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Jan. 16, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show

26:34

Ep. 88 - #MeToo Ends: Not With A Bang, But A Whimper

This is the way #MeToo ends, this is the way #MeToo ends: not with a bang but a whimper. We will discuss Hollow Men, Sodden Women, and the Neo-Victorian morality. Then, this day in history! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	This is the way Me Too ends.
	This is the way Me Too ends.
	This is the way hashtag Me Too ends.
	Not with a bang, but a whimper.
	We will discuss hollow men, sodden women, and the neo-Victorian morality.
	Then, this day in history.
	I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
	There is so much to get to.
	This is one of the most interesting cultural stories that we've seen in a year or more.
	Before we get to that, a little bit of bookkeeping.
	In case you missed it yesterday or you might be interested in seeing it, Ben and I went over to our friend Ty Lopez's house last night.
	Ty, you might know him.
	He had one of the biggest ads on YouTube ever, I think.
	This is Ty.
	Just bought this new Lamborghini here.
	Fun to drive up here in the Hollywood Hills.
	But you know what I like a lot more than materialistic things?
	Knowledge.
	In fact, I'm a lot more proud of these seven new bookshelves that I had to get installed to hold 2,000 new books that I bought.
	It's like the billionaire Warren Buffett says, the more you learn, the more you earn.
	I love that ad.
	That's the guy.
	You know, I'm here in my garage with my Lamborghini and all my books and everything.
	And this is a really bizarre coincidence.
	Two of the first people that I met in LA right when I got out here were Ty and Ben.
	So really, totally randomly, I had just come into LA for some auditions.
	A friend of mine that I was staying with said, "Oh, go to the cigar bar.
	I have some work to do for a couple hours." So I go to this cigar bar down the street.
	I'm reading a book, just smoking a cigar.
	Guy turns to me.
	He's reading a book.
	He says, "You're the first guy I've seen reading a book in LA.
	I've seen reading a book in LA, we should be friends.
	Which is true, the more I've lived here, the more I've learned that.
	And so anyway, it turned out that he was living up at Tai Lopez's house, this internet guru, you know, reads a book a day kinda guy.
	And so he invited me up to a party there a couple days later, so my first taste of LA was hanging out with those guys, and obviously, I met Ben through Andrew Klavan and Jeremy Boring and the whole Daily Wire crew.
	So this was a real melding of the worlds.
	Ben did, I think, an hour-long podcast with Ty.
	Then I came in, I did an hour-long podcast with Ty.
	So if you want to check those out, they're over on all of his social media platforms.
	It's a lot of fun, especially hanging out in his house, which I think is worth a gazillion dollars.
	So it's a nice change of pace from my cardboard box that I live in down in Culver City.
	So anyway, go check it out.
	It's a lot of fun.
	But before we get into today's show, we have to thank someone because, look, we only have about 45 minutes that we can get into this show today at most.
	And if you're a person, if you want to be able to read a book a day and plan out your life and get a $27 gazillion home, you've got to make sure you get your appointments up on time, that you keep a schedule.
	How are you going to do that?
	Right there, baby.
	Movement Watches.
	Movement Watches was founded on the belief that style shouldn't break the bank.
	The watchmaker's goal is to change the way consumers think about fashion by offering high-quality, minimalist products at revolutionary prices.
	So I love watches.
	I have a bunch of watches, but I refuse to pay thousands of dollars for a really high-end timepiece.
	I won't even pay hundreds of dollars.
	If you go into a department store and you want to get a watch that looks like this and is the same quality as this, you're going to be looking at Three, four, maybe $500.
	Movement Watches has circumvented all of that by going straight to the consumer.
	So they've sold over a million watches that way to customers in 160-plus countries around the world, and Movement has solidified itself as the fastest-growing watch company in the world.
	So, you know, I use this one.
	I really like this.
	This is one of the Chrono watches.
	It's a little, you know, it sits a little bulkier on the wrist.
	It's a more solid watch.
	It has some of the, you know, We're good to go.
	It just shows that you have places to go, people to see.
	You're not always checking your cell phone like you're a little toddler or something.
	You can't always have to pull it out of your pocket.
	That's a hassle.
	Be an adult.
	Wear a watch.
	They start at just $95.
	So that's an unbelievable price point.
	Under $100, you can get one of these watches.
	It's because selling online, they can cut out the middleman and all of that retail markup, so you get the best possible price directly to you.
	It's got a classic design, quality construction, and styled minimalism.
	So, now I know that I said that they start at $95.
	You can get 15% off today.
	So it'll be even cheaper.
	And you can get free shipping and you can get free returns.
	There is no risk whatsoever.
	So you go to movement.com.
	That's MVMT.com.
	Because we don't have time for vowels.
	This is the modern world, baby.
	We gotta get moving.
	MVMT.com slash covfefe.
	C-O-V-F-E-F-E. MVMT.com slash covfefe.
	C-O-V-F-E-F-E. What is it, Marshall?
	MVMT.com slash covfefe.
	C-O-V-F-E-F-E. This watch has a really clean design.
	It's really nice.
	You know, everyone around here wears them, and we get a lot of compliments.
	They're really cool watches.
	So, come on, step up your watch game.
	This is 2018.
	New year, new you.
	Get a movement watch.
	MVMT.com slash Covfefe.
	C-O-V-F-E-F-E. Join the movement.
	All right, let's get into this.
	Let's get into the main story.
	The Me Too campaign, the hashtag Me Too campaign about sexual assault and harassment has officially jumped the shark.
	We talked about this a little bit at the end yesterday with Alicia, but the fallout from this piece is even more interesting, really, than the piece itself.
	The feminist website, babe.com, gotta love it, they ran a piece yesterday titled, I went on a date with Aziz Ansari.
	It turned into the worst night of my life.
	The worst night of her life.
	Wow.
	Clearly, this is going to be a Weinstein-esque tale of abuse, rape, intimidation, blacklisting enormity, right?
	These accusations are so bad, the accuser chose to remain anonymous, going only by the emotionally evocative pseudonym, grace.
	So...
	What does the accuser allege happened?
	She alleges that she hit Anaziz Ansari, the left-wing comedian, at an Emmys afterparty.
	He ignored her, but nevertheless she persisted.
	They exchanged numbers.
	That was that.
	She heads back across the country to New York.
	He leaves her a voicemail, and they chat via text for about a week.
	Now, that part seems minimal, but we'll get to why that's a key aspect of the problem here a little bit later.
	So they set a date.
	Grace agonizes with her friends over what to wear, these jeans, yada yada, blah blah blah.
	She arrives at his apartment, and here's where things go horribly, horribly wrong.
	Did he attack her?
	No.
	Did he take her captive?
	No.
	No, no.
	Instead, he offered her white wine instead of red.
	I'm serious.
	Babe.com writes, quote, After arriving at his apartment in Manhattan on Monday evening, they exchanged small talk and drank wine.
	It was white, she said.
	I didn't get to choose, but I prefer red.
	But it was white wine.
	Then Ansari walked her to Grand Banks, an oyster bar, on board a historic wooden schooner on the Hudson River just a few blocks away.
	I actually used to live right around that area.
	Can you imagine the horror?
	Her host, her date, offered her the type of wine preferred by virtually every woman on Earth without even taking one moment to become a psychic and read her mind and understand that she likes the other kind of wine before buying her dinner at an expensive oyster bar.
	Lock him up!
	Lock him up!
	Call the police!
	Marshall, can you get the police on the line?
	This is outrageous!
	So they had dinner, and then Ansari asked for the check.
	So Babe writes, Grace says she sensed Ansari was eager for them to leave.
	When the waiter came over, he quickly asked for the check, and he said, like, let's get off this boat.
	She recalls there was still wine in her glass, and even more left in the bottle he ordered.
	The abruptness surprised her.
	Like, he got the check, and then it was bada boom, bada bing, we're out of there.
	That's right.
	That's right.
	You heard that correctly.
	Ansari was too quick to pay for their expensive dinner.
	The classic faux pas.
	You're at a dinner, and your date pays the bill too quickly.
	Isn't that a tale as old as time?
	Just terrible.
	So anyway, they go back to his apartment, they flirt for a little bit, they get naked, and they make out.
	As Babe tells it, she remembers feeling uncomfortable at how quickly things escalated.
	Note the wording here.
	Grace doesn't remember expressing her discomfort in any way.
	She doesn't remember telling him that they should keep their clothes on or not to kiss her.
	She just felt it.
	Yeah, just felt it.
	Now things get really crazy.
	Aziz Ansari allegedly tried to have sex with the naked lady in his apartment.
	What?
	And they almost did!
	Can you believe it?
	They both made it to third base, as it were, and then she finally told him firmly she didn't want to have sex.
	So they stopped and sat on the couch.
	Then she started, um...
	How do I say this on a family-friendly show?
	She gave him another triple.
	They kissed some more.
	Now keep in mind, they're still completely naked at this point.
	Then she changed her mind again and said she didn't want to have sex, and she put her clothes back on, and she said, You guys are all the same.
	You guys are all the effing same.
	Truer words, by the way, have never been spoken.
	And that is a major aspect of this, but we'll get back to that in a second.
	So she calls a cab and she leaves.
	Here's the most important line.
	Grace explains.
	It took a really long time for me to validate this as sexual assault.
	I was debating if this was an awkward sexual experience or sexual assault.
	As a rule, if you have to ask, it's the former, not the latter.
	If you have to debate it, it's the former, it's not sexual assault.
	At no point in this entire encounter did Aziz Ansari commit sexual assault.
	That pains me to say, because I don't really like Aziz Ansari at all.
	I don't find him funny, I think his political preening is like nails on a chalkboard, and the character he plays on stage is an all-around soy boy.
	But this is a classic case of regret, not assault.
	And that doesn't mean the girl doesn't have a right to be sad or hurt or angry.
	She felt used because she was being used.
	Why did the girl stick around at all after the awful wine episode at the beginning?
	Why did she stick around?
	Because she liked Ansari, and she wanted him to like her for more than her body, for more than just a one- or two-night stand, for more than just sex.
	Now, Ansari may have liked her.
	He may have just wanted to score.
	I don't know.
	But like all men, and especially famous men, and especially rich famous men, and especially rich, influential famous men, Most especially of all, like rich, influential, famous men in a hookup culture that treat sex like a handshake, he wanted sex and he expected it to come easy.
	Because that's our culture.
	That's the ubiquitous culture surrounding sex that we live in.
	But why did she stick around?
	If she felt uncomfortable, why did she strip naked and keep engaging in sex acts?
	Why did she repeatedly let him make it so far around the bases?
	We have an answer from Sexpert April Mazzini.
	Yes, Sexpert.
	That's a thing.
	Sexpert.
	Sexpert April Mazzini of AskApril.com explains, quote,"...I hear from women who have sex on the first date and then try to leverage that act into love.
	They impute their feelings about the sex on a first date onto the other person, and those who feel that sex on a first date means interest are often hurt if a second date doesn't evolve." A tale as old as time, but a trick not always so pervasive and relied upon.
	46% of people who use the dating website OkCupid say they'd sleep with someone on the first date, a high percentage that just keeps rising in recent years.
	And OkCupid is a pretty good source here because online dating sites and mobile apps like Tinder or Bumble or whatever.
	In my single days, I always used Grindr, but I never met the right lady.
	They always had these huge Adam's apples, which is neither here nor there.
	The use of online dating sites and mobile apps among young people nearly tripled just between 2013 and 2015, according to Pew Research.
	And there isn't a ton of research available for how that trend has evolved even over the past three years.
	But I can tell you from personal interactions, and you know it yourselves, every single young person in the country is on these apps.
	I have multiple friends who even met their future wives on these apps.
	I'm gonna go to two weddings this spring, as a matter of fact, for friends who met on apps like Tinder.
	Still, marriage is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to all of these apps and these websites.
	The trouble with these apps Is that they incentivize a swipe-right culture where the next better hookup is always a click away.
	Why stick with the person you've got, the person sitting across from you or in the bar or at the party or whatever, when your phone is buzzing with an endless stream of new digital hotties?
	Buzz, buzz, buzz.
	That gets back to one of the earliest aspects of Aziz and this girl's encounter, one that everybody's missing in their coverage.
	They met at a party.
	She hits on him.
	He's not that interested.
	They chat a little bit.
	They exchange numbers.
	Then what happens?
	They text for a week.
	They text.
	They don't grab coffee or drink.
	They don't even talk on the phone.
	They text.
	And texts can be a deceptive experience.
	We know that she's interested in him.
	Were the texts flirty?
	Yeah, presumably.
	What did they say?
	What did she say to him?
	How did he respond?
	Texts are a virtual fantasy land.
	There's no phone to hear the tone or the tenor or the hesitations in someone's voice.
	There's no face staring you down to seduce or to embarrass or to shame or to amuse or do anything.
	Texts are a blunt object, but increasingly, they're the only way that single millennials communicate.
	A 2014 Gallup poll, and now we're talking four years ago, a full 68% of 18 to 29-year-olds reported that they had texted, quote, a lot the previous day.
	That number plunges to 47% among 30 to 49-year-olds and down to 26% of 50 to 64-year-olds and 0% of me because I hate texting.
	I hate...
	I hate...
	I really...
	You know it, Marshall.
	I do not text.
	I despise it.
	I find it...
	Here's the reason.
	I find it so rude when you're having a conversation with somebody to look down and check your phone and start talking to somebody else.
	You say, hey, hold on a second.
	No, I know we're having a conversation, but literally anything else on planet Earth is more interesting than what you are saying to me, so let me pull out my phone, spin the roulette wheel, and assume whatever is on that screen is more important than you.
	I hate it.
	I don't do it.
	And then I don't...
	Later on...
	So I don't do it in the moment and I don't even do it later on when I stop talking to somebody.
	Aside from that digression, everybody texts and texting dehumanizes the person on the other end.
	It abstracts that person.
	It removes every single sense of another person other than seeing a formalized abstraction of their thought in the form of words on a screen.
	And maybe a weird picture or two.
	That's it.
	It's not even like writing a letter, a long letter, where you get a sense of their feelings.
	It's just three words, this, that, this, the other thing.
	It's very shallow.
	So even heading into the date, Aziz and this woman head in with necessarily different perceptions and likely different expectations.
	And then we equate Harvey Weinstein's violently raping women and ruining their careers and blackmailing them with an awkward date and consensual sexual encounter that left a woman upset because a man wanted to have sex.
	In a culture where sex on the first date is common and basically expected, in a culture that tells you men and women are exactly the same, the sexes are indiscernible.
	They want exactly the same things professionally, personally and sexually.
	A culture where two people could enter an encounter in good faith with exactly the same premises and yet one leaves hurt and one leaves confused.
	What's the problem?
	I'm a feminist.
	Wow, you said it, Aziz.
	You said it.
	That's a great point.
	Joshi Herman, the editor of Babe.com, said, we would publish this again tomorrow, the piece about this awful encounter with the wine and whatever.
	It's newsworthy because of who he is and what he has said in his stand-up, what he has written in his book, what he has proclaimed on late-night TV. Her account is pointing out a striking tension between those things and the way she says Aziz treated her in private.
	Now, this is actually sort of a decent point.
	Why is it?
	I'm a feminist.
	Oh, yeah, right again, Aziz.
	Good job.
	But it's not just that the things he's spouting in public contradict the things he does in private.
	It's that the things he's spouting in public contradict the things that everybody does in private, because feminism presents an incorrect view of the world, that men and women are exactly the same, and that hurts everybody involved.
	Perhaps the craziest thing about this whole episode, this pathetic end to the Me Too movement, is that it's got me agreeing with The Atlantic and The New York Times.
	That's awful.
	Caitlin Flanagan writes in The Atlantic, quote, She tells us that she wanted something from Ansari and that she was trying to figure out how to get it.
	She wanted affection, kindness, attention.
	Perhaps she hoped to maybe even become the famous man's girlfriend.
	He wasn't interested.
	What she felt afterward, rejected yet another time by yet another man, was regret.
	And what she and the writer who told her story created was 3,000 words of revenge porn.
	I thought it would take a little longer for the hit squad of privileged young white women to open fire on brown-skinned men.
	I had assumed that on the basis of intersectionality and all that, they'd stay laser-focused on college-educated white men for another few months.
	But we're at warp speed now and the revolution in many ways so good and so important is starting to sweep up all sorts of people into its Conflagration the monstrous the cruel and the simply unlucky Apparently there is a whole country full of young women who don't know how to call a cab and who have spent a lot of time Picking out pretty outfits for dates.
	They hoped would be nice to remember They're angry and temporarily powerful and last night.
	They destroyed a man who didn't deserve it.
	Wow.
	I Absolutely right.
	Caitlin Flanagan is probably the best writer in The Atlantic, and she's one of the reasons I still subscribe to The Atlantic.
	And by bizarre coincidence, I actually found out just the other day she's Andrew Klavan's sister-in-law.
	She's Drew's wife's sister.
	And I suppose that isn't coincidental that I would enjoy the writing of Drew's sister-in-law, but still, very small world.
	She's exactly correct.
	She's brutally correct.
	Barry Weiss in the New York Times writes...
	I am a proud feminist.
	And this is what I thought while reading Grace's story.
	If you're hanging out naked with a man, it's safe to assume he's going to try to have sex with you.
	If the inability to choose a Pinot Noir over a Pinot Grigio offends you, you can leave right then and there.
	If you don't like the way your date hustles through paying the check, you can say, I've had a lovely evening and I'm going home now.
	If you go home with him and discover he's a terrible kisser, say, I'm out.
	If you start to hook up and don't like the way he smells or the way he talks or doesn't talk, end it.
	If he pressures you to do something you don't want to do, use a four-letter word, stand up on your two legs and walk out the door.
	Aziz Ansari sounds like he was aggressive and selfish and obnoxious that night.
	Isn't it heartbreaking and depressing that men, especially ones who present themselves publicly as feminists, often act this way in private?
	Shouldn't we try to change our broken sexual culture?
	Proud feminist, huh?
	Is that feminism?
	Weiss is saying men and women want different things from sex.
	It's perfectly fine for men to pick up the check at dinner.
	It's not disrespectful or patriarchal.
	It's perfectly reasonable for men to choose a wine and pour their day to glass of it, though of course she may refuse it.
	She's right that there's a broken sexual culture, but the sexual culture is feminist.
	You can't simultaneously say that the sexual culture begun 60 years ago by feminism and sexual liberation is broken and that's why we need more feminism and sexual liberation.
	We're headed toward a neo-Victorian era.
	You can see it all around you.
	You see it on college campuses, which are now hiring deans and deputy deans and deputy assistant deputy deans to regulate and monitor sexual activity.
	This sort of campus sexual regulation we haven't seen since men and women had to sign back into their single-sex dorm rooms at night, however many decades ago.
	The era of original Victorian morality began after the post-Cromwell restoration of the monarchy in England and led to a period of free-living and all-around debauchery modeled after the French, of course.
	A more libertine people, you know, have never graced this earth.
	So Queen Victoria's uncle, George IV, was popularly seen as a pleasure-seeking playboy.
	Scandal abounded.
	National leaders were regularly seen as decadent playboys.
	The culture was freewheeling and fun.
	Does that sound familiar?
	Now, what followed was a period of strict morals, personal restraint, and cultural ascendance.
	We may be headed there now, but Victorian values were based in traditional Christian values until Charles Darwin and the crisis of faith began eating away at them.
	The quality of the new Victorianism we're heading toward will be decided by precisely which moral system, which view of the world we grounded in.
	So, you better start praying.
	Okay, can we get to this day in history now?
	No, we can't because we have to sign off.
	Marshall, you tyrant, you monster.
	I'm sorry, if you're on Facebook and YouTube, you've got to go to dailywire.com.
	If you are already there and a subscriber, thank you.
	You help us keep the lights on and covfefe in my cup and subscriptions to The Atlantic for the one good article it has a year.
	If not, please go to dailywire.com right now.
	Why?
	Why would you do it?
	Well, you'll get me.
	You'll get the Andrew Klavan show.
	You'll get the Ben Shapiro show.
	No ads on the website.
	Blah, blah, blah.
	The conversation.
	You can ask different questions.
	I think Drew's conversation is today, actually, at 2.15.
	Is it, Marshall?
	Yeah, you can hear him setting up next door.
	Yeah, we can hear him setting up in the room next door.
	So actually, subscribe right this second, and you'll be able to ask Andrew Klavan questions today for the conversation.
	It's going to be really good.
	But the most important thing, forget all that.
	The leftist tears tumbler.
	This is gonna be a big one folks.
	The me too movement is completely over now It's ended with a with a bag not with a bang but a whimper Feminism is being brought into question because of our new cultural moment and our new neo-victorianism You've got Hollywood falling apart because of this issue get it or you're gonna drown Don't be stupid.
	You're going to drown on salty, salty, delicious leftist tears.
	You can only drink so many.
	You can only gorge yourself on so many.
	You have to store them in a proper vessel like this.
	Make the right decision for you and your family and save yourselves.
	Go to dailywire.com right now.
	Right now, we'll be right back.
	Okay, let's get to this day in history.
	This day in history...
	This is a big one.
	On this day in history, the Roman Empire officially began.
	Now, I'm not going to go through the entirety of the Roman Empire in our last few minutes here, so let's focus on one incredible historical coincidence at the outset of the Roman Empire that might shed some light on the nature of the world, of the physical world and the metaphysical world.
	The Roman Empire began When Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, Octavian is frequently called, heir to the assassinated Julius Caesar, was granted the title Augustus by the Roman Senate.
	So Augustus ruled from January 16th, 27 BC, until his death in AD 14.
	After the demise of the Second Triumvirate, Which was formed by himself, Mark Anthony, and Marcus Lepidus to defeat the assassins of Julius Caesar.
	Augustus restored the semblance of the Roman Republic.
	There was the Senate and the legislatures and all that, the semblance of it.
	In reality, he retained firm rule all for himself.
	There's much to note about Augustus, but consider just this one fact.
	Augustus was not actually the son of Caesar.
	He was his adopted son.
	He was regularly referred to as Divi Filius, son of a god, because upon Julius Caesar's death, a comet, known as Caesar's Comet, appeared above the earth.
	It was the brightest comet in recorded history, having even a negative absolute magnitude.
	It could be seen even by daylight and was taken as a sign that Caesar had been deified, turned into a god upon his death.
	And so the son of a god reigned on a throne in Rome and initiated the Pax Augusti, the peace of Augustine, the peace of Rome, of so much of the civilized world that blanketed the land, It was so named by Seneca the Younger and considered a miracle because of the widespread war which had wreaked havoc for so many centuries prior.
	At that same time, during that same reign, another bright light appeared in the sky over Bethlehem to signal precisely the coming of another king.
	A king whose kingdom is not of this world.
	A king who would be called not Phileus Dei, but Phileus Dei.
	Not son of a god or the divinity, but son of the one true god himself.
	And a king who would bring not just peace for a time and a space, but for all time and space into eternity.
	A coincidence so incredible.
	An example of God's whimsy so undeniable.
	And yet it's almost never taught in history class or physics class or astronomy class.
	Alexander Pope put it well.
	All nature is but art unknown to thee.
	All chance, direction, which thou canst not see.
	That's our show today.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	We are not going to be here tomorrow.
	I've got a film shoot that I've got to be at tomorrow because, shockingly and incredibly, occasionally I still get hired as an actor in this town, but I assume that'll be the last time, so don't worry about it again.
	So we're going to do a show on Friday instead.
	We're still going to do the mailbag on Thursday, so get your questions in ASAP. And until Thursday, I'm Michael Knowles, and I'll see you then.
	The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

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