Gillum pounced on this like crazy.
If they can find any, you have, see, the whole point is to make you watch your tongue so you can't think straight.
The whole point is to make you watch.
If you slip, if you say something that can be spun, you know, you have to always be thinking so you can't really think as clearly as you want to if you're a candidate.
So Gillum just absolutely makes hay out of this on again on Fox.
That Mr. DeSantis is taking a page directly from the campaign manual of Donald Trump.
But I think he's got another thing coming to him.
If he thinks that in today's day and age, Florida voters are going to respond to that level of derision and division.
sick of it what we're trying to offer in this race was that racist or a four Where we want to go as a state?
Was that racist or a figment of speech?
Well, in the handbook of Donald Trump, they no longer do whistle calls.
They're now using full bullhorns.
And that was a bullhorn.
And what I've got to say about that is that we've got to make sure that we stay focused, I think, on the issues that confront everyday people.
I'm not going to get down in the gutter with DeSantis and Trump.
There's enough of that going on.
I'm going to try and stay high and try to talk about what the North Star and the future is for the state of Florida and the people of this state.
And I think that's what people want.
They're just so sick of this divisive, derisive politics that have been coming out of Washington and has now infiltrated the politics of this state vis-a-vis Ron DeSantis.
Well, first of all, I'm glad he's going to stay high because if this election is going to go this way, I'm going to stay high too.
It's the only way I'm going to get through it.
But that was expert Democrat politics because he says, look how divisive he is being because he said, you know, monkey and it's Trump, Trump, Trump.
Trump's a racist.
Therefore, he's a racist.
I mean, it's just all BS because the guy was talking about socialism and that's what Andrew Gillum doesn't want to talk about.
He doesn't want to talk about the fact that Tallahassee has been lagging behind other cities in the Florida economy while he was mayor.
He doesn't want to talk about that.
He doesn't want to talk about what socialism means.
What it means is that your work, your time, your life belongs to the state and can be, your money can be spent the way the state says, not the way you say.
He doesn't want to talk about that.
He wants to talk about monkey, monkey, monkey.
Let's just look one more time again at him using this phrase to see if it really is a dog whistle.
I come from Chicago.
So I want to be honest.
It's not as if it's just Republicans who have monkeyed around with elections in the past.
Sometimes Democrats have too.
Wait, now that I hear it again, maybe it was a little race.
Oh, wait, that was Obama.
Just a minute here.
Not only was Obama using that racist phrase, he was running against McCain, and now McCain's dead.
Is that a coincidence?
I don't think so, my friends.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
Just come out and say it, Andrew.
Just come out and say, I'm a socialist.
You want to vote for that?
See how far you get.
See how far you get with this thing.
My rule is this.
If you are running for office, if you are asking the American people for power, you cannot hide behind the color of your skin.
You got to play the game on the same field as everybody else.
You know, if Andrew, if Ron DeSantis would say that to a white man, and he would, then he can say it to a black man.
This thing about dog whistles, crap.
If you can't hear it, it's not there.
Bernstein's Unwavering Integrity00:08:24
This thing about, oh, secret subterranean bigotry, crap.
I mean, even little babies react more kindly to people who look like the people around them.
So maybe we all have that a little bit in our heads, but that's all of us, that's blacks and whites.
If you have a philosophy, if your philosophy is racist, I will stand against you down to the wire.
I will stand against you if I believe that you are a racist, but I don't believe in your secret dog whistle garbage.
It is just garbage.
It's like Ocean's 11.
You're in or you're out.
You're running or you're not.
If you're running, run on your policies.
Let the people see what you believe.
You're a socialist.
You're standing with Bernie.
You're standing with a guy who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, right?
In the slave state of the Soviet Union.
You're standing with a guy who stood with the communists in Nicaragua, who stood with the communists in Cuba.
You're standing next to him.
I want to hear about that.
I don't want to hear about the color of your skin.
I don't give a rat.
I really don't.
And so I think this is going to cost them votes.
I think they pulled this trick too many times and they pulled it too fast.
Because again, what are the rules of racism?
It's, you know, what are the rules?
What are the rules of using the word monkey?
I've never understood why that is a, you know, I mean, obviously, if you call, you know, if you say that to a black person directly, oh yeah, you're a monkey, that's racist.
But if you're just using the phrases, we all use it, he's monkeying around, whatever we use it for, because we're all related to monkeys, obviously.
If you're using it that way, I just do not see it.
What are the rules?
What are the rules of sex?
What are the rules of racism?
And what are the rules of lying?
Because CNN has been calling Donald Trump a liar since he came down the elevator in Trump Tower.
Every single thing, if he says, oh, the crowd was bigger than it was, oh, what a liar, what a liar.
If you say, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
But if you say your crowds are bigger and you're Donald Trump, you're a liar.
So they went nuts with this story about Michael Cohen's lawyer, right, Lanny Davis, said that Cohen had information.
He was a source saying that Cohen had information about this meeting with Donald Trump in Trump Tower.
And I got to hand it to Sean Hannity.
Sean Hannity, I'm going to be playing the Hannity montage cut eight.
Sean Hannity put together a montage of them breaking this story that maybe Donald Trump had knowledge about a meeting where nothing happened that nobody cares about except CNN, right?
Except the networks, except the people who hate Donald Trump.
Nobody cares about this meeting.
It's a garbage meeting.
Don Jr., I think, made a mistake when he agreed to meet with a Russian lawyer who said she might have dirt on Hillary Clinton.
He was a novice.
He probably didn't know what he was doing.
It's a minor, minor mess up.
It is not spying on America for Russia.
It's nonsense.
The whole story is nonsense.
But boy, oh boy, when they thought they got this story, and they got it from journalistic legend Carl Bernstein, journalist, oh my goodness.
So Hannity put together this montage of them breaking the story.
It's great.
A claim that goes for the truth of what the president knew and when he knew about an event that is central to the special counsel's Russia investigation.
Tonight, sources with knowledge tell myself and Carl that Michael Cohen claims that then candidate Donald Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton.
It's very, very significant because the president has denied any foreknowledge of this event.
And this meeting goes to the question of intent to collude.
You've been saying for a year that we need to follow the money, follow the lies, and figure out this cover-up.
So how did you do it in this case?
Talk to us about how you got this reporting.
Well, I talked to sources.
Ooh, sources, because Carl Bernstein sources, you know, all the president's men.
Remember when Robert Redford met with the guy in the parking lot?
The sources, ooh, you know, except, except, here was his source.
Lanny Davis has now said he was the source, and here's what he says now.
So Michael Cohen does not have information that President Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians beforehand, or even does not.
So that's your source, Carl.
And the crazy thing is, the crazy thing is CNN won't take it back.
So now Trump, they won't disavow the story.
They will not disavow the story.
They stand by their stories.
So Trump tweets, you got to love Trump because when he's got him on the ropes and he's so, this is the thing about Donald Trump that I am with him 100%.
The press is corrupt.
The press lies.
The press is one-sided.
And Trump is 100% right about this.
There is no air here.
There's no space between what Trump is saying and the truth.
He's got it right and he tweets.
CNN is being torn apart from within based on their being caught in a major lie and refusing to admit the mistake.
Sloppy Carl Bernstein, a man who lives in the past and thinks like a degenerate fool.
Oh man, this is prime Trump.
I love it.
Sloppy Carl Bernstein, a man who lives in the past and thinks like a degenerate fool, making up story after story is being laughed at all over the country, fake news.
And CNN gets its backup.
And instead of saying, yeah, we made a mistake, and we always make a mistake on only one side, instead of just saying it, CNN tweets, make no mistake.
They always go, it's the John Brennan school of response.
They go for the pomposity.
They become gas bags.
Make no mistake, Mr. President.
CNN does not lie.
They lied.
We report the news and we report when people in power tell lies like ourselves, which we don't report.
CNN stands by our reporting and our reporters, even when they're completely wrong and incompetent.
There may be many fools in this story, but Carl Bernstein is not one of them.
What's funny about this is if you go back and read the book, All the President's Men, if you go back, which is written by Bernstein and Woodward, if you go back and watch the movie, Bernstein's the incompetent one.
Bernstein's the irresponsible one.
Bernstein's the one who's always being reined in by the post management saying, you haven't got the story.
You haven't got the story.
He is the one.
There's a scene in the movie where Redford says, as Woodward says, I'm a Republican.
And Bernstein, like, it's all upset.
He gives him this look.
You're like, oh, my God, you're a Republican.
Bernstein was the guy who was kind of an incompetent and who was riding on Woodward's coattails.
And there's a story over at Breitbart by Curtis Ellis recalling that in the 70s, Bernstein wrote this big Rolling Stone story complaining that the CIA used the New York Times, Washington Post, CBI, and other American news organizations during the Cold War to gather intelligence and provide cover for its agents and even shape news reports.
And now, of course, Bernstein is sitting on CNN with James Clapper and John Brennan, perfidious gas back, John Brennan.
So this is not a guy who's necessarily an icon.
This is not somebody we need to respect.
You've got a great story once, but when you look back at that story, you start to wonder, you know, hey, were you guys always this dishonest?
Was Nixon treated unfairly?
I mean, I think Nixon was a pretty dark character who did some dark things, but maybe they overstated it.
Maybe they wouldn't have gone after him.
In fact, they didn't go after Kennedy.
They knew about the corruption in the Kennedy administration, and they covered it up.
Same people, Ben Bradley, they covered it up.
So these guys aren't legends.
These guys are legends in their own mind.
They're only legends because they write the legends.
And Trump is right about them.
Trump is right about them.
So all I'm asking is, what are the rules?
That's my only question.
I'll play by the rules.
If the rules are chastity, then Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump are both ill-behaved.
But if the rules are like that Stormy is a fun mom who's a feminist icon, but Trump's a bad guy, I don't get it.
I don't get it.
And if the rule is when Donald Trump says he had a bigger crowd than he really did, he's a liar.
What is CNN?
What is CNN?
If CNN is the most trusted name in news, I'm the queen of Romania.
That's all I want to know.
Have we got Heather?
We got her back.
Oh, great.
Heather McDonald.
Listen, I cannot say enough good things about Heather McDonald.
She is my colleague over at City Journal.
She is one of the best reporters in the country.
I always flatter you when I see her, Heather, but it's all true.
Campus Microaggressions and Real Problems00:14:32
The Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributor and editor of City Journal.
She is also the New York Times best-selling author.
And her latest book is The Diversity Delusion, which comes out officially September 4th.
I'm sure you can pre-order now.
How race and gender pandering corrupt the university and undermine our culture.
As usual, Heather, you are reticent and shy about your opinions.
But it's wonderful to see you.
How are you?
It's always a pleasure.
Let us talk about this.
This is basically, you're talking about the gender and race business.
So we're talking about, let's start with race.
What does this mean?
You start out by saying affirmative action is a disaster.
Why is affirmative action a disaster?
Well, it harms its alleged beneficiaries.
You know, we've been having a, I think by now sterile debate for the last 40 years about its constitutional validity under these very arcane standards of review.
The real problem with affirmative action, as far as I'm concerned, goes beyond reverse racism.
It's the fact that you are bringing people into academic environments for which they are not prepared and you're setting them up to fail.
Let's take it out of the race context.
Let's take it as a gender example.
Let's say I have 650 math SATs, but MIT decides it needs to have more females so it can look out over its diverse realm.
And they admit me.
And all of my peers were admitted on merit, not on the ridiculous fact of what's between their legs.
And they have 800s on their math SATs.
What's going to happen to me my first year?
I'm going to bomb out because I'm not going to be able to keep up with freshman calculus or advanced calculus.
And even if I'd come in wanting to be an engineer, I'm going to look around and say, I can't hack it.
And I'll probably end up in women's studies if I stay at MIT at all.
Because the classes will be pitched for the average capacity of the students, not to me.
If I, with my 650 math SATs, if I'd gone instead of MIT to maybe Boston College, which is a perfectly respectable school, and my peers all had 600, 650s on math, I'd keep up.
And I would probably persist in my intention to become an engineer.
The same thing happens with blacks and even more tragically.
It turns out, according to one study at Duke, that a larger percentage of black male freshmen want to major in a science field when they come in as freshmen than white males.
About 70% of the black males admitted to Duke intend to be an engineer or a physicist.
What happens to them?
They all change majors.
They can't hack it.
So we end up with fewer black scientists than we would have otherwise had had they been admitted to University of North Carolina.
So it's an oppressive and sadistic policy on the part of these preening admissions directors and college presidents that want to feel noblesse oblige when they look out over their diverse realm to admit students who are patently not going to be able to keep up.
Does that also infect the setting aside affirmative action specifically, but the notion that race is the all important definition of humanity?
Does that infect the culture of the university altogether?
I mean, does it lessen our education system altogether?
Well, absolutely.
But, you know, what I will tell you the dirty secret of these protests that we've been having over the last couple years, the Black Lives Matter protests on campus, the die-ins, the, you know, oh, we're dying cries from Yale students or Princeton black students saying, we're sick and tired of being sick and tired, the Maudlin statement of the century when it comes out of a black Princeton student's mouth.
The reason that race becomes this main issue and the students go around claiming that they're victims of microaggressions or explicit racism is precisely because of racial preferences, what's known as mismatch.
They're brought into these schools.
They can't keep up.
They have two options.
They can say, I was admitted as a quota, or they could say, I'm in an oppressive environment.
And the reason I'm not feeling comfortable in my chemistry class is because the teacher is using a racist, patriarchal teaching method like expecting me to learn facts.
So the racial preferences are driving a lot of this, but certainly, I mean, it's part of this whole just poisonous identity politics, which starts on campus and then is bleeding very fast into the world at large.
We're seeing the science fields within universities being infected by gender and race quotas.
And in tech companies, in corporations across the country, meritocracy is being thrown overboard at a really alarming rate in favor of racial and gender diversity, which means lowering hiring standards.
Yeah, all the standards go down.
Talking about your new book, The Diversity Delusion, How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.
Always great writing, great reporting from Heather McDonald.
Let's talk about something that always really bothers me, this idea of microaggressions, put these two together, microaggressions and subconscious racism.
Is that even a thing?
Are those real things?
No, they're not.
I mean, it's basically an implicit acknowledgement that we have done very well when it comes to purging this country's truly deplorable past.
It becomes harder and harder to find explicit actual racism.
The reality in every institution that's in the mainstream today and any large institution is precisely the opposite.
You cannot find a single institution today, whether it's a university, a corporation, a bank, a nonprofit, media, Hollywood, publishing, that is not exercising preferences in favor of minorities and against whites.
I would hate to be a white male today.
I may be white, which is a count against me, but I'm a female.
So sadly, I've been the so-called beneficiary of gender quotas throughout my life, which nauseates me.
But the microaggression conceit, which is, let's look at some of the classic microaggressions.
There was a period two years ago where model and self-pitying students would put together these little videos with whiteboards and they would list behind them the microaggressions that they've been subjected to.
It was really sad.
And one of them was you're like in your freshman mixer and somebody comes up to you and says, so like, what are you?
And this is a microaggression.
Well, let's put this in context.
We live in a world where we're told that the most important thing about somebody is his race and ethnic identity.
And so this is a sort of a clumsy way of asking, okay, so you're Samoan, LaOcean, Cherokee.
What are you?
Now, rather than getting all hot under the color about this and running to your dean and demanding a new diversity sinecure, you know, a new diversity vice provost, how about just saying, well, you know, I'm Low Ocean, Samoan, and half Cherokee.
What are you?
But that's what students are now running to their deans about in tears and saying they need protection from.
I would say that the responsibility of those adults on campus is to teach students to distinguish between a real problem and a fake problem.
And microaggressions are a fake problem that should not stand in the way of their getting the best education they can.
You know, on the side of gender, you have a story in here about Columbia.
I think it was called the Sexual Respect Initiative.
Could you explain what that is?
Well, you know, this means as a graduate student studying an actually important subject for once that unfortunately he won't allow me to even reveal because he's so worried, he said we can now no longer have freedom of conscience.
The Sexual Respect Initiative was a mandate for every graduate student and every undergraduate student in order to graduate.
They had to go through these ridiculous re-education options, like they could attend a healing therapy, aromatherapy session for campus rape survivors, or they could watch a video on toxic masculinity, or they could attend a feminist play of, you know, how awful it is to be a female at Columbia today.
And they all embraced all of these options for learning sexual respect, embraced a particular view of sex on campus, which is the more the better, unless you have regrets in which case you've been raped.
And this student, this graduate student who again is studying something that we should all be grateful that he's studying because it preserves the heritage of Western civilization, happens to be a religious conservative.
And he does not believe that endless, promiscuous, premarital sex is the best thing for students to be engaged in.
But there were no options.
There were no sexual respect options for him that might have said, well, you know, one way to respect your boyfriend or girlfriend is to be abstinent until marriage.
And so what this really was, was forcing a particular type of politicized sexual agenda on every single Columbia student.
What always gets me about this is it seems to reduce women to the state of hysterical Victorians.
I mean, you even used the word the fainting couch in one of your essays.
Are girls on campus being raped at an incredible rate or something, or is that ridiculous?
It's completely ridiculous.
Can we put this in context, Andrew?
So what's the claim that the Obama administration used endlessly, Joe Biden, the Title IX, you know, due process, evisceration?
It's one in four to one in five college women, we're supposed to say, I would prefer girls, are going to be sexually assaulted during their campus experience.
Well, a one in four, one in five violent crime rate, even over four years, is beyond anything that we know of in human society.
It's beyond the worst African civil wars.
Detroit, our most violent crime, most violent city, has a 2% violent crime rate for all four violent felonies.
That's murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery.
If this was the case, if we were living through a sexual violence epidemic of that proportion, you would have seen a mad rush to create single-sex schools decades ago.
Highly educated mothers, no longer baby boomers now.
What are they, millennials or a generation X?
I don't know, but they're younger than baby boomers, meaning they have been even more brainwashed by feminism.
They are sending their pre-kindergartners, daughters to $250 an hour tutoring to get them into the most elite kindergarten in New York City in order to make sure that they go to Harvard and Yale and Stanford 16 years later.
They're apparently sending their kids into their daughters into a rape scene of climactic proportions with eagerness and intensity, competitive fervor.
It does not, the story does not add up.
So an oppressive reaction to a crisis that doesn't even exist, which is kind of almost the definition of leftism.
I'm running out of time.
Let me ask you, when you look at all this, I mean, you're so steeped in this.
Do you despair or do you see the culture turning around at any point?
What do you see in the future?
Well, I'll be perfectly honest.
I know I'm also say this.
I'm pretty much in despair, but I do think that what we need to do above all is to hit back against this, the primary fallacy underlying all of this, and it's behind the campus free speech crisis as well, is the idea that America is fundamentally racist and sexist.
And you, Andrew, have been one of the most important voices out there to dispute that lie.
As long as that lie holds and campuses are its guardian, we're going to have this assault on the Western tradition and civilization and humanities.
We have to return colleges to their core mission, which is passing on the inheritance, our precious inheritance to students.
We have to say we're not a racist and sexist culture.
Alumni have to stop funneling billions into their alma mater until they do due diligence and make sure that they're not involved in identity politics.
And in the meantime, parents just have to be very careful with what their students are studying and make sure that educate them before they get to college in the importance of learning great books, great literature, and great philosophy.
Amy Adams' Versatile Role00:06:07
Heather McDonald, you're one of my heroes.
As you know, you know, The Diversity Delusion is the new book.
You're always so nice when I talk to you, and then you go out in the street and you're like this tough guy reporter.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure which is the real you.
But anyway, it's great to see you.
I hope I get to see you again soon.
Me too, Andrew.
Thank you so much.
She's the best.
She really is a great reporter.
Get the book, The Diversity Delusion.
Also, read her in City Journal, where she writes continually and she is always on top of things and never minces words.
It's true when I talk to her.
She's always so sweet and nice.
And then she goes out and she just tears into people on the street.
All right, stuff I like.
It's time for Claven on the mic with stuff I like.
That's a good one.
I like that one.
Just whited?
Whiteed?
All right.
So this is very, very buzzy stuff right now.
The sharp objects on HBO based on the Gillian Flynn movie and starring Amy Adams, who is, well, I'll talk about that in a minute.
She's just such a great actress.
But this is getting just a lot of buzz.
I've watched the entire thing beginning to end.
The book, let me talk about the book first, because I really do think Gillian Flynn is a genuine talent.
She's the author, obviously, of Gone Girl.
And one of the things about her that I've said this before, but I think people don't realize is that because she writes kind of thrillers, people judge her on her thrillers.
And as a thriller writer myself, I think some of her thrillers are weirdly, she's only got three books, but the plots aren't always that great.
But what she is, is a great satirist.
And as a satirist myself, I say that.
She's a terrific satirist.
She satires American mores and morals.
And her thriller stories are really like Gone Girl is really a satire of marriage.
Sharp Objects is a satire of kind of down-home, you know, southern life.
And it is a southern gothic.
And I have to tell you, it is so dark.
It is so incredibly dark that if you are not in the mood for that, you don't want to watch it or read it.
If you do want to experience it, read the novel first because the novel is great.
And they mess up some of it in the HBO show.
But the HBO show is also spectacularly well done.
Amy Adams is a movie star in an era where there are no movie stars.
In other words, she is somebody who can deliver a different role but always remain Amy Adams.
I mean, that was what the great movie stars could do.
It could be like James Stewart and Spencer Tracy.
You know, they were different in each part, but they were also the same in each part.
And Amy Adams can do that.
She is incredibly attractive.
I love the fact that, you know, because of she plays a cutter in this with somebody who cuts herself.
And so she has her clothes off a lot of the times, even though it's not nudity, but she has, you know, she's in bra and panties.
She looks like an actual woman, which I find, happen to find incredibly attractive.
She doesn't look like she's been photoshopped or she's been in the gym for 100 hours every day.
You know, she looks like an actual human being, which I just find incredibly attractive.
She's a wonderful actress.
This thing, let me play a piece of this.
It gives you a good sense of it.
We have a little clip of it.
She plays a reporter who has got a lot of emotional problems, and she is sent home by her kind of fatherly editor.
She is sent back to this small town she got out of Wingap, Missouri.
I think it may be in a different state in the book.
But anyway, in the movie, it's Wingap, Missouri.
And she is sent back because there have been two murders, and she is sent back into her home where she grew up with this very, very oppressive mom.
And she had a sister who died, and now she's got a new sister whom she hardly knows.
And here's a scene where they're all sitting at dinner after they think they've caught the killer, the person who has done these murders.
And she, the reporter, doesn't believe it.
And here she comes down to dinner.
The Keenan boys arrested.
Our little girl is finally safe.
I can't even say the relief I feel.
All's well at last.
Is it?
I don't think John Keenan's a killer.
Of course she doesn't.
Camille, sit down.
Sit down.
I suppose this means you'll be heading back to St. Louis shortly?
Story's over.
I hope he gets the death penalty.
Baby killer.
Turns out, Missouri is the fifth most productive state in terms of carrying out executions.
We had to stop.
Fluid was controversial.
I think, yeah, I think it wasn't killing people one of those.
Well, in any case.
I just read that we import it from Romania.
Fluid.
Reliefal injections.
Oh.
Needles.
Like the needles I get sometimes.
Very different.
Like putting a cat to sleep.
So it's this southern dinner party, and the lighting is beautiful, and the food is beautiful, and the daughter's obviously ill or drugged or something.
And they're just talking about death, death, death.
And that's kind of catches the whole tone of the thing.
It's like the attempt at normalcy in a civilization that is collapsing.
It is really good.
I recommend that you read the novel first.
Gillian Flynn is a really talented writer.
This and Gone Girl are her two best books.
The third book is not quite as good as these, but they really are good.
But then watch the show, if only for Amy Adams' performance, but also I found it really riveting, even though, as I say, very, very dark stuff.
And speaking of dark stuff, we now go into the long four-day clavinless weekend.
It's kind of like, I don't know what you do, just gather together your old clavin shows and like cling to them like a piece of driftwood in the stormy ocean.
Survivors Gather Here00:00:52
We will be back here on Tuesday.
The election season will begin.
The summer will end.
The election season will begin.
We'll be going right into the vortex.
I will take you through it.
I will lead you through it like Moses into the promised land or something.
All right.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Have a great vacation.
survivors gather here on Tuesday.
The Andrew Klavan Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
Technical producer Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
And our animations are by Cynthia Angulo and Jacob Jackson.