Ep. 1115 dissects Mars’ woke M&M rebrand and NYC’s Now statue—framed as satanic—linking them to abortion activism and "chronological snobbery," while Neil McDonough’s Left Behind interview ties apocalyptic themes to cultural decline. Atlanta protests expose media bias, Disney’s Splash Mountain closure reveals 21K activist petitions vs. 100K fan backlash, and listener mail critiques feminist career guilt. The episode argues postmodernism’s denial of natural laws—sex, tribalism—only redirects evil, with corporate leaders like Iger prioritizing ideology over profits amid Disney’s $68% visitor dissatisfaction. [Automatically generated summary]
Many of you are deeply concerned about the political ramifications of M ⁇ Ms if you're fat and toothless and have literally not one other thing to think about.
As you know, the Mars Candy Company decided to change the look of its advertisement spokes candies to mollify Woke's sensibilities after receiving a petition signed by as many as one person who said that while he was not usually offended because he had a hard outer shell, he was soft on the inside and the old spokes candies were so insensitive they made him feel like he was melting, although not in your hand, only in your mouth.
What he was doing in your mouth, I don't want to know.
In the good old days when men were men and women were small chocolate globules with an occasional peanut inside, M ⁇ Ms were represented in advertisements by lovable, anthropomorphic M ⁇ Ms who made us smile and chuckle right up until the moment we devoured them, giving us the forbidden thrill of cannibalism along with cavities and a midsection that looked like an inner tube.
Then the Mars Candy Company started changing the look of the M ⁇ M characters to give them, and I cannot emphasize enough that I am not making this quote up but reading it word for word off the press announcement, they wanted to give the talking candies, quote, more nuanced personalities to underscore the importance of self-expression and power of community through storytelling, unquote.
This was widely recognized as the greatest marketing decision since the historic introduction of New Coke on April 23, 1985, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 10.17 a.m. when the brand was discontinued because it was the worst marketing decision until the change in the M ⁇ M spokes candies.
The M ⁇ M change included making the female green M ⁇ M less sexy and more feminist by shortening her legs and replacing her high heels with sneakers, thus destroying the sexual fantasies of 12-year-old boys with deeply disturbed sexual fantasies.
Mars also released a new lavender female M ⁇ M, which they said represented acceptance because she was trans and identified as a Reese's piece.
This went along with a picture they had tweeted showing the brown M ⁇ M, also a female, holding hands with the green female M ⁇ M with a caption suggesting they were lesbian lovers, thereby restoring the sick fantasies of all the 12-year-old fetishists who were into lesbian love scenes between pieces of chocolate.
As a result of the lesbian M ⁇ M affair, Catholic priests have banned the candies from taking communion, except for Pope Francis, who says all M ⁇ Ms are welcome, especially when he gets the munchies after grooving on reefer.
In any case, the M ⁇ M changes eventually came under attack from both the right and the left.
On his Fox News show, Tucker Carlson said he was absolutely appalled that there could be a news day so incredibly slow he would wind up talking about MMs.
Feminists, meanwhile, wanted to know why a feminist M ⁇ M could not be sexy, and so they had to have that explained to them.
The resulting fur kept the nation riveted to its television sets watching something else entirely.
So Mars finally decided to get rid of the M ⁇ M spokescandies altogether by driving them out into the woods, letting them out of the truck for a cigarette break, and then mowing them down with a machine gun.
Well, maybe that was a scene from the Great Escape, I'm not sure.
In any case, the slaughtered M ⁇ Ms have now been replaced by actress Maya Rudolph, which has ended the controversy because right and left can all agree she's overrated as an actress and should probably just be like a spokeswoman for the idiots who make M ⁇ Ms.
Now, of course, I wouldn't be telling this ridiculous story about how wokeism ruins every single thing that ever gave anyone anywhere any fun whatsoever and replaces spontaneous pleasures of even the smallest type with joyless virtue signaling that does jack diddly squat to lessen the divisions amongst us,
but only exacerbates the thoroughly reasonable annoyance we feel with having supercilious moral posturing shoved down our throats like a fistful of M ⁇ Ms, except without the calories and the tooth-rotting sugar.
Now I can't remember where that sentence was going.
Oh yeah, I wouldn't be telling the story if it didn't have a serious moral.
No wait, yes, I would.
In fact, I just did.
Forget I said anything.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
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It's a wonderful day.
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All right, we are back laughing our way through the fall of the Republic, fall of just about everything we hold dear.
We're going to talk today about the new statue celebrating abortion in New York City.
Megan Bashram will be here to talk about Disney going utterly woke.
And Neil McDonough, a great actor, I'm a big fan of Neil McDonough's.
He's got a new movie out called Left Behind, Rise of the Antichrist, which is a sequel.
I think it's a sequel to this show.
Anyway, I'm really, really looking forward to talking to him.
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Today's comment comes from Jordan Tackett, 4739.
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He says, all it takes is 291-year-old Andrew Clavin to solve the Steven Crowder versus Daily Wire nonsense.
Thank you, Gandalf.
Well, thank you very much.
That does.
I'm glad a lot of people responded to the show about that.
And I'm glad I'm hoping that is just going to pass away because we're not going to be talking about it anymore.
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Now, one of the problems with doing a podcast on a site like The Daily Wire, which is defined by politics, is I know a lot of people want to hear about whatever's happening in the news today, whether, you know, Trump being reinstated on Facebook and Facebook lying about how they canceled him, you know, Hunter.
the tanks in the Ukraine, whatever else is going on in the news.
Statue Of Abortion Rights00:15:46
And a lot of times, if you really want the big picture of what's happening, if you really want a clear picture of what's happening, you have to turn to the arts and talk about those.
And that's a very different thing.
I was recently on an all-access, if you're an all-access subscriber, as you should be, we have these things where each of the hosts comes on and talks and answers all your questions.
That's what I do on my show.
I think Matt Walsh does a sex show with various different genders.
No, I'm making that up.
No, I answer all the questions.
And I was asked recently if I thought there were still prophets in the world.
And I said, no, I thought that Jesus had put an end to the age of prophecy, but that art sometimes was prophetic.
You know, Ursula K. Le Guin, the great science fiction writer, said, when I write about the future, when she writes about the future, she's actually just writing about the present extrapolated into the future.
And I think a lot of artists, if they see the present clearly enough, can predict the future.
I've talked about how Hamlet predicts the postmodern age, hundreds of years in the future.
I've talked about how in a slightly lesser scale than Shakespeare, my own novel, True Crime, kind of predicted Donald Trump simply because I observed in the present that political correctness meant that it was polite to lie.
It was impolite to talk about difficult truths so that only an impolite person would tell the truth.
And the character in True Crime is kind of reminiscent of Donald Trump in his moral character, but also in his ability to get at the truth that nobody else wants to say.
So I want to talk about some works of art today that I think are explaining the news to us in a new way.
And one of them is this statue that was put up in New York.
It's only going to be there temporarily.
A lot of people didn't quite get that.
It's a statue called Now that has been put up atop the state courthouse in Manhattan, which is a beautiful Beaux-Arts building.
And it has around the top of the building, it has statues of famous lawmakers like Moses and Zoroaster, Solon, you know, and so, but there's an empty spot on it because in the 1950s, they had to take down the statue of Muhammad because Muslims don't like Muhammad to be depicted.
So they put up this new statue, which is called Now.
It made me laugh because I criticized it on Twitter and leftists attacked me for criticizing it.
Then they went out and tore down statues that they didn't like for political reasons.
But this statue is, you can see it if you're watching.
It's an eight-foot golden statue of a female.
It is meant to honor Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg.
Bader Ginsburg, you can see the sort of doily under her chin.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore a doily to emphasize the fact that she was female.
She wore it on her black robe to emphasize that she was female because she was only the second woman on the court.
And it's by a woman.
Her name is Shiziah Sikander.
She was born in Pakistan, but she's an American sculptor.
She calls herself a citizen of the world, though here's a picture of her.
She's kind of a cutie pie.
She calls herself a citizen of the world, but of course, there are some places in the world where if she dressed like that, she'd be flogged.
So maybe she's actually just a citizen of America and doesn't want to talk about that.
And she describes her statue this way.
She says she is a fierce woman and a form of resistance in a space that has historically been dominated by patriarchal representation.
I'm sorry, I fell asleep in the middle of that sentence, but I'm sure you got it.
She said the work was called Now because it was needed now at a time when women's reproductive rights were under siege after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
So in celebrating Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it's honoring Roe v. Wade, which Ruth Bader Ginsburg said was wrongly decided, not because she didn't believe in the right to abortion, but because she said it wasn't a matter of privacy.
It was a matter of equal rights.
So she's not, this artist, by the way, is not untalented.
Whatever you think of this particular statue, she, you know, here's another thing she did.
It's called Marat 2.
And you can see she has quite a lot of talent, actually.
And talented people see things when, you know, they take in what's happening now and they get a vision of it.
And they see things whether they want to see them or not, whether they like it or not.
And sometimes the art that they produce says things that they don't want to say.
I mean, all of us, I think all artists, I'm an artist, and I think all artists sometimes look at the stories we write or the paintings we paint or whatever and think and learn from them.
And we think, gee, I didn't really know that that's what I saw.
So I want to talk about this statue.
And what I see, I see three things about it that I think are important.
One, of course, is that the woman's hair, I see more than that, but we're going to talk about three things.
One is that the woman's hair is coiled up into the horns of a goat.
And the goat, of course, is frequently associated with Satan and demons and witchcraft, who are, of course, also associated with the sacrifice of unbaptized children, which were said to sacrifice unbaptized children, which nowadays we sometimes call abortion.
So that is very appropriate.
No one really knows why goats are associated with the devil, but probably because of the horns.
Also, goats have really weird eyes, if you've ever looked at them, but also because of the rampant, they symbolize rampant male sexuality, which is associated in Christianity.
You know, in the pagan world, it was associated with like Dionysus and wine and all this.
But in Christianity, it was associated with the devil.
So you have a woman, this is a depiction, the statue of a woman enslaved to the goat demon, the male goat demon.
So she has this, her head has been taken over by the horns of a goat.
And you'll notice also that she doesn't have a vagina.
And this is not in the way the old so-called patriarchal paintings of nude women sometimes also you couldn't see the vagina, but oftentimes that was because the woman's hand in the classic statue of Venus, her hand was always covering herself modestly.
And also sometimes they would just pose the figures so that even if it had been a real woman, you wouldn't see that part of her body.
But this is different.
This is, she's standing above us with her legs akimbo, essentially, her legs spread, and she very much has no reproductive organs.
So she has been literally stripped of her power to create.
So this is a statue that celebrates abortion as a satanic ritual that enslaves women to male sexuality and strips them of their magisterium, their central power, which is the creation of human beings and the nurturing of raising children, which I think is an excellent visionary description of abortion.
So actually, this is something that a talented artist did that maybe said something that she didn't mean to say, but I think very much says it.
And, you know, this is a true thing that feminism, which begins by telling women they're going to be free and that women are going to have equal power and equal rank in the world with men, ends by telling them that they are not free unless they become men.
And this is where you start to get this transgender push to eliminate the category of women as a natural real category.
So they're basically telling women that they will decide, the court will decide, the power will decide.
We might even say the patriarchal system will decide who among them has the right to call themselves a woman.
You may have heard of the story in Scotland where a man who was arrested for two rapes suddenly declared himself a woman and wanted to be put in a woman's prison.
And his wife said, you know, no, he never mentioned before that he was a woman.
This is just something he said to BS the authorities.
And there was a big fuss over it.
And finally, the authorities said, all right, we're not going to put her in a women's prison.
But while it was going on, J.K. Rowling, who has actually been excellent on transgenderism, she says she has many transgender friends.
She is not attacking transgenderism per se.
She's simply saying it does not turn you into a man in a dress does not become a woman.
She's someone who knows a lot about magic.
There is no magic in real life.
It just doesn't happen.
But she said a very interesting thing.
She said, J.K. Rowling tweeted, men defining what a woman is, what women should and shouldn't fear, what women should and shouldn't say, what rights women should be fine with giving up, and of course, what constitutes real misogyny.
Well, get a bloody mirror, she says.
That's real misogyny looking right back at you.
Feminism begins by telling women that they are going to be given equal status and then ends by telling them that in order to have that equal status, they must join the powers of men.
They must be strong.
They must be career-oriented.
They must, in fact, vanish as women and lose that magisterium.
So it's, you know, it's a really interesting.
And the third thing, this is the third thing about the statue that I wanted to mention.
It's called now.
C.S. Lewis had an idea called chronological snobbery.
He said it was the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.
So, and you also, I'm sure, know the famous quote by the philosopher George Satayana, who said, those who cannot remember the past are contempt to repeat it.
So, what we are in right now is we're in this little circle where we're repeating yesterday, and it just gets worse and worse and worse because the past has been discredited.
It was racist, it was sexist, it was evil, it was patriarchal, it was all those things.
And anybody who said anything good, we find out what Peccadillo has, George Washington, may have given up a continent, but he owns slaves, so we can't listen to George Washington, we can't listen to any of the founders because they allowed slavery even though they had no way of getting rid of it.
It doesn't matter, so we're only locked into now, and only the wisdom of now can be heard.
And if we read Shakespeare, we have to talk about his sexism.
If we go to Disney World, we have to erase anything that has anything to do with the past, as we'll talk to Megan about later.
So, you look at this statue of a de-sexed woman with her head dominated by the horns of satanic male energy, and you ask yourself, why is it that feminism, which promised to make women, give women power, only gives power to those women who accept and personify the values of the patriarchy?
And it's the same question as socialism.
Why does socialism, which promises we're all going to be equal, turn us into slaves?
Why did anti-racism become racism with blithering idiots at the New York Times and elsewhere screaming about whiteness as if it were a moral quality?
People saying, well, whiteness is a problem.
What on earth does that mean?
We had Nicole Hannah-Jones recently said, white people have to fix this problem because white people caused it.
And you think, like, wait a minute, not the same white people.
That's like saying the Jews killed Christ.
It's like saying each, you know, an honest black man is responsible for the crimes of a criminal black man.
It's like, it is insane.
It is the insanity of racism.
So how does it happen?
How does it happen that all of these things that promise one thing give us the exact opposite?
And I think if you want to know the answer to that, you have to look at another work of art, another work of art that I came in contact with today, because it doesn't represent now.
It is an excellent piece of art which represents then.
And like all really good art, it's centered on the truth.
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So I had a moment to watch a film on Amazon Prime, and I picked this film out almost at random.
It sounded kind of interesting.
I had a, you know, a couple hours free, which is rare for me.
And I thought, well, I'll watch a movie.
And this drove me insane.
It drove me insane because if you think the more things change, the more they stay the same.
We on the right are so bad about the culture.
I know I've been complaining about this for 20, 25 years.
This film, we should have picked this film up and banged the drum about it.
We should have flocked to wherever it was playing to see it.
And instead, I didn't even know it existed when I mentioned it to people.
Shapiro had seen it, but I don't think he promoted it.
I think we should have promoted it.
I did not even know it exists.
It's called Mr. Jones.
It's directed by a Polish lady named Agniska Holland.
She's best known for a movie called Europa Europa, which I saw in the 90s.
I thought it's a wonderful true story about a Jewish boy who survived the Holocaust by masquerading as a Hitler youth.
It's really good.
And it was written by another lady, Andrea Shalupa, whose parents were born in displaced persons' camp after World War II.
And she says they survived the horrors of both the Soviets and the Nazis.
So I'll fall off my seat if you've ever heard of this.
Maybe some of you have, but conservatives didn't talk about it at all that I heard.
And I do pay attention to these things.
It's based on a true story also.
And I looked up the true story and researched it.
And the story is movified.
It's a little bit, you know, change for the movies, but it's true to its source material.
It's a very simple story.
James Norton, very good British actor, plays a real-life journalist in the 1930s.
He was a journalist in his 20s, living in the 1930s, a guy named Gareth Jones.
And he's working for the former prime minister, Lord George, and this kind of think tank that he's got.
And he has scored an interview with Hitler, and he comes back to try to warn Lord George's ministers about what is coming because of Hitler.
And they laugh him off.
And here's that scene.
It's cut five.
War begins in the minds of men.
Goebbels believes the Reich will be here for a thousand years, which means they will most certainly expand to the east into Poland.
The next great war, gentlemen, has already begun.
Hitler will soon learn that there's a great deal of difference between holding a rally and running a country.
So they don't listen to him.
He tells them the absolute truth, and he loses his job.
And he has an idea, a very simple idea, that Stalin's Russia is making all these innovations and building up their economy and building up all these things, but the ruble is worth nothing.
And so he says, well, if they're broke, if they're broke, where's the money coming from?
So he travels to Moscow on the hopes of scoring an interview with Stalin.
And there he meets the guy who is basically running the journalistic show in Washington.
He was called the man, our man in Moscow, Walter Duranty, who works for the New York Times and has a Pulitzer Prize.
And he's played by Peter Sarzgaard, who's always good, but he's absolutely terrific in this.
He's the best thing in the movie by far, but he's just absolutely sensational.
I'm not going to tell you this is the greatest movie ever made, but it's a very, very solid, very good, very intelligent movie.
And Sarzgaard is great in it.
And Duranty, which is absolutely true, is not only covering up for Stalin because he's a communist, he is also a sexually depraved horror show.
He holds orgies where, you know, there's nude women shoot heroin and shoot themselves up with heroin, and he walks around naked like the demonic goat who rules the mind of the woman on the court building in Manhattan.
And interestingly enough, this meld of evil philosophies like communism and sexual depravity go together a lot.
I mean, it's not just a coincidence.
They go together a lot.
In Davos, where they just met, I didn't know this.
You know, Knowles just got back from Davos and I was talking to his producer, Jonathan Hay, and he said that the prostitutes come in, very high-priced prostitutes sweep into Davos as all the elites are gathering in Davos.
Evil Philosophies Converge00:08:11
And I looked it up, and here's a story from the Daily Mail.
Demand for sex work, sex work, I love that, skyrockets each year at the meeting of world leaders and business tycoons who jet in from all around the world to rub shoulders with each other.
Escorts are booked into the same hotels as high-powered bosses and their employees.
So the same people who want to dominate humanity and tell us that we have to eat insects to keep the, you know, while they fly around their private jets, we can't use any gasoline in our Volkswagens, but they get to fly around.
Same people who are doing that are also paying $2,000 to $3,000 a night for orgies.
And these are the guys who tell you sex work is worth, just like the women's pimps.
Sex work is slavery, by the way.
I don't care how much you get paid for it.
I know quite a lot about it from doing research for one of my novels.
And it's basically slavery.
All right.
So Gareth Jones, this reporter, sneaks into, goes to Moscow and has to sneak out of Moscow to get to what is now then called the Ukraine.
And he discovers the Holodomor, which is a man-made famine created by Stalin by his collectivism.
He said these farmers who own small farms are too rich and they're the bourgeoisie.
We're going to destroy them.
We're going to take their farms away.
We're going to collectivize them, run them as collectives.
And that killed, I mean, Ukraine is an incredible fertile land, a breadbasket.
But not only did that kill the crops, but they stole the wheat to give to the elites in Moscow and took it away.
And this resulted in the slaughter of no one knows how many millions of people by starvation.
This was a Stalin-created starvation of between $5 and $10 million.
And so this is an amazing, amazing thing.
You know, you can't even picture how many people, five to 10 million people is.
It's the city of New York wiped out, but not just wiped out, wiped out by slow starvation.
So children are eating tree bark.
They're eating people.
It was just an absolute nightmare.
There's a scene in it.
Basically, Gareth Jones finds a group of women and men trying to get their hands on something to eat.
And he goes up to one of the women and he says, how did this happen?
And she says, how do you think it happened?
Men came and tried to change the natural law.
By changing the natural law, they destroyed the breadbasket and starved millions of people, a city's worth of people.
Just unimaginable horror.
So at the end, as he is being thrown out of Russia, Gareth Jones confronts Walter Duranti, this sexually depraved liar for the New York Times, and he says, here's a piece of tree bark as a souvenir.
Tell me why you lied.
This is cut seven.
What's keeping you here?
Lying for them?
You wouldn't know the first thing about how difficult it is to report from Moscow today, would you?
Of course not.
Not just a child.
But it is not the job of a journalist to say, how dare you, sir.
You actually thought you could interview Stalin and make some kind of difference, didn't you?
A souvenir from my trip.
Tree bark.
It's all the people have left to eat.
All right.
You keep stealing, sir.
My dear Mr. Jones, there comes a time in every man's life when he must choose a cause greater than himself, than all his miserable little ambitions put together.
Perhaps someday you will.
So it's a wonderful scene, and Sarsgard, as I say, is great as Walter Duranti of the New York Times, Pulitzer Prize winner of the New York Times, who lied and covered up the Holodomor.
And even when Gareth Jones went back and reported it at the cost of being canceled, having his career stripped away, and ultimately, after the movie is over, he was murdered for it.
But After he does that, Walter Duranti goes in the New York Times and basically says it's not true.
It's not happening.
He covers it up actively.
The fact that the New York Times has never taken away, he's never returned his Pulitzer Prize, which was given for other reporting from Moscow, tells you everything you need to know about the New York Times because they too believe in something greater than themselves.
That is themselves.
They believe that they supersede the natural law, that they can change the natural law by lying it out of existence.
That's why they have the 1619 project that basically lies about the founding, the reasons for the founding of America, and they are spreading that to fit.
They're continuing Duranti's dishonest work by spreading that through our school system.
They tried to change the natural law.
Well, this is what's happening now: that men can't become women.
Men can't become women.
Women can't become men.
It's just the way it is.
That's the natural law.
That people won't work without the chance to make a fortune.
That tribalism can only be rejected.
Racism can only be rejected.
It can't be destroyed.
The New York Times still thinks, still thinks, like Walter Duranti thought, that they can lie the natural law, the truth, out of existence.
And the thing is, if you're a materialist, right, like what's his name, Yuval Harari, who's supposed to be the great intellectual of Davos, when you think that there is nothing inside material, there's only material, then there is no natural law.
This is what Yuvil Harari says.
It's just fictions that we make up about natural rights, people having rights, about people having some kind of inner world that is unchangeable, that is part of creation.
Matter is not imbued with an inner nature.
And because that's false, because it's a lie, matter, in fact, is just the language in which the spirit speaks.
Matter tells us something about the truth.
And to understand the spirit of man is to know that femininity is an embodied thing.
It is an embodied thing.
Women carry it within them.
Each woman is, of course, an individual, but each woman carries femininity as each man carries some version of masculinity in himself, even though he's an individual.
And it can't be changed by any surgery we know how to do.
The natural ambition can't be changed.
It can only be channeled.
It can only be hemmed in by values, good values, and love.
You can tell capitalists that they have to limit their capitalism, but you can't tell them not to strive for money and power because people will do that anyway.
And power imbalances, power imbalances will always be there.
They can't be destroyed.
The power imbalances between men and women, the different kinds of power that men and women have can only be transformed by love, but they can't be eliminated.
There's a moral law.
That is the natural law.
There's a moral law.
And when you try to rewrite it, what happens is the evil just goes someplace else.
When you deny it, it just goes someplace else.
Or when you deny the fact that men and women are different and they have different magisteriums, different areas of power, when you deny that, all you do is shift the evil around to someplace else.
You just turn the evil on yourself.
When you deny the fact that people are naturally tribalistic and racist, and you don't just simply say, we're not going to do the racism, we're going to not do it.
If you let that racism out and think, well, I can change it by making it won't be racism against black people, because that's wrong.
It'll be racism against white people.
You simply continue the evil.
The devil doesn't care who does the hating as long as the hating gets done.
What I'm telling you now, what I'm telling you now, as I'm sure you recognize, is the gospel of Christ.
This is the gospel of Christ.
The poor are always with you, therefore treat them with love.
Women submit to your husbands, but husbands love your wives.
Submit to the powers that be when they act as ministers of the loving God.
Some people tell you that if you don't obey that law, you go to hell.
And what I'm saying is if you don't obey that law, you're in hell already.
Justified Villain Role00:15:38
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I know, I know you're thinking, gee, I really would like that, but I just don't know how to spell clavin.
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
There are no easy pennies.
All right, I'm really happy to have Neil McDonough on today.
He is, I'm a big fan of his.
He is a really talented actor.
He came to fame in Band of Brothers, which I only just saw recently.
I first saw him in Justified.
He now has a new movie out, Left Behind, Rise of the Antichrist.
It is a sequel to a film that was made quite a while ago, and we'll talk to him about that and about a lot of other things.
Here's a brief clip of Left Behind.
If someone had told me that millions of people were just going to disappear, I, like you, would have said they were crazy.
Was it the rapture?
Yes.
Yes, it was.
Are you sure?
I mean, are you really sure?
I saw it happen.
Those weren't vanishing.
It wasn't the rapture.
The rapture was debunked on the first day.
The second wave of vanishings has thrown the financial markets back into chaos.
Trust me.
You want to make sure you're on the right team.
You're already teaching them the art of fake news.
I just wish I could say one more time.
Why are you still here?
Because I asked God to leave me behind.
We don't need to look for magic.
They're not a bunch of religious wackos like my mom.
Fortunately, we have a solution.
We can implement Eden Pay worldwide in a matter of weeks.
Welcome to the future.
Let me welcome Neil McDonough.
Neil, thank you so much for coming on.
I appreciate it.
Thank you for having me on the show.
I really appreciate it.
It's to be on the Daily Wire and to be with you guys.
It's something I've been looking forward to for a while.
So here we go.
Let's start it up and have a fun conversation.
Well, I am truly a fan.
I'm not just saying that.
I first noticed you on Justified, one of my favorite shows with, of course, international stage and screen star Nick Searcy and an occasional assist from Tim Oliphant.
But you played this murderous, sadistic, very smooth, but very sadistic killer.
And if I may say so, you have one of the cruelest faces I've ever seen.
And I was absolutely shocked when I started to read about you and find out that you are a Christian who refuses even to do kissing scenes on screen.
Is that true?
Yeah, that is true.
And everyone, you know, it was funny.
It was Justified that was kind of like my big comeback role where, you know, I was fired from a show because I wouldn't do certain things.
And everyone thought it's because I'm this religious zealot.
And, you know, obviously I'm a very religious guy, but I just love my wife.
You know, I love my craft.
I love working.
But I love my wife, my family that much more.
So I was never just comfortable with it.
And there are plenty of guys who are.
So my hat's off to you for doing it.
But for me, it's just something that I was never very comfortable with.
And after about two years of suffering and not being able to work and kind of losing everything, my house, my cars, my, you know, kind of just really taking it hard.
I remember that this one day, I said, God, why have you forgotten about me?
And then as soon as I said that, I kind of crumbled to my knees and realized what an idiot I was for saying something like that because he gave me so much.
And it was, I think it was his test to me to make me realize how much I have in my life.
And sometimes you need to.
sit back every once in a while and look at what you do have and appreciate it what you do have.
And that was that moment.
And then 10 seconds later, Graham Yost calls and said, you want to be the villain on Justified this year.
So be careful what you ask for in life because he's always listening and he's always watching.
So look, you know, after 100 and 150 movies and TV shows and five kids and a fantastic wife, and now we're producing our own films.
And it was one of those things in my life where I was in the career for about 10 or 15 years.
Everything was going so well.
But I think I just started taking it for granted a little bit.
And I think he just probably wanted me to really realize how much he did give me and is giving me.
And that's where I'm at today.
And I'm just blessed beyond belief to have what I do have.
And yeah, it's pretty fantastic.
So just the fact that you wouldn't do sex scenes essentially meant that your entire career vanished.
Yeah, I mean, there were two things that really happened.
I think during that time, I also kind of, as we all do, lean on a crutch.
And for me, it was just leaning on alcohol and trying to just drown myself and trying to figure out why the heck my life is going this way.
And it turned out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
And then, you know, with my wife, Revere kind of coaching me, I always say I can go through life with one hand tied behind my back as long as that hand is being held by my wife, Reve.
And she helped me realize that, you know, alcohol wasn't the right thing for me.
And that by giving up alcohol and really focusing on my career as a man, as an actor, as a father, as a husband, all these things, holy cow, you look at the last seven years of my career compared to the seven years beforehand.
Now I'm writing and producing my own films with my partner, Derek Presley.
And Rave and I are raising our own finances to tell films that we want to tell, you know, films that reach out to the heartland of America, films that reach out to people who want to watch the bad guys take it in the end and the good guys who have their flaws get through their problems like all of us and figure out how to stand up to what is right.
And I get to make those films now and write those films and produce those films and put content out there that my family can be proud of to watch.
Man, I'm the most blessed guy in Hollywood, and that's for sure.
So it's, yeah, that's where I'm at in my career right now.
It's pretty great.
You know, it's really interesting that you don't want to do sex scenes, but you don't mind playing.
Have you seen how good looking my wife is?
I mean, why?
I mean, I mean, I kid ourselves.
Well, yeah, it's like Paul Newman said, why go out for a burger when you got straight?
You got to take it home.
I use that word all the time.
But the thing is, but you don't mind playing an evildoer like you did in Justified.
So talk a little bit about the new film, Left Behind, Rise of the Antichrist, where it seems like you're playing a fairly sinister character.
Yeah, I think, you know, playing villains for me is kind of make-believe.
So when I'm on set and when I'm doing these things, you know, like, especially some of the things during Justified, Reve would be there on set and we'd just be laughing at everything that's going on because it's just so absurd.
And then finally, when we got home, this one episode, we watched an episode.
And it's one of the last times I've actually sat down in front of a television and watched what I do because I kind of scare myself at times.
And it scared Revere.
And it took her a few days and she finally told me why she was upset.
She goes, what were you thinking when you were doing that scene?
And I keep my choices really simple.
And by keeping them so simple, it makes it almost like I'm the guy next door, which makes it really scary.
So I have to provide for my wife and my five kids and make a career of something that I love doing.
So my choice was, okay, I'm either going to be in the middle of a battlefield as a soldier.
or I'm going to be the villain.
I'm going to be the best villain out there.
And now finally, I get to produce our own films and I get to play the heroes, which is what I've always wanted to do, but really didn't have the opportunity to do so because of obvious reasons.
But to work with Kevin Sorbo, I got to tell you this.
There are few guys during Bander Brothers.
Dick Winters was always the guy who led from the front.
And so many productions I've been part of, the leaders lead from the rear and it doesn't really work so well.
Kevin Sorbo is that guy.
He's leading from the front.
He is, you know, kind of like what Kevin Costner is.
It's that same feeling of, I'm prepared.
I know my stuff.
Let's go have a great day at work.
Let's give him some honor and let's do the right thing.
And I love working with Kevin because he's that guy.
And when you see the film, and I've seen clips of it, it's filmed so well.
It's shot so well because he makes everyone on the crew feel like there's a common goal of doing something great.
And I think that's what we did on this film.
You know, I'm a big Kevin Sorbo fan, both professionally, but also he's just one of the nicest people.
He and his wife both.
They're absolutely lovely people.
He's one of the most heated people on Twitter.
I never mentioned him about me either.
You just can't find a nicer human being than Kevin Sorbo, but you really can't.
And then great golf swing, too, by the way.
Oh, really?
All right.
I was actually hoping you would tell me something.
I was actually hoping you'd tell me something bad about him.
What is the story of Left Behind, the rise of the Antichrist?
I'm not really sure.
I'm not really sure what I'm allowed to say.
Oh, okay.
Coming out.
But I'll tell you this.
It's filmed so well.
It's got a great message.
It's a film that the masses can watch and think.
What I love about certain types of films is that it makes you think.
You can go as dark as you want in a film.
You can go as light as you want in a film.
It doesn't matter really.
It's if it's done really well.
And for me, if there's a moral play going on, then it makes you think, hmm, after watching that film, maybe I can be a little bit better as a husband.
Maybe I can be a little bit better of a worker.
Maybe I can be a little better as a dad.
Maybe be a little better.
If he got over it, maybe I can get over that thing.
Or she got over it.
Maybe I, you know, so those are the films that I've always liked.
You go way back, one of my favorite films of all time was The French Connection.
Popeye Doyle was such a mess of a human being, but by the end, he figured out how to get it done.
You know, you go back to Dirty Harry, it's the same kind of thing, where all these characters are just kind of have their flaws, but at the end, they're the only ones who can stand up to whatever is going on.
And I've always loved those characters.
Just for the last 15 years, I had to play the other side of the spectrum, playing the villainous side.
Now I get to play the heroic side, which to me is something that I'm finally, you know, I'm in the spot where I'm exactly supposed to be.
And, you know, he has put me in this spot for a reason.
And I'm not going to ever take it for granted.
I'm never going to just kind of, you know, I've never been a guy who mails it in.
My dad said, when you go to Hollywood, if they give you a dollar, give them $2 worth of effort.
And that's what I pride myself on.
And my kids are the same way.
And Rave is the same way.
So at the McDonough Company, which we started a few years back, those are the films and TV shows that we aspire to do and are going to keep on making because I know the heartland of America doesn't really get the entertainment that they always want.
And that's the entertainment that we're trying to make.
So is your company going to concentrate on Christian content specifically, or is it just going to be not Christian content?
There's this one quote a friend of mine sent to me the other day.
It's Psalm 133.
How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity.
And I think what we do as followers of God, we sometimes forget there are all kinds of followers of God.
You know, there are Jews, there are Muslims, there are agnostics, there are Buddhists, there are Taoists, there's all kinds of people across this planet, but we're all God's children.
And if we all treat each other as brothers and sisters, if we unify each other as us, not pieces, then the world is a whole lot better place.
So for us, in the films that we try to make, we try to talk to everybody.
We don't try to just talk to one group.
We try to talk to everyone and say, look, God's got your back.
You just have to give over to him and have faith in him.
He will always be there for you.
You can always lean on him.
Even how when times are really tough and you're going through very difficult things in your life, if you just give over to him, great things will come out of it.
And we're here for a short amount of time.
But what we're promising is eternity if we do the right things.
And I think those, again, those are the templates of the films, the TV shows that we really strive to make because everyone's out there looking for entertainment to make them better, right?
Not worse.
Let me ask you a question about this because I had a week this week where I talked to several artists who had been canceled, basically.
One of them, a very talented painter I've had on my show, Arthur Kwan Lee, who paints biblical scenes, but was caught out driving while conservative, essentially, and lost all his galleries in New York.
Another guy, Clifton Duncan, who we've had on the show as well, is a Broadway star, doing really well on Broadway and was thrown out because he wouldn't take vaccines.
You were thrown out.
You were canceled because of your Christian stance.
I was canceled in Hollywood because of my conservative stance.
What do you say to people like that when they come to you and they say, we can't work.
We don't know what to, you know, where, what if, what if a guy came to you at the start of his career?
What would you tell him?
How would you tell him to proceed?
Your career is, you know, what you do for your living is great.
That's it's important to all of us, whether you're a plumber, whether you're a painter, whether you're an actor, whether you're a fireman, whether you're whatever, elected official.
That's just your job, isn't it?
So to aspire to be the best human being you can be is what you should always strive to do.
And we're all flawed.
We all are sinners.
We all make mistakes every single day, but it's how you get up the next day and dust yourself off that makes you a child of God, right?
So when people ask me that question, what's your tip if you have faith in how to navigate that towards in through a business where that really isn't always kind of looked upon well?
I say, well, what are you supposed to do?
You're supposed to be on that path.
You're supposed to always try to do the right thing for humanity.
And sometimes they'll take you down.
Sometimes they'll crucify you.
I've been canceled, you know, all that stuff.
And I'm still the exact same guy I was back then.
I think now I'm just a little more appreciative.
And sometimes it takes carrying that cross to make you realize how fortunate you are and what an amazing world this is.
And that we should love and honor our brothers and sisters with all of our hearts and all of our souls and not fight so much and not desire for so much.
It was, you know, I was listening to a quote that Charlie Munger was saying, Warren Buffett's partner.
Schiff's Revelations on Congress00:09:17
It was really interesting.
He said, greed isn't the worst thing in the world.
Greed for happiness, greed for your wife, greed for being the best person you can be.
To want that to be in your bloodstream wholeheartedly 24-7 is not a bad thing.
It's the envy that kills the fabric of America.
It's envying your neighbors.
It's envying their stuff.
It's envying, wow, they have that nice car.
They have that nice thing.
Why can't I have that?
And then you start taking people down because they've been successful at certain things.
They might try to take down Kevin Sorbo for certain things, as you were saying.
You can't listen to jealousy.
You can't listen to hatred.
You can't listen to any of that stuff.
All you can listen to, really, is what he has out there for you and how you deal with it, the plate that is in front of you.
What are you going to do with it?
And that's what you're supposed to do as a man or woman.
And so when they say, you know, how do you navigate it, you know, having faith in your business?
Well, I think it's going pretty well.
You know, so I can't imagine 30 years ago when I left Cape Cod, Massachusetts, that I'd be writing, producing, starring in films with the most amazing wife and have these five kids and have this life that I have.
There are bumps along the road.
And those bumps, you have to look back at and think, thank goodness for those bumps because it made me appreciate what I have.
And I'm the most blessed guy that I know because of all the bumps that I have taken.
It makes me truly appreciate what I have now.
And that's where I'm at.
All right.
I got to stop there.
It is really great talking to you.
You're a real talent.
And please come back when one of your films comes out and we'll talk again.
Absolutely.
We'll see you in the next one.
Thank you so much for having me on.
God bless you again.
Neil McDonough.
Thanks very much.
Thanks.
Thank you.
All right.
Now let's talk about the news.
Now that we've talked about what the arts tell us about the news, let's talk about the news.
You know, there's one more, actually, one more great work of art that predicted the future that's gone with the wind, where they showed you Atlanta being burned in the South by the Yankees as Rhett Butler tried to escape with Melanie and her newborn baby.
Here's just a little clip of that.
It's cut eight.
Never left much for the Yankees to take, Dev.
We'll have to make a dash for it before the fire reaches that ammunition.
So Atlanta is burned by the Yankees.
At least back then, the Yankees had a point.
But in Atlanta is burning now or has been burning now.
And you may not have heard about it because the news, the media is covering it up.
And when they're not covering it up, they are misselling it.
What happened is that they're trying to build an Atlanta public safety training center in a wooded area, a training site for law enforcement and first responders.
It's been nicknamed Cop City.
Antifa and other leftist groups moved in to protest this and they declared an autonomous zone.
The state police went in to clean them out and a man named Manuel Turan of Tallahassee, Florida, shot and severely injured a Georgia state patrol trooper.
The cops returned fire and poor Emmanuel was shot and killed.
I'll leave a space here for a moment of silence.
All right, now let's move on.
The protesters said that no, he didn't shoot the police, but now the evidence has been gathered and released to the public.
And it is clear that this guy did shoot at the cops and he was, it was a fair return of fire.
Now, finally, Governor Brian Kemp has declared a temporary state of emergency, which means that he can activate 1,000 Georgia National Guard troops in response and put this fire out.
The place has been burning.
Now, who is burning Atlanta?
Okay, this is the thing.
A bunch of people were arrested.
Six people were arrested, but here are some of them.
Francis Carroll, 22.
He's the son of a yacht sailing.
He's white.
He's the son of a yacht-sailing, multi-millionaire family.
Hails from the wealthy Maine city of Kenny Bunkport.
So he lives next to George W. Bush.
Madeleine, who calls herself Henri Fiola, 22.
She's a trans non-binary activist, also, I believe, white, alumna of Oberlin College, where she studied, or he, yeah, she studied archaeological studies with a focus on decolonization.
Emily Catherine Murphy, 37 of Michigan.
So in other words, it's white people from the North coming down and deciding that the places that need police the most shouldn't have these police.
The nearby, the guy who runs the nearby Homeowners Owner Association, who I mention only because it fits in with the story, is a black guy, is saying this is a terrible thing.
The police should have cleared these things out long ago.
CBS buried the story.
ABC and NBC did cover it, but see if you can tell what's missing from ABC's coverage.
This is cut 10.
Overnight, chaos erupting in downtown Atlanta.
Firecrackers set ablaze.
This police car in flames.
Police arresting six people.
The protest against a new police training center and the killing of an environmental activist started peacefully, but took a turn when some rioters smashed windows and set a cruiser on fire.
So it was a peaceful demonstration, but it took a turn when some rioters, and they never mentioned leftism, they never mentioned Antifa.
Antifa is a fascist organization, by the way.
The FA in Antifa stands for fascism, and the anti stands for nothing.
They are just a bunch of black-shirted thugs who burn buildings and who are— this was very organized.
This was a very organized attack.
They used a banner to cover up the guys who were throwing rocks and throwing bombs and burned a police car and all these things.
So that's one place where the press has been lying and covering up.
And another is in what's happening in Congress.
Kevin McCarthy, who's now Speaker of the House, Republican Speaker of the House, has been doing a good job.
A lot of people don't like, a lot of people don't like the Speaker of the House because he's an institutional man and the people on the right tend to be purists.
There's a lot of purists on the conservative base.
And if he's not being a purist, they hammer him.
Paul Ryan, I always thought was a really good person who actually did something that no one had done before, which is he stood up against the entitlements that have bankrupted the country.
That's called the third rail of politics because everybody who steps in it gets destroyed.
And instead of backing him, conservatives ganged up on him and beat the living hell out of him philosophically because he wasn't hard on immigration.
So instead of just disagreeing with him there and saying, yes, but he's doing good work here, they just made it impossible for him to do anything.
And once Trump came in, he left.
And the Trumpies hated him, but he actually was a truly conservative person.
And I think they were wrong to do that.
But so the Speaker of the House is always unpopular.
And sometimes he's also, sometimes these guys are cynical.
They're cynical people.
But so far, Kevin McCarthy is doing a good job.
And he barred Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the intelligence committee.
And the press came after him.
They were screaming at him.
And here's McCarthy standing up though and explaining why Schiff has been barred.
This is cut 12.
The Intel Committee is different.
You know why?
Because what happens in the Intel Committee, you don't know.
What happens in the Intel Committee, although the secrets are going on in the world, other members of Congress don't know.
What did Adam Schiff do as the chairman of the Intel Committee?
What Adam Schiff did, use his power as a chairman and lie to the American public.
Even the Inspector General said it.
When Devin Nooneth put out a memo, he said it was false.
When we had a laptop, he used it before an election to beat politics and say that it was false.
and said it was the Russians.
When he knew different, when he knew the intel.
So here's how this was reported in the news, cut 13.
We suspect the real reason Republicans are going after Mr. Schiff is that he has been so effective.
In a contentious exchange with reporters Tuesday night, McCarthy said it was a matter of national security, falsely accusing Schiff of lies about Donald Trump.
Here's Schiff, what he actually did, like McCarthy says, Cut 14.
The reality is that there is ample evidence of collusion in plain sight.
Adam Schiff, the top Democrat, saying there is significant evidence of collusion.
Just ample evidence of collusion of the campaign, and it's very much in the public record.
Adam Schiff said that there was damning evidence of collusion, and he said it was worse than Watergate.
I could certainly say with confidence that there is significant evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia.
So you have seen direct evidence of collusion.
I don't want to go into specifics, but I will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial.
I can't go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence.
I've certainly said that there's ample evidence of collusion.
I've never used the word treason.
There's an effort to discredit Christopher Steele rather than looking into how many of the allegations he wrote about were true.
Ample Evidence of Collusion00:03:06
That's a slime.
And I called them a McCarthyite, and some right-wingers say, well, McCarthy was right.
McCarthy was a reckless drunk who actually gave a bad name to the anti-communist movement.
J. Edgar Hoover did a lot to clean out the communists, and he didn't like McCarthy because he was so reckless.
Schiff is a McCarthyite.
He lies.
He lies, and he tells you things about things that, as McCarthy points out, we can't see.
So the press lies.
Well, why do they lie?
Why do they lie?
They lie because they want to change the natural laws.
They want to tell us that if we just give up our freedom, they're going to make us a perfect world.
They want to tell us that if we just get rid of this capitalism, this evil capitalism, everything is going to be great.
We're all going to be equal.
They want to tell us if we just give up our gender roles and our families, we're going to take away, we're going to take care of your kids.
We're going to do so much better job because we're going to tell them they're girls when they're boys.
They tell us all these things.
And because these things are not true, and because they believe that matter is empty of meaning, because they believe that matter has no internal meaning, they think that all the natural truths are just narratives.
This is what Yuval Harari says.
They're just fictions.
But this is what all the postmodernists and all the structuralists and all the deconstructionists say.
They are just narratives.
These are grand narratives that have been imposed on people.
Capitalism isn't better than socialism.
It's just a narrative.
Marriage isn't better than promiscuity.
That's just a narrative.
We just make these things up.
The Bible is just a narrative.
So if you change the narrative, which we call lying, if you change the narrative, you will change the truth.
But the truth remains, and the truth ultimately remains in the misery of women.
I think women have just grown more and more miserable over the last 30 years with the exception of a small contingent of very elite women who benefited from these things.
And by the way, I don't want to take any choices away from women.
I'm just commenting on the choices women have made and have been told to make.
You know, they've told us that our health care is going to get better, our health care has gotten worse.
In England, where they have, we're all reverting to the 70s, but the English 70s were much worse.
The British 70s were much worse than ours.
Their lifestyle, their quality of life has just absolutely plummeted.
All of this, all of this, because of lies.
And this is why it's so important to tell the truth.
When they say to you, why do you care?
Why are you making such a big deal?
Why are you starting a culture war?
It's because the truth is always, is always the thing that makes us free.
And the truth is what they think.
They think they can get around.
They think they can change it by lying.
It never ever works.
Last week I talked about how once respected institutes of higher learning like Stanford and USC are banning unspeakably racist and or sexist phrases like fieldwork, white paper, and you guys.
Now, does this language reform help anybody?
No, but that's not the point.
The purpose is for you to stop thinking, stop asking questions, just go along with whatever your political leftist overlords have in store for you, no matter how ridiculous the premise.
It's all very simple.
The world wants to make you woke, but not Dennis Prager.
He wants to make you wise.
Princess Ride Controversy00:15:20
And the founder of Prager U is going to do just that with a never-before-seen series exclusively on Daily Wire Plus called the Masters Program.
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And the master's program is taking 40 years worth of wisdom and experience and distilling it down to its essence.
If you've ever wondered how the world turned into a clown show, Dennis has the answer.
He covers topics such as, is human nature basically good, the consequences of secularism, and more.
The first two episodes of Prager U Masters Program are available to stream right now exclusively on Daily Wire Plus.
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All right.
We always love to have Megan Basham here.
She is a reporter, a cultural reporter for the Daily Wire, does a great job.
She's also on Morning Wire.
If you're not listening to Morning Wire, you should.
It is absolutely terrific.
Megan, it's good to see you.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
Thanks for having me.
Always love being here.
Yes, it's great to see you.
And we have to talk about Splash Mountain.
I'm embarrassed to say that I've never been on Splash Mountain, but I know it's ridiculous.
You don't like to get wet?
But I don't know.
I like those.
I don't really like those rides that much, but I just want to know now they're closing this.
This is one of the most popular rides they've ever had, and they're closing it.
Explain this to me.
Yeah, you know, it seems to be another instance of Disney being reactive to a very small group of activists.
And, you know, there's a big question about how wise this is.
So Disney has obviously been suffering financially in the last few financial quarters.
Streaming revenues are down.
The studio revenues are down.
And so the parks have really been kind of the one crown jewel.
It's the backbone of Disney financially.
It's what they've been able to point to and say, look, the parks are doing really well.
And now suddenly there are signs that the parks are not doing so well.
You know, revenues are up there, but they're largely saying that's coming from jacked up prices.
And they kind of started nickel and diming families saying, we want you to pay extra for the parades or for the fast passes that used to be complimentary.
And at the same time, they've been restructuring a lot of things in reaction to activists.
So to give you just a couple of examples already, if you didn't know, if you go on Pirates of the Caribbean, that ride's a little different now.
We don't have the bride auction.
And they made that change coincidentally in 2018 at the height of the Me Too movement.
Suddenly the bride auction was no longer acceptable.
And they made some changes a couple of years ago to the jungle cruise.
And that one hurts because my husband was a jungle cruise skipper in college.
And so he kind of hates to see the changes they made there.
And so now you're just hearing a lot of negative reaction.
A recent poll found that 68% of Disney fans who go to the park frequently say they feel that it has lost its magic.
So looking at all of that, you have to go, okay, why are they making this decision to go ahead and change one of their most popular rides?
And Splash Mountain is one of the most popular rides.
It is inspired by Song of the South, a 1946 Disney movie that took place in the Reconstruction era on a plantation in Georgia.
So there was a big petition in 2020 to change that ride.
The concern was that it was racist, that it played on racist stereotypes.
And that petition drew about 21,000 signatures.
And, you know, I have to say, I reached out to a Disney podcaster, Skylar Schuler, and I want to give him big credit for talking to me because he was on the side of, look, this ride needs to be changed.
He talked about it in 2020.
He supported those efforts.
And here's what he told me about why he felt like the ride needs to be changed.
Again, you look at it from an IP standpoint.
It's not, it's a classic ride as in it's been around for 30 years, give or take.
You know, it's not one of the when you talk about these Disney attractions, you know, people go, oh, well, wouldn't Walt Disney wouldn't want this change, but it's not one of the rides that Walt Disney was ever a part of.
You know, he has that famous quote that, you know, the park will continue to change and grow.
Are they erasing, you know, African-American culture?
I mean, maybe that, I mean, that's an argument you can make, but at the same time, now you're, now you're actually giving, you're shedding light to a African-American, you know, character.
Like now she's at the forefront of her own attraction.
You know, it's that Louisiana bayou culture is just so synonymous with African-American culture that it just, it just makes sense.
You know, can I just, can I just say that?
I just want to add to what you said.
I so respect that guy for coming on and making his point.
You know, I disagree with him.
I tend to disagree with him, but I will argue and discuss things with anybody.
And we have such a hard time getting left-wingers to come on here.
And he came on, earnestly said what he had to say.
And I appreciate that.
Yeah, I do too.
And let me, I'll just add, some of the left-wing, and I don't know if Skylar would describe himself as left-wing, but he was certainly on the side of, yeah, we need to change this ride.
But some of the podcasters I asked were not so gentlemanly.
So I really appreciate it.
I find that hard to believe.
Yeah, yeah.
So I got some interesting responses.
But, you know, what's interesting to me is to his point, I'm a mom.
I actually really like Tiana, the Princess and the Frog movie.
She's the princess in that movie.
I think it has a great storyline as far as don't just wish upon a star, but you got to work for your dreams.
And so, you know, as the mom, my kids get annoyed.
I'm like, there, there, that's a good theme.
Listen to that.
But I did wonder, that movie did not do that well.
And you have to wonder, okay, was it because they marketed it in this take your medicine way?
We're giving you this black princess and you're going to like it.
And so I look at that and is that going to be the response to Splash Mountain now?
What should be, you know, I'm not technically super opposed to making some changes or updates, but could you give this princess her own ride in a different way rather than making it something of a social justice statement?
So on that side, another group of Disney fans started their own petition and their petition was, let's save Splash Mountain.
They love the Brayer Rabbit, the Brayer Uncle Remus stories.
They wanted that to continue.
And so they started this petition.
And this is what's interesting.
Their petition gained 100,000 signatures compared to only 20,000 signatures on the other side.
So guess who won?
20,000 over the 100,000.
And I talked to the guy who started the petition to save Splash Mountain.
And I wanted to play a little bit of him as well, because I think there's this perception that these guys just don't want change.
They just want things to be different and we want things old-fashioned.
And talking to Eric Teeboldt, who started this petition, I was really struck by the depth of thought that he put into it and his passion for these stories.
And here's just a little bit of what he told me.
It seems that Disney is willing to do anything except make actual African stories.
You know, like if they, if they really wanted to, you know, like make a big deal about it and do those kinds of things, then they would create actual stories based off of African mythology.
There's African princess stories.
There's African, you know, there's all those kinds of things that they could do, but they choose not to.
Instead, they take a traditional Danish story, they race swap the character, they change the location to New Orleans, and that's the movie that they release.
And then that film, because it did so poorly, is part of the reason why Disney moved away from 2D animation and went to doing 3D animation.
Because in that exact same year, Tangled came out and made four times what Princess and the Frog did.
You know, that's a really interesting point because, you know, I really like the Brayer Rabbit stories, the Joel Chandler Harris stories.
And the thing about Harris, you know, is he was a guy who actually, before the Civil War, worked on a plantation and he was a lower class white guy.
So he used to feel more comfortable with the slaves.
So he would go into the slave quarters and spend hours and hours with them listening to the stories they told him.
And then he wrote them in dialect.
And I understand, you know, I actually do understand how from a modern sensibility, you hear that dialect.
It was used to make fun of black people in the old days.
It was used to basically, you know, stereotype any black character in a show.
But at the same time, it probably was something close to what he was listening to.
And, you know, it's like C.S. Lewis said, if you don't want to be startled, you shouldn't read old books.
The Bray Rabbit stories are hilariously good stories.
I mean, they're just incredibly entertaining stories.
So that Harris was actually kind of acting like the Brothers Grimm when they went through Germany and interviewed all these housewives who were making up the classic fairy tales.
So you say, well, they were men and they were stealing women's stories, but no, they were preserving this incredible wealth of motherhood that was telling these wild stories that have since fed Disney, the Disney Corporation ever since.
And so this is really in keeping with what Disney does.
And just on this one point, I understand the discomfort with the accents and all that stuff, but it only is, it's only a discomfort which could be gotten rid of through education because I think these are important stories that came out naturally out of this out of this culture that was being created against all odds, against all American odds.
Well, and the fact that you had so many children that were inspired by these stories and that for generations loved them.
And I also look at you're also erasing part of Black entertainment history.
You're erasing James Basket, who was the first Black American male to win an Academy Award.
He won an Academy Award for Zippity Doo Dah, I think it was.
Yeah, yeah.
So, and they aren't just erasing Song of the South.
They're also taking the songs away.
I don't know if you know this, but they will not play Zippity-Doo-Dah anymore at the park.
Used to be when you walk in, you'd hear that playing.
So they're not doing that anymore.
And it does feel like you're losing something that so many generations of families loved.
I mean, that is the iconic Disney song right up there with the Mary Poppins songs.
So I also read that they won't say ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls anymore because correct, right?
And so all of these things, it feels like, you know, it's very, so I talked to some Disney insiders and I said, how much do you feel like this is a risk?
And these are some highly placed people.
And what they tell me is this, it's hard to quantify.
How do we know?
And these are some people who are not necessarily for what's been happening.
But what they told me is it is very hard to quantify.
You can't point to something and go, okay, that last Toy Story movie that really championed a lesbian kiss.
We don't know for sure that it didn't do well because of that, which, okay, because we don't know what would have happened if we'd released that movie without it.
So, you know, the question is, how do you draw a straight line?
And you don't.
But what you know is that Disney is suffering.
You can see that more people don't want these changes than do.
So you go, why are they doing it?
And I asked that question to some of these folks.
And the answer was, they are true believers.
That's why.
So the question was, okay, at the top, the guy that was ousted, Bob Chapik, who lost his job over, he was the former CEO, had a pretty brief tenure, who wanted to turn some things around, but he wasn't really ideologically committed either way, just did not face down the activists within the company.
And that includes some very highly placed activists.
And now Bob Iger is back and he is one of the guys who is a true believer.
He is a true leftist.
And I have heard there are people like that on the board as well.
And I talked to Nathan Estruth, who is not at Disney, but so he would talk to me on the record because all the Disney guys, you know, they're like, I will tell you, but you cannot quote me.
And, you know, he's a longtime executive with Procter Gamble, so a very large Fortune 500 company.
And he was pointing out: look, we're based in Cincinnati.
So we're not trying to, we will engage this social activism when we have to, but you companies like that will try to avoid it as much as possible.
He thinks that is not the case with Disney and talked a little bit about these being celebrity CEOs.
This is what he said.
Honestly, I think, you know, they are in a celebrity woke mode as C-suite leaders and the board in that they do glory in this to some degree.
So until it really hurts them, or as we saw with, you know, Chapik being fired, or they're removed, right?
That I think is the answer.
So they, rather than kind of saying, okay, maybe we made a mistake here, or we're going to step back and we're going to make sure we serve all customers and make sure all of our employees are respected and allowed to bring truly, you know, their religious beliefs and their rights of conscience to work.
We're going to fire the CEO instead.
We're going to move around the deck chairs and say, oh, it was all about Bob Chapik.
But at the end of the day, we know it wasn't, right?
Because Susan Arnold, who was chairman while Bob Chapik was CEO, had been on the board for 10 years, right?
She was chairman during the most tumultuous kind of year from December of 21 to December of 22.
Yet there wasn't a change in policy.
Now you have Bob Iger stepping in and saying, well, I wish that hadn't happened.
Well, I bet he does.
But the fact of the matter is, he's not saying we're going to change the policy.
Wow.
You know, Megan, I got to stop here, but this is in keeping.
You know, all the time I was working in Hollywood, people would say to me, all Hollywood cares about is money.
It's just not true.
These ideologies, these ideologies confer tremendous amount of prestige, success within the industry, awards, dates, all kinds of things that they want as well as money.
So that's why you can have a 20,000 signature petition and get more than 100,000 petition against.
It's just an amazing story.
Stay Home, Stay Debt-Free00:09:56
Well done.
Well covered story, Megan.
Megan Basham, you can read her with a reader's pass on Daily Wire.
Hear her on Morning Wire.
It is great to see you.
We'll talk to you again next month.
Sounds good.
Thanks, Andrew.
Thanks very much.
All right.
Some of us, some of us are careening toward the Clavenless Week because we are not subscribers.
We're just kind of riding, just hanging on for the ride.
But just to show you that we like you anyway, we're going to solve all your problems with the mailbag.
Did Andrew Clavin do it?
Who?
He has a show on your network.
He's the bald guy.
He has a show.
I thought that guy was an HR.
I've been talking to him about all my problems.
Yeah!
All right.
I don't even want to know what that was.
From Emily, dear Mr. K-L-A-V-A-N, there are no E's in Claven.
Around this time last year, my husband whispered rock auto in my ear.
Now we have a beautiful baby girl.
It works every time.
My heart's desire is to be home with my baby, be a homemaker and homeschooler along with my future children.
I believe having a mom at home gives kids so much, and I believe God is calling me to serve my family in this way.
However, to help pay off our mortgage, I am going back to work next month and won't be able to quit until next year.
We believe that that financial freedom of being completely debt-free will be worth it for our future, but the decision is still so hard since we technically could make it work with me quitting now.
If I stay at home now, though we will have a very tight budget for another 10 years instead of through next year, how can I look at this next 18 months without dread?
Every time she smiles at me, my heart breaks that I won't be home with her.
Is this just the mom guilt that everyone talks about?
The mom guilt is called, we also call that your conscience.
Well, all right, let me speak carefully here.
I think you should stay home.
I think you should stay home.
And I think you should discuss this with your husband.
I'm not a financial advisor, okay?
I know that there are some people who think that being debt-free is the all-in-all, but I don't believe a mortgage is necessarily a bad thing.
I believe a mortgage can actually be a good thing.
So that's something you want to discuss with a financial advisor.
And by a financial advisor, I don't mean your uncle Fred.
I mean an objective person.
And I don't mean some guy on the radio.
I mean an objective person who can look at your bank accounts and figure out whether this is actually going to help you or not.
Even if it's going to help you, if you say God is telling you to stay home with your baby, your heart is telling you to stay home with your baby, your baby is telling you to stay home with your baby.
Stay home with your baby.
You know, I mean, it's worth any amount of money.
This is obviously, I can only give you my opinion on this.
I'm the person you asked.
I think this idea that guilt is just a thing we feel because of social constructs is nonsense.
Guilt is something we feel when we're doing something wrong.
You can have too much guilt.
You can have misdirected guilt.
But I don't think this is so embedded in human nature that babies need their moms, that moms want to be with their babies is so embedded in our human nature that I do think it is a thing part of our creation.
And I'm not convinced that getting rid of your mortgage is actually going to improve your life as much as you think it is.
You know, if your mortgage, well, again, I'm not a financial guy, so I think that's something you should get from a financial guy, but there are mortgages.
There are ways to refinance, so you're paying a lot less.
But anyway, that's something you should talk with somebody about.
You should not simply go back to work when everything inside yourself is telling you not to do it.
There's a reason that we have feelings like that.
From Max, I've enjoyed your show for years.
I know you converted from Judaism, so you took a slightly different approach to the dilemma I am facing right now.
I'm a reformed Jew, not too religious, in a long-term relationship with a girl who was raised in a strong Christian home, attended a Christian high school.
We are at the point of our relationship where it's marriage or nothing, and she wants to have a Christian-focused family.
We have been together for almost three years.
We grow happier every day.
We are together.
We never fight and are aligned on everything but this subject because I want my children to at least attend the high holidays and celebrate Passover dinner.
I am writing to you to learn your thoughts on interfaith marriage, children, and possibly get some ideas on how to navigate my situation.
Well, everybody's different.
I mean, I think the best situation is that everybody's on the same schedule, that everybody's going to the same church, that everybody has the same religion, and that I think that's the best thing you can have.
But of course, the second best thing you can have is tolerance and acceptance of one another and love for one another and patience with one another.
But it's also very personal.
In the case that you're describing, you are what is called a cultural Jew.
And that's how I was raised to it.
One of the reasons I was not charmed by Judaism is because we didn't talk about God at all.
It was just a cultural thing that my father was wedded to.
And I thought, well, why would you do that?
I don't even understand that.
Why would you worship if you don't believe in God?
That was my particular thing.
But it's because in this case, your wife is such a committed Christian.
And let's not forget that Jesus was a Jew.
Maybe you could think about something like this.
Maybe you go to church.
The children go to church.
If you don't want to go, you don't have to go.
But they go to church.
They go to Sunday school and they learn about Christianity.
But you honor your Jewish heritage because that's really what you're talking about.
And if I'm wrong, I'm sorry.
This is what I'm getting out of your letter.
But you honor your Jewish heritage.
There's no reason not to have Passover.
The Last Supper was a Passover.
Jesus instituted communion at the Passover.
He celebrated Passover.
There's no reason you can't celebrate Passover.
There's no reason you can't celebrate certain Jewish high holy days and explain that this is your culture.
This is where you come from and allow your wife to teach your children the Christian God.
And I don't say that because I'm a Jew who became a Christian.
That's not why I'm saying I'm saying because of your particular situation is that you're not that religious.
Your attachment to your Judaism is largely cultural.
You can teach that without getting in the way of your wife teaching them the vision of God that is so important to her and so intrinsic in her way of life, in her way of looking at things.
Just a suggestion, obviously.
You're going to have to solve it yourself, each person to his own.
But the best situation is where you're all on the same page, but the second best situation is where you just treat each other with love and respect and worship God in your own ways.
From Nicholas, longtime listener and fan, I was recently given a DW plus membership by my lovely fiancé, who's also a big fan.
I recently got engaged to my high school sweetheart.
We're both still quite young and have budding careers in engineering and nursing, respectively.
We both understand the importance of finishing our education, pursuing what we've been working towards in school, but we both have a goal one day of growing our family together.
We're both Christians and have been preparing our hearts and minds to embody the sacrificial love that will be needed.
But I've seen personally how when individuals make personal sacrifices, resentment can sometimes fester towards their spouse.
With that in mind, what advice would you give us regarding how to best prepare for marriage and the reality that we will both have to sacrifice parts of our career for one another and our future family?
I'm not trying to read this, actually.
I'm not sure what you're saying.
The standard, old-fashioned way, which I still think is the best way, is for the husband to work extra hard to support his wife as she takes care of the children.
Nursing is something that can be done part-time.
In my experience, and this is not true of every single person, all generalities, of course, have exceptions.
But in my experience, it is the husband who resents being taken away from work, and it is the wife who ultimately regrets being taken away from her children.
That is my experience, that you make these decisions under the mantle of feminism, which I think is a misguided philosophy, which I said elevates male values over female values.
I'm for the feminism that gives everybody choices, but I think the philosophical feminism that elevates male values over female values is deeply, deeply in error and has made women miserable.
Most women like taking care of their children and they do want some other occupations in there, but they like them so that they don't take them away.
They don't make every moment of their life packed with business.
If you can sit down with your wife and talk about this and talk about what they really want, because if you sacrifice your career, you will be bitter and resentful.
Men are bitter and resentful when they lose parts of their career.
What you want to do is you want to do your career fully, but also make time in your life to be home with your children and take care of your home life and your relationship as well.
That is what a man does with his life.
Women have to make more choices because they have the children and because they care, they're very attached to children when they're little, and the children are very attached to them.
So I would question all your values here.
Sit down with your fiancé and discuss what that's going to look like when you have a family.
I do it now, before you get married, because you may be on totally different places.
And don't kid yourself about it.
Don't lie to yourself about it.
Don't tell yourself that you're going to sacrifice your career as an engineer and not care, because I think you will.
And find out from her if she is going to, how she's going to feel, because a lot of women think they want to work and then that baby shows up and not at all.
I mean, I've seen that a million times.
So everybody's individual.
You may be an exception to the rule.
I'm simply telling you what I've seen over time.
And you definitely want to sit down and talk about that in an honest way.
If you are not a subscriber, you are now being plunged into the Clavenless week.
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How can I not have that happen?
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