Superman gets a little light in the loafers, the Italians shout "Let's Go, Brandon," and the media attacks a rock legend.
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DC Comics has confirmed that Superman is officially a little light in the loafers.
I, myself, had always had my suspicions.
The tights, the chiseled body, the lack, if we're honest, of any real sexual tension with Lois Lane.
But the creatives have now dispelled any doubts.
The new Superman, much like our entire culture, is super duper gay.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday from G-Man, who says, Before exploring space, maybe Kamala should explore the southern border and see it with her own eyes.
Yes, that's true.
Maybe a little less cringe-inducing performance with the child actors about the wonders of outer space from the vice presidentess, and a little more doing her job when...
For instance, she's tasked with the southern border, which, practically speaking, no longer exists.
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Promo code MICHAEL. M-I-C-H-A-E-L. Superman is pretty and witty, and now he is gay.
I do not follow the superhero stuff all that closely.
I never really read comic books as a kid, and I certainly don't read them now.
But according to DC Comics...
John Kent, who is the new Superman, he's the son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, the original Superman and his beard.
John Kent is apparently bisexual.
This is a very important plot point, of course, for the Man of Steel.
He also, in this new comic, will have a love scene with a dude.
And the dude has pinkish purple hair and looks a bit on the young side.
And they have a gay kiss.
But he's not totally gay.
He's just a little bit gay.
And it just seems to me...
Well, I had the same reaction that Blake Masters did.
Blake Masters is a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona.
He saw the news, and I don't know if he's a comic book fan or anything, but he retweeted it and he said, not everything has to be gay.
This is no offense to people with unusual sexual desires or behaviors or anything like that, but why is everything gay?
Why?
You know, especially when June rolls around.
June, in our liberal liturgical calendar, is Pride Month.
And for the month of June, at least in the West, you'll notice not in the Middle East or some other places, but in the West, every corporation, every institution, every non-profit, every person becomes gay for exactly 30 days, and then it stops.
And you just think, well, why?
Why is that?
Why?
So Blake Masters says, not everything needs to be gay, but in a way everything sort of does need to be gay.
Because if you're going to insist upon this new moral standard, it's not going to stop at...
You do you.
You do you, I'll do me.
Follow your lights, but don't impose your views on anyone.
that's kind of the libertarian-ish approach, someone say libertine approach to moral philosophy, but it doesn't really stop there because every single society has to have some vision of what it considers to be the good.
It's got to have some standard.
This is the thesis of my book, Speechless Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.
And so as standards start to change, they're going to change for all of society.
And I don't mean to call out just the LGBT issue here, but this is true of any sort of standard.
It is going to pervade the society.
And if you think that you can just compartmentalize it and put it in one corner of society, you can.
You're trying for something that never has been and never will be.
And you see this shifting, very often opportunistic sort of standard beyond the realm of comic book sexual politics and into the realm of sports.
John Gruden, who I'm reliably informed as the head coach or was the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders.
I'm about as much of a Raiders fan as I am a fan of the Superman comic books.
But But John Gruden was the head coach, and he just resigned.
He resigned under pressure.
He had to resign because decade-old, or even more than a decade-old, emails, personal emails, were leaked.
And in those emails, he sometimes said politically incorrect things, notably calling the commissioner of the NFL a, I'll clean up the language a little bit, a wuss, a clueless wuss, which every single person knows that he is.
Even I know that.
I don't follow football at all.
And even I know that Roger Goodell is a clueless wuss.
Okay.
And so this football coach puts that in his emails, private emails.
They are leaked a decade or more later.
Now he has to resign.
And he said other things and he made insensitive comments and now he's got to, got to resign.
What this is, I think.
It's bigger than just cancel culture or saying that people should have their private emails protected.
You know, I think the angle that most conservatives are focusing on with the John Gruden story is that liberal democracy requires there to be a distinction between the public and the private sphere.
And then in the 1970s, the second wave feminists came in and said the personal is political and all your private stuff is actually public now and we're going to scrutinize all of it and we're going to hold you to account for...
Things you say at home, or who does the dishes, or what have you.
There's an aspect of that, sure, but this goes a little bit further.
And while people are focusing on this comment in one of the emails where he commented on a black player's large lips, and they're saying that he's basically David Duke because he made some racially insensitive comment, I think the more telling comments are about sexuality and masculinity, where he calls Goodell a big wuss.
What we're seeing here is a cultural revolution, one that is aimed specifically at anti-masculinity.
And we're seeing this paired up with a technological revolution, which is namely the surveillance revolution.
So to bring that back down to earth, what we're seeing is standards changing completely on sexuality.
And so beyond...
Your sexual desires or your sexual partners.
It's even down to what a man is or what a woman is.
It's even down to this idea now that masculinity is toxic.
In the old standard, masculinity was good.
The word virtue itself is related to the word for man.
John Wayne, Gary Cooper.
I'm reminded of Tony Soprano.
We've been talking about Tony Soprano recently because it was Columbus Day.
And one of the lines from that show that keeps coming up is, what have happened to men like Gary Cooper?
Whatever happened to John Wayne?
Whatever happened to the father knows best, the strong man?
Now, when we look at male figures in the culture, they're all a bunch of bumbling idiots, right?
It's Homer Simpson or Ray Romano, and they can't do anything.
And they're just a big joke.
And their wife has to do everything and take care of them because these guys can barely put their pants on in the morning.
So there's an attack on masculinity.
And a lot of what's in these emails, these John Gruden emails, is locker room tall.
I know it's an overused expression these days, and it's an expression that really hit the mainstream when Donald Trump was caught on a secret tape, also, let's not forget, on a hot mic, on a secret tape that had been held for years and years, saying that when you're a celebrity, women let you do whatever you want, you can grab them by the you-know-what.
You can grab them by the Roger Goodell.
Yeah.
And at the time, a bunch of pearl clutchers said, oh my gosh, Donald Trump is openly advocating for rape.
First of all, he's not talking about sexual assault at all.
He said, they let you do it.
So even within the context of his joke, he wasn't joking about that.
But second of all, he wasn't being serious.
He was joking around.
He was having a little locker room talk, a little rough talk, which is the way that men...
Sometimes speak, and when I say sometimes, I mean all men at some point have talked like this, and it doesn't mean anything.
It doesn't mean that you're hateful.
It doesn't mean that you're bigoted.
It doesn't mean that if John Gruden is calling, what's his name, Roger Goodell a clueless wuss, it doesn't mean that he...
Harbors a deep-seated hatred of homosexuals or if he makes fun of some guy's lips, it doesn't mean he hates black people.
It just means he's talking a little bit rough and a little offensively and a little aggressively, which is something that we used to expect from football players and football coaches.
These are people, football players, who get involved in dogfighting rings.
Remember that?
These are people who get involved in really tough...
They're disproportionately likely to commit crimes.
You can be arrested.
There are actually some really bad crimes that football players have committed in recent years.
Some of them have beaten their wives and girlfriends.
Some of them have committed murder.
But the one that we're all supposed to lose our collective sense over is because this guy used some harsh language.
In emails.
Why do we even know about the harsh language?
Because of the technological aspect, the surveillance state.
Why do we know about Donald Trump's joke to Billy Bush on the Access Hollywood show?
Because of the surveillance state.
It's become more and more and more so.
Anything you've ever said in your email, in your texts, in your private messages, certainly anything you've ever tweeted, anything you've ever searched for, Basically anything you've ever thought, anything you've ever said.
You know how you talk and then all of a sudden you're getting ads on your cell phone for things that you were just talking about in a normal conversation to someone in real life?
These things are all pairing up.
And because the people who have control, because the ruling class, are the ones pushing for this cultural revolution, the asymmetries of power here are very, very concerning.
Because people who...
The dissent from the political orthodoxy of the culture are increasingly going to have their private emails leaked and their private conversations leaked.
And the worst things they've ever said and done are going to be broadcast and used to ruin their lives.
And then people who go along with the leftist orthodoxy are going to have even the worst crimes that they can commit excused.
Speaking of gender roles, new announcement from British Airways.
British Airways has informed pilots and the cabin crew.
That they need to stop the hateful language, the hate speech that passengers so often encounter on their airplanes.
Do you know what hate speech I'm talking about?
Three words.
Ladies and gentlemen.
So when you get on a British Airways flight, let's say, I don't know, I keep really blowing my British accents these days, but I don't know.
Something to the effect of, well, hello there, governor, ladies and gentlemen, welcome on to the flight, yeah, yeah.
I don't know, I assume that's, I haven't flown British Airways.
But they will, it's very nice, very civilized to say, Hello.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome to your flight.
Please buckle your seatbelt.
We'll be serving drinks very shortly.
Well, you're not allowed to say that anymore.
And this is because they want to promote, quote, diversity and inclusion.
According to the Telegraph, the announcement came over the past few weeks.
And the pilots and the cabin crews were told to use gender-neutral language.
Now, what gender-neutral language are they going to use?
You're no longer a lady or a gentleman.
Presumably, you can't be called a man or a woman.
What are you going to be called?
Meatbag?
Hey!
Hey!
Meat bag.
Hey, flesh sack.
Hey, what?
I don't know, because the things that distinguish you, that seem to elevate you above the animals, that you're a lady, that you're a gentleman, at least that you're a man or a woman, those are no longer acceptable.
Hey, person.
Well, son, though.
Son is sexist.
Hey, per daughter.
Hey, per daughter.
Is that what you're going to be called?
I don't think so.
In a way, British Airways is right to do this.
Because we are no longer a society of ladies and gentlemen.
We are increasingly a barbaric society.
Don't forget the word barbarism just comes from this idea of foreigners speaking a language that you don't understand.
And they all sound like they're saying bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar.
That's actually where the word comes from.
And increasingly, that's what our society feels like to us.
People are saying things that don't mean anything.
We don't speak a common language.
We don't view ourselves and the world in the same way.
And I'm reminded of Edmund Burke.
You know, Edmund Burke has that famous line in the Reflections on the Revolution in France.
He says, the age of chivalry is gone.
That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded it.
And the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
And he talks specifically about how no more will we have that duty, that sense of loyalty, that proud submission of rank and sex.
You know, You know, this idea that would keep an exalted freedom alive, even in servitude itself.
That is gone.
That actually is gone.
And it's too bad.
Last night we were at the Ryman.
We did a backstage live show.
It was a ton of fun.
Thanks to everyone who came out.
We had a really, really great time.
And someone asked, what's the surest sign that civilization is on the decline?
And the question was not to me.
It was to someone else.
And we were trying to move quickly through these questions.
But it seems to me the answer is, when men stop holding the door, whether it's the door to a building or the door to a car, you know, or men stop picking up the tab, or...
When men stop treating women with a special sort of respect, and vice versa for that matter.
And the reason for this is that these are the ornamentations of life that represent an entire, developed, sophisticated, serious social system.
And that kind of care is gone.
I didn't even start doing this until at least in my 20s.
There's something nice about a man opening up the car door for a woman.
It will delay you.
When you've got to get out of the house, you've got to go somewhere.
That's you and your wife or you and your girlfriend or you and whoever, just some chick.
If you just each walk to your own door and just get in quickly and turn the car on, you'll leave faster.
But there's something less dignified.
There's something a little utilitarian, a little savage.
If you'll allow me.
Perhaps hyperbole.
About that sort of thing.
Take the minute.
Take the time.
Take the time for these little ornamentations that make life a little bit more civilized.
You know, when we sit down to eat dinner, We can either sit down, put our napkin on our lap, say grace, you know, look, greet everybody, pour wine, make sure everyone has their own food, then pick up our knife and fork and start eating our food.
Or we can just like shove our faces in our slop buckets and not do any of those things.
And I guess it would be faster and more efficient and utilitarian to do it in the latter way, but it would not be civilized.
It's very sad to see this from British Airways because I think we in America always think of the Brits as being a little more sophisticated than we are.
But their priorities are now out of order.
And it's not just on the man-woman thing on the airplane.
They're out of order even with regard to the species.
So the British Medical Journal has come out with an editorial.
I'm suggesting that doctors need to cut treatment.
Well, I should say doctors and the public health bureaucrats who, at least in the United Kingdom, are controlling the healthcare system.
In America, we still have a little bit more of a free market system, but it's probably heading in the British direction.
So they say, we need to cut healthcare to people in order to save the planet.
So you've got to stop providing medical care to human beings So that a rock hurtling through space can be happier?
I don't know.
The rock doesn't have emotions, but somehow out of care for the rock hurtling through space, we need to allow more people to die.
Here's from the editorial, quote, Healthcare contributes 4-5% of global greenhouse gas emissions in the National Health Service in the UK. 62% of these emissions are from its supply chains and 24% from delivery of healthcare.
Health professionals can be institutional leaders who drive decarbonization in hospitals through reducing over-diagnosis and over-treatment in healthcare.
Pause for a second.
What is...
What is over-diagnosis?
Presumably, if something is being diagnosed, then it's a real healthcare problem.
So if it's being over-diagnosed, you're saying that too many people are having their health problems properly diagnosed?
Anyway, it goes on.
Eliminating waste, streamlining services, and better managing suppliers and procurement.
All of these efforts will bring us closer to making healthcare more sustainable.
Okay, so that's a little weird to me to see that.
Okay, four to five percent of carbon dioxide coming out is from the healthcare system.
So let's, you know, that thing that keeps the people alive and healthy.
So let's stop that.
Let's stop doing that, and that way there will be a little less carbon dioxide in the air or something.
Because somehow that is leading the sun monster to kill us, or I don't know, that's at least what they say.
There's a separate piece in the British Medical Journal, beyond this broad editorial.
This is a separate piece by an author named Ramia Matthew, who goes even further, who says that we shouldn't even really diagnose and treat cancer.
Because, you know, we do it earlier and earlier.
Well, I'll just put it in his own words.
He writes, the pressure to diagnose cancers earlier and earlier is another major contributor to modern medicine's carbon footprint.
Over successive years, we've been told to continually lower cancer.
We are encouraged to investigate sooner and more extensively.
In primary care, most patients with mildly elevated or even high normal platelet counts now undergo a barrage of investigations in case thrombocytosis is an early indicator of underlying cancer.
What does the yield of these tests have to be like to make this an acceptable approach?
And shouldn't we be considering the environmental impact of putting so many patients on a conveyor belt of investigations as part of a cost-benefit analysis?
What on earth are you talking about, man?
Man, this guy has lost the thread.
Man, the British Medical Journal has lost the thread.
You're saying, how...
How much are we willing to offend Mother Gaia, you know, the earth nature god, this new pagan idea that we live for the benefit of our deity, this rock?
How much are we willing to offend the pagan deity of the earth while we diagnose cancer in people?
Let's flip the question.
How many cancer patients should die to appease the nature gods?
How many cancer patients is Ramia Matthew and the British Medical Journal willing to sacrifice to the nature gods so that the sun monster doesn't kill us at some point in the future?
My answer would be zero.
I don't like sacrificing people to the pagan gods.
I'm not afraid of the sun monster in particular.
And I'm certainly less concerned about the feelings and health of a rock than I am about human beings.
Because I think human beings have dignity.
And I think they are elevated above creation, the rest of the creation.
And I think that human beings...
Have dominion over the creation and that we ought to be good stewards of that, but we ought not to sacrifice ourselves for the rocks and the plants and the birds and the fish.
That's the Christian view.
That's the view of our civilization until about five minutes ago.
But as Christianity has fallen apart as a political force, and it obviously can't fall apart generally, but as a political force in the West, it has fallen apart.
What has happened?
The same old crazy, kooky, pagan ideas have crept back in afterward.
And you're seeing that even in what used to be a high point of civilization, the United Kingdom.
Talk about the tail wagging the dog.
If you did not catch backstage last night, then you missed...
Oh, look, you missed a lot of talk about politics, and you missed a lot of talk about whatever, a lot of exciting announcements we're making about entertainment.
But most importantly, you missed Smokey Mike and the God King.
you missed a very, very important performance by your favorite 1960s rock band.
So that's a huge mistake.
Even worse, though, it means you didn't hear this exciting news.
We've got a lot of new projects in the works that are going to change the way you stream, like our new comedy series that we're bringing you, featuring none other than the hilarious Adam Carolla, plus our new movie starring the fearless Gina Carano, Terror on the Prairie, which is currently in production in Montana.
Last, but certainly not least, we're dropping the teaser trailer for Shut In, our first original production.
It's a 60-second look into a thriller that you are not going to want to miss.
We cannot wait to share these final products with you, so keep your ears and eyes peeled for updates on their release dates.
Also, a little bit of news.
This news broke last night while I was...
On stage at the Ryman.
But the University of Wisconsin-Madison is messing around with my tour with Senator Ted Cruz.
So there's been a change of venue.
I'm flying out there immediately after this show.
More on that in just a minute.
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We'll be right back with a lot more.
Welcome back to the show.
So, Last night, when we took the stage at the Ryman, there was a chant heard above all of the other chants.
Three words.
You guessed them.
Let's go, Brandon.
Rang out from the moment the curtain opened up on stage.
And this is not just happening in Tennessee, and it's not just happening in the United States.
It's happening all over the world.
The revolt against Joe Biden through the euphemism, the euphemistic, the kind of in-joke chant, let's go, Brandon, has now hit the streets of Rome.
F*** Joe Biden!
- Get in!
So, I guess the Italians have not gotten the message.
The way that we do that chant here is we say, let's go, Brandon.
But it's confusing, because then you've got to translate from English to more English to meaning English into Italian.
It's very confusing.
Andiamo, Brandon.
Andiamo.
It doesn't sound as good in Italian.
Why?
Why are they doing this in Rome?
And elsewhere, too.
I mean, you're seeing similar kind of protests around the world.
Why?
Why?
Joe Biden is ostensibly, at least, the president of the United States.
He's not the leader of Italy.
He's not the leader of the European Union.
He's not the head of the United Nations.
So why are you seeing these protests?
Well, I think we need to recognize the United States is the leader of the world.
At the very least, the leader of the West.
at least until very recently, certainly the leader of the rest of the world.
And if you've ever traveled outside of the country, especially if you've ever traveled outside the country during an American election season, you will notice the degree to which the rest of the world looks to the United States for leadership.
And they are invested in the outcome of the American election.
And America really is sort of an empire, at least with a lot of soft power.
And that power is projected everywhere in the world.
I remember I was traveling in the Middle East during the 2016, right before the 2016 election really kicked into high gear.
It was already really up and going.
And I was in Beirut.
I was in the United Arab Emirates.
I was in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
And I was down in Muscat, Oman.
I was in India.
And anywhere I went, anywhere and everywhere I went, people were talking about the American election.
I thought it was so strange.
I thought, what do you people care?
Oh, right.
The United States is the leader of the world.
So they are very invested in that.
And I think these F Joe Biden chants and let's go Brandon chants happening elsewhere in the world, They represent broadly the power of the people versus the ruling class.
And the reason I think this has caught on, the F. Joe Biden thing and the Let's Go Brandon thing, is because it's a meme.
It expresses a real thing.
I really believe that Brandon ought to go.
But it's also a meme.
And memes are in themselves a representation of the power of the people.
In 2016, sometimes, you would see Trump supporters refer to meme magic.
This idea that you've got the ruling class here...
That controls all of the media, that controls all of the big tech platforms, that controls the administrative state, that controls much if not most of the elected government, that controls the universities and the schools and everything.
It just controls everything.
And then you've got some memes.
And then you've got these people who are just posting little memes on the internet and making fun of the ruling class and getting their message across because the emperor has no clothes.
There was a meme that came out after the election.
And it showed two different groups.
It showed one, it was like the New York Times building, and it said, the title was, who do you think would win in a fight?
And on the New York Times building it says, the entire globalist neoliberal media corporate establishment, or, and then it had a picture of Alex Jones, the radio host, or a shirtless vitamin salesman.
And Jones won, because Jones was the Trump supporter.
He was being identified there with Trump, and obviously the Times and all the rest of them were identified with Hillary.
So I think a lot of this has to do with people saying, look, all of the official power, almost all of it in the entire world, rests with the liberal establishment.
But we still have power, and how are we going to express it?
We're going to march through even the streets of Rome and chant, let's go, Brandon, or some variation thereof.
Now, you are seeing a pushback against this ugly rule of the oligarchic powers that really expanded during COVID. During COVID was really when the technocrats and the bureaucrats and the oligarchs came up and said, hey, we're going to suspend all of your normal life, all of the normal rule of law, and force you in your homes, force you out of your job, shut down your church, force you to muzzle yourself, make you take some experimental drug for a virus that's not particularly dangerous to most people.
and they just kept changing their minds by the day and further and further encroaching on people's freedoms and way of life.
So there has been some pushback, but it's been slow.
Well, Maybe you get a Republican governor who says, okay, we're going to not require masks.
Well, that's good, but other people are requiring masks.
Okay, we're going to...
The government is prohibited from mandating masks.
Okay, well, what about the private businesses?
What about my place of work?
Well, I don't know.
It's maybe...
And so increasing...
We're not going to mandate vaccines, but corporations might mandate vaccines, right?
And it's been this real battle the whole time.
Well, Governor Greg Abbott down in Texas...
Doing a great, great job.
And he just had a very important order come out.
Governor Greg Abbott is banning any entity in Texas from instituting a vaccine mandate.
This is very important.
You might remember that a little while ago, Governor Abbott banned the government from instituting them.
So the state government could not have a vaccine mandate.
But that still left most Texans out in the cold because most Texans don't work for the state government.
So now he is completely banning.
Here's the exact wording.
No entity in Texas can compel receipt of a COVID-19 vaccine by any individual, including an employee or a consumer, who objects to such vaccination for any reason of personal conscience based on a religious belief or for medical reasons, including prior recovery from COVID-19.
I hereby suspend all relevant statutes to the extent necessary to enforce this prohibition.
This is great.
I love this.
Extremely cool.
Very conservative.
Right.
Just.
It also shows us the difference between the libertarian point of view and the conservative point of view.
During a lot of the later 20th century, the libertarian and the conservative point of view were identified as being identical, and the libertarian point of view really dominated that.
Now I think we're seeing the split a little bit more.
And you're seeing a lot of neoconservatives and libertarian types objecting to Governor Abbott's decision here.
And they're saying this is an affront to liberty.
How is it an affront to liberty to say you're not going to have a vaccine mandate?
Well, they argue, because the private business should have the right to mandate vaccines.
So the government should not infringe on your individual rights, but the private businesses should infringe on your individual rights, and that's the greatest defense of liberty.
Now, the libertarian argument here, I think, is just silly.
It's like another meme of someone, you know, of that little snake from the Gadsden flag having his head crushed by a big boot, and it's got all the names of corporations on the boot, and the little snake is saying...
At least it's not the government.
Well, no.
If my way of life, if my traditions, if my liberties are being taken away by some woke corporation, that is no better to me than if the government is taking them away.
In many cases, it's worse because I have even less control over the woke corporation than I do over the government.
So what Abbott is doing...
We are not just going to get political power as conservatives and then not use it and let woke corporations do whatever they want.
We as conservatives are going to win political power and then wield the political power to affect our political vision.
There was a big debate that came up last night.
It was a debate over secession.
Should Texas, for instance, leave the United States?
Should the right-wing states secede, or vice versa?
Should the Democrat states secede, or should we encourage that, or should we permit that?
And it was a big divide.
It wasn't usual.
I agree with Candace Owens on...
Almost everything.
And Matt Walsh and I often agree on a lot of things.
But on this one, they were both calling for secession.
And I was more in line with what Drew, Ben, and Jeremy were saying.
Namely, first of all, secession is going to involve a civil war.
And I don't think we ought to clamor, at least.
If a war comes, I guess we have to deal with it.
But I don't think we should be clamoring for it.
But furthermore, it just seems to me that although there are many stalwart, strong, tough conservatives, like my friends who were on stage last night, Who are more open to the idea of a Texit or a Cal Exit or a Secession.
I actually think it's kind of the lib answer here.
Meaning, why would I allow half of my country just to go away and become a lib dystopia and kill a zillion babies and, you know, wave the rainbow flag of the liberal empire and rend my country in two?
Why would I do that when the alternative is...
Just winning back political power in my own country and prohibiting the left from pursuing their radical, destructive agenda.
Why can't we just stop them?
Right?
The secession argument seems to me to be a little bit of a you-do-you kind of argument.
Well, okay, I have no right to tell people in California that they can't mutilate children's genitals and kill babies and do all sorts of great...
Yes, I do.
I absolutely do have that right as an American, and I damn well intend to use that right.
And I think we all ought to do that.
Well, if people want to teach critical race theory in schools in New York, you can have no right to talk about that.
If they want to burn the American flag in some godforsaken left-wing state, then that's their right.
I don't think it's their right.
I don't think they have the right to do that.
And if they do happen to have the right today, I think we ought to take that right away.
Because I don't think that's a good right to...
At all to permit in this country.
And I think it'll lead to national destruction.
And I don't think great nations continue to grow and flourish by dividing themselves into ever smaller bits.
Absolutely not.
No way.
We're seeing this speech issue happening right now.
And it relates to COVID. I am flying out, moments after I wrap this show today, to Wisconsin with my friend Ted Cruz.
And we are going to be doing a verdict live show in conjunction with Young America's Foundation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This is a very left-wing school.
And we had a feeling that there would be some shenanigans.
And there are.
The school is demanding that we mask for the event.
Now, I'm not just saying they're demanding that the audience masks.
I hate that to begin with, and I think that people should basically just avoid that stupid mandate altogether.
But no, no, no.
They wanted me and Cruz to mask on stage during the event.
So we're going to be on stage on camera saying...
And that's going to be the event.
And so in recent years, there have been many attempts to stifle conservative speech on campus.
In this case, they'd just be basically taping our mouths shut.
So we said, well, hold it.
You can't expect the speakers...
Certainly not the speakers to muzzle themselves.
They said, no, that's the rule.
And so you look, and there is a rule.
Now, there's an exemption for education-related arts performances.
It would seem to me that a very popular podcast with a sitting U.S. senator would count as such.
But UW-Madison doesn't want to do that because they hate our show and they hate conservatives being able to speak.
And so they just want to shut us up.
They've given exemptions to liberal speeches, but they don't want to give an exemption to ours.
So the libertarian point of view, I think, would be, well, okay, what can we do?
It's you, Madison.
Let them do whatever they want.
My conservative point of view is, uh-uh.
No way.
We're going to figure out a workaround for this speech today.
But in the future, I think what we need to do is go in, take political power back, fire these administrators, change the rules, and transform that culture and transform that institution back towards something resembling a coherent, good, American educational institution.
More people have died from coronavirus in 2021 than died in 2020.
You might see some conservatives mentioning this on Twitter.
You're certainly not going to see this from the establishment media.
But why does it matter?
You know, I've always thought that the death statistics that have been seriously manipulated from the very beginning of the epidemic to the point that anyone who died with COVID was counted as dying of COVID.
You know, the median and average age of a COVID death in the United States have been north of 80 from the beginning.
And they've been higher than the average life expectancy in the United States.
But we're never allowed to take that into account or suggest that that might tell us something about the meaning of these numbers.
We even saw in some cases people who died in a car wreck, if they died with the coronavirus, it was called a COVID death.
Someone could get shot in the head.
And then if they died with coronavirus, then they were counted as a And you had public health officials telling us that, but because there was a political incentive to inflate these numbers, that's the way the statistics were counted.
So I thought, I don't know, why are now we playing this silly statistics game where we're trying to make arguments from, really, arguments about justice, the justice of forced vaccinations, the justice about the mask mandates, the justice about all of this, from just these narrow kind of statistics?
Well, there is one reason that these numbers matter.
It shows you the double standard and it shows you how from the beginning there was never going to be any way to argue from the science to convince these people to stop their madness.
When people were dying under Trump, under the Trump administration, when people were dying of COVID, notably in Democrat states, California did very poorly on the virus and New York did the worst of all on the virus.
New Jersey did pretty bad too.
That was Trump's fault.
When Andy Cuomo was sending sick people into nursing homes and killing elderly New Yorkers needlessly by the thousands, that was Trump's fault.
All of the COVID deaths were Trump's fault.
But now that people are dying ostensibly of COVID on Joe Biden's watch, whose fault is it?
Ron DeSantis, of course.
Greg Abbott, of course.
It's the Republican governor's.
How come it wasn't the Democrat governor's fault when they were dying in Democrat states, often, under Trump?
How come that was the president's fault then, but now it's not the president's fault, it's the governor's fault?
Because there is no logic to this.
Because this is not about the science or even about a coherent political philosophy.
This is about using and exploiting a virus to attain new political powers and to wield them ruthlessly against the left's opponents.
That's what it's about.
That's what it's been about from the very beginning.
And so I don't want to toot my own horn.
You know how much I hate to say I told you so.
But from, if not day one, at least day two, and really I think from day one of this epidemic, I came out and said, guys, don't give in.
Don't give in on this stuff.
This seems really overblown.
This seems opportunistic and cynical.
Well, a number of other people, not just the rock-ribbed right-wingers working in politics, but a lot of other people called this out as well, including Eric Clapton.
Eric Clapton, one of the great popular musicians of the last 50 years.
Eric Clapton is not exactly, I don't know, he's not like a MAGA hat wearing, rock-ribbed conservative.
He's expressed some conservative views over the years, but he's also a rock musician.
He's expressed some kind of liberal views.
So, Eric Clapton...
Went out and got the vaccine.
He got the COVID vaccine.
He was encouraged to do it.
I guess he's a little slightly long in the tooth these days.
You know, he's not as young as he once was.
So he goes, gets the vaccine, and he has an adverse reaction to it.
And it causes him some nerve problems.
He already had a nerve issue, but it causes him some more nerve problems.
And he's talking to his doctors, and they said, ah, yeah, well, you know, this does happen sometimes.
And he couldn't play guitar for some period of time, several weeks at least.
And so now he's really campaigning against vaccine mandates.
He's saying he won't play at venues that require the vaccines.
And so I think this is really admirable.
I tweeted out and I said, you know, whatever you think of Clapton, the man's got more credibility than Dr.
Fauci.
So I got a call from Rolling Stone magazine.
It doesn't happen a lot.
Of the magazines that call for interviews, Rolling Stone is not one of them.
And they're really angry at Clapton.
The headline is, Eric Clapton isn't just spouting vaccine nonsense.
He's bankrolling it.
I do have to thank the author of this piece because he quoted me, I think, pretty faithfully.
He actually did express my views on this.
But it's amazing that Rolling Stone needed some right-winger to tell them this, which is, Since when are rock and roll stars supposed to just go along with the establishment party line?
When did that happen?
Isn't that kind of weird?
I'm not even saying I love rock and roll.
You know, I do not think it's the highest form of art, even though I guess I'm technically in a rock band, from like, you know, a sort of 1960s rock band.
But I don't think it's the highest form of art, okay?
But Rolling Stone does, and a lot of people do in our culture.
A lot of people love rock and roll, and rock and roll was all about flicking a middle finger to established authority and breaking rules and being subversive.
Except now you'll notice all of it, just about, Goes along with the party line.
Now, part of this is because the radicals of the 1960s became the establishment, and they had lots of bad ideas, and they've done a very bad job with society, and that's why you're seeing society crumble all around you.
But those rockers are part of that establishment, and very few of them, with some exceptions, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison also has been pretty strong against these vaccine mandates.
They've come out and said, no, actually, I don't think we should just give all our political rights and freedoms to Dr.
Fauci.
No, this seems kind of wrong.
Actually, no, I'm going to trust my audience to make their own medical decisions, like we used to do in this civilization.
No, I'm actually going to trust my own listeners to make some basic decisions about their own lives.
That is, I think, the greatest evidence of all that our ruling class, our ruling elite, our ruling establishment has transformed radically.
And so if we are going to undo that, I don't think we need to grow our hair out or get a ton of rock tattoos or anything like that, do a bunch of drugs.
Probably we shouldn't do any of those things.
But what we are going to have to do is question that ruling establishment.
We're going to have to subvert it in creative ways.
And we're going to have to take a very long path, just like it did for the radicals of the 60s, a years, decades long path to gradually but steadily attain political power and wield it and have the courage to wield it.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you up in Wisconsin tonight.
I'll see you back here tomorrow.
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Superman has come out as gay.
We're told that this is all about creating gender greater representation for supposedly marginalized groups.
But I think there's something else going on, and I'll explain what that is.
Also, parents in Loudoun County call for the superintendent to resign after the school district covered up the rape of a girl in a school bathroom.
And the Chicago Police Department is having trouble recruiting new cops.
I wonder why that is.
Plus, Lego commits itself to combating gender stereotypes.
