Ep. 865 - CNN Gets Into The Ring With a Cage Fighter
A Seattle school cancels Halloween in the name of “diversity, inclusion, and equity,” Joe Rogan takes CNN’s top medical correspondent to task for lying about ivermectin, and YouTube censors Steven Crowder for telling the truth.
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The next couple of months are going to look a little bit different as the cultural revolution marches on.
In the name of diversity, inclusion, and equity, Seattle School is canceling its annual Halloween parade.
According to the Libs, black people apparently can't carve jack-o'-lanterns.
In the name of public health, one of the most famous basketball players in the world is going to be benched for refusing the Fauci ouchie.
And as a consequence of those same public health measures, the Biden White House is warning that you might not get any Christmas presents this year.
But there is a bright side.
From school board meetings to churches to the Joe Rogan podcast, the people aren't going down without a fight.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is from Davidson, who says, The thing about conspiracies is sometimes the theories are right.
Well, that's true.
And you saw a lot of that in 2016, 2017, 2018.
We were told it's a conspiracy theory that the FBI is spying on Donald Trump.
Actually, even before that, we were told it's a conspiracy that the Obama IRS is targeting conservative organizations.
It's a conspiracy.
It's a conspiracy that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab.
How many times do these theories need to be proven correct before we stop calling them conspiracy theories?
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Black people can't carve pumpkins.
Apparently.
This is what I have learned from a school in Seattle.
The school in Seattle has an annual pumpkin parade.
That's a sweet thing to do.
Isn't that nice?
Little kids go around.
They've got their pumpkins.
They carve.
That's a nice little fall Halloween tradition.
Or at least it was at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School.
But you see that school's racial equity team.
Why does it have a racial?
I don't know.
But they have a racial equity team.
This is one of the consequences of critical race theory, and this is one of the effects of that you see in the world, this critical race theory that begins in law schools and then permeates our legal and academic systems to the point that you have racial equity teams in elementary schools and to the point that they cancel pumpkin parades.
Apparently, quote, historically the pumpkin parade marginalizes students of color who do not celebrate the holiday.
Specifically, these students have requested to be isolated on campus while the event took place.
This, according to a spokesman from the school, talking to our friend Jason Ranz, who's a radio host in Seattle.
The students are like six, right?
So we are being told that, and I don't even believe that this is true, but let's just say that it is true that a six-year-old didn't want to participate in the school activity.
We are being told that that is basically the equivalent of a bus boycott.
We're told this is basically the equivalent of the civil rights marches, the March on Washington.
Because you see, black people, they don't have Halloween.
That's a white person holiday.
They don't have the fall.
The fall is a white person season.
What is a black person season?
I have no idea.
It seems to me it's pretty counterproductive to caricature black people in this way.
If black people can't carve the pumpkins, it actually reminds me of something that I noticed in college.
So I'm in college, not that long ago, what was it, like 10 years ago?
Less.
And I'm in college, and it was Martin Luther King Day.
Very, very liberal, liberal college.
And they served a special meal in the dining halls.
They served Barack Obama's favorite fried chicken recipe.
And they served a bunch of other food that's mostly southern food that we traditionally associate with black people, watermelon, that sort of thing.
And I looked at that and I thought, hold on, so Martin Luther King Day, on Martin Luther King Day you have Barack Obama's favorite fried chicken recipe, because Obama and Martin Luther King are both black, so that makes total sense.
And Obama, because he's a black guy, man, he loves his fried chicken, isn't that right?
I doubt that he does.
I suspect that Barack Obama probably prefers Mahi Mahi or something, because he grew up in Hawaii and he was raised almost exclusively by white people.
And it's this ridiculous caricature to pretend that because Barack Obama's black, what, he drinks grape soda or something?
No, because...
At these very liberal, enlightened institutions, everyone's got to fit in their little box.
And only white people do this, and only black people do this.
And apparently this has gone all the way down to this very woke elementary school where the black kids can't carve the pumpkins.
Halloween is not the only holiday being canceled, though.
Looking beyond Halloween, we are now being told...
We were excited for a little bit because Dr. Fauci told us that maybe we could have Christmas this year.
Remember, he canceled it last year, then he sort of canceled it this year, and then he got pushed back.
And so he said, okay, maybe you can have Christmas.
But Jen Psaki over at the White House says, sure, you can celebrate Christmas, but you ain't going to get any presents.
Based on everything being announced today, can this administration guarantee...
That holiday packages will arrive on time?
We are not the Postal Service or UPS or FedEx.
We cannot guarantee.
What we can do is use every lever at the federal government disposal to reduce delays, to ensure that we are addressing bottlenecks in the system, including ports and the need for them to be open longer hours so that goods can arrive.
And we can continue to press not only workers and unions, but also companies to take as many steps as they can to reduce these delays.
Now, I don't want to be too harsh here and just take pot shots at Jen Psaki because I can.
I suppose there is a nice aspect of reducing the materialism and the commercialism of Christmas and bringing the real reason for the season back into focus.
Yes, that is all good.
I'm not sure this is the way to do it, though.
I don't think that the way to reduce the commercialism of Christmas...
That the best way is necessarily to destroy the global supply chains and lock down the world over a cough.
I don't know that that's...
I suppose whatever works.
But what this really shows you beyond Christmas, and this will have effects well beyond Christmas, is the enormous tale of these lockdowns.
The lie that we were told a year ago, beginning with the 15 days to slow the spread, that are now in the 590th day to slow the spread...
Was that you could shut down the country, really shut down the entire world, and then that would just be fine and there would be no consequences.
You just lock people up for weeks and weeks and months and months and now well over a year.
You stop making stuff, you stop shipping stuff, you stop being productive, and then that would be fine and you can just turn it on again.
You can turn off the world and turn it on again.
I don't particularly like Ayn Rand's book, Atlas Shrugged.
I think it's a pretty stupid book and her philosophy is awful.
However, you got to give the woman credit here.
The book is about turning off the motor of the world and stopping the productive aspects of the world economy and recognizing that there are terrible consequences of that.
We are seeing that right now.
So at least in that narrow aspect, that is correct.
And what does the White House have to tell us about this?
Say, you know, hey, look, nothing to see here.
You're not going to get your Christmas presents.
If anyone has tried to order anything over the past six months, you'll know it's very difficult.
I moved into a house for the first time.
I was living in a small apartment, and I moved into a house in Tennessee, so I needed a bunch of furniture.
I still don't have a lot of that furniture because the supply chains are completely destroyed.
And that is going to continue for a long time.
So if you want to get your little kitties a Christmas present, I would start stocking up now.
And speaking of these COVID lockdowns, I guess the worse it is for the economy, the worse it is for our political system, in some ways, the better it is for the culture.
Things are getting worse and worse and worse, but people are recognizing that.
Even people who are not traditionally rock-ribbed conservatives, people who are not necessarily traditionally on our side, they're beginning to wake up and say, wow, this liberal ruling class, there's something really, really wrong here.
I'm trying to think of the people...
Well, you notice this a little bit with the Me Too movement.
You'd see a couple of Left-wingers waking up and saying, wow, the right-wing here is actually making a little bit more sense.
Well, you notice that J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, is a left-wing feminist, but she's now agreeing with the right on the transgender issue because the issue has gotten so crazy.
And here in our own country, I think the clearest example of this is Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan, who is now being vilified by the media, is no rock-ribbed conservative.
Joe Rogan was a Bernie bro.
He supported the furthest left candidate in the presidential race last cycle, last year.
And yet, because Joe has sort of seen through the haze and the fog and the lies, seen behind the curtain of this lying media, Joe Rogan is now on the side of conservatives and he called out CNN to their face.
Joe Rogan invited Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, onto his show, and he had a simple question.
Does it bother you that your network totally lied about me?
You're talking about a drug that's been given out to billions and billions of people, a drug that was responsible for one of the inventors of it making the Nobel Prize in 2015.
A drug that has been shown to stop viral replication in vitro.
You know that, right?
Why would they lie and say that's horse dewormer?
I can afford people medicine, mother.
This is ridiculous.
It's just a lie.
I don't think anyone is thick.
But don't you think that a lie like that is dangerous on a news network when you know that they know they're lying?
You know that they know that I took medicine.
Like, here it is.
This is ivermectin.
This is right here.
Somebody gave it to me.
All right.
Hang on.
The thing is, we're going so fast.
I feel like I'm missing- Do you think that that's a problem?
That your news network lies?
Well, I don't- Dude.
What did they say?
They lied and said I was taking horse dewormer.
First of all, it was prescribed to me by a doctor- Yeah, yeah.
Along with- They shouldn't have said it was worse.
A bunch of other medications.
If you got a human- Because there were people that were taking the veterinary medication, and you're not, obviously.
You got it from a doctor, so it shouldn't be called that.
Ivermectin can be a very effective medication.
There it is.
Thank you, Sanjay.
Thank you, CNN, for admitting this when you got totally called out on it and backed into a corner and you tried every which way to evade it.
I can't believe Sanjay Goop's first reaction here, which is, well, uh, hold on.
I mean, we're going kind of fast, aren't we?
Joe Rogan speaks very slowly and he's saying one thing.
It's not like he's moving a mile a minute here and jumping from topic to topic.
He goes, hey, does it bother you that you guys lied about this drug that I took?
Joe, I just, gosh, slow down, buddy.
Okay, does it bother you?
And then so finally, Gupta can't get out of it, and Rogan's not letting him off the hook, and Gupta finally has to admit, okay, yeah, all right, sure, we said that you took horse dewormer, and yeah, I'm looking at the pill bottle that was prescribed by the guy, and I guess, yeah, I guess you didn't.
Okay, can we move on now?
Can we move on now, please?
And Joe Rogan won't let him move on.
Can I just come back to the one?
I want to talk about two things on the ledger.
Before we get to that, does it bother you that the news network you work for out and out lied, just outright lied about me taking horse dewormer?
They shouldn't have said that.
Why did they do that?
I don't know.
You didn't ask?
You didn't think that was where you're the medical guy over there.
I didn't ask.
I should have asked before coming into the podcast.
But they did it with such glee.
No, Joe.
Yes, they did.
I watched.
No, no, Joe!
And they did do it with Glee.
And they did it without any even hint of shame.
And then so when he goes, yeah, well, okay, maybe they shouldn't have done that.
Can we please move on now?
No, we can't move on.
Why did they do that?
Can you give me an answer?
Well, I don't know.
What do you mean you don't know?
You're their top medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, and you thought that you could just get away with this, and you could giggle and say, oh, haha, all those stupid idiot rube Nazi alt-right, whatever label they want to say, Trump-supporting bitter-clinging rubes are just gobbling up horse dewormer.
What a bunch of idiots.
Oh, and Joe Rogan's one of them?
Yeah, he's one of them now, too.
Even though he was a Bernie bro like five minutes ago, yeah, now we hate him.
We used to like him when he was on the left, but now he has said sort of some slightly critical things about Biden.
Yeah, he's a dumb idiot who eats horse gum and paste, right?
So all I would say to Joe Rogan here is, yes, slay queen, slay, yes, awesome.
And what I would say to everyone who listened to that is, Look at how they fold when they're called on it.
Look at how they fold.
You know, I guess this is the phenomenon of the so-and-so destroys debates.
What's the format?
It's conservative person destroys liberal person in a debate, and then you post a five-minute clip, and you see left-wingers getting their most sacred, cherished...
Maxims and moral edicts knocked down before their very eyes with facts and logic.
And so I guess we at The Daily Wire sort of pioneered this particular genre.
But the reason that it went viral is because, one, the right-wing arguments, the conservative arguments, tend to be more persuasive than the left-wing slogans.
And because the left-wingers are unprepared.
99 times out of 100, the left-wingers can't respond to the conservative arguments.
I think this is because the conservative arguments are stronger.
But even if you don't think that...
The most basic reason why the left-wingers can't respond to the right-wingers is because the left-wingers are never exposed to those arguments.
The left-wingers are living in a bubble.
They are dominating the media and the big tech companies and the educational institutions and the government.
And so they're just unaware of their own BS and they're never called out on it.
It's like a fish in water.
They're just not aware of these crazy, ridiculous premises that they're moving around in.
And so any time that some conservatives are finally able to break through the bubble, Whether it's because they get to speak on a college campus, through sheer tyranny of will, or because they make it onto some TV show, or because they get Sanjay Gupta to sit down, they fold.
They fold because there is no defense for the preposterous notion that people who look into ivermectin are eating horse dewormer.
It's just not true.
So the question is...
What else are they lying about?
And this is where we get to my friend Stephen Crowder.
I'm going to try to speak to my friend Stephen Crowder a little bit later today.
You probably haven't heard much from him on YouTube recently because he's been kicked off of YouTube.
And the way YouTube works is you get strikes.
So you get strikes usually for just saying true things, if those true things are inconvenient.
But they'll give you strikes for any number of reasons.
They find your content offensive.
They say your content is misleading, even if it's Leading?
It's the opposite of misleading.
Even if it's honest content, then especially they'll go after you.
And so Crowder now has two strikes on his channel.
That means he's going to be down for a week.
Third strike, you're out.
Third strike, Stephen Crowder, one of the most popular channels on YouTube, is gone forever.
Why is Stephen Crowder gone?
Well, it's actually a little bit our fault.
Our fault here at the Daily Wire.
We broke a story the other day.
This was a major news story about how in Loudoun County, a girl was raped, and she was raped in a bathroom, allegedly, and she was raped, allegedly, by a guy who sometimes wears a dress, who probably doesn't belong in that girl's bathroom, but the left now believes that men should enter the women's bathrooms, and they tell us there's no risk of any women being harmed here, and then a woman was harmed, and the school covers it up.
So we broke that story.
The establishment media didn't want to cover it.
Finally now, actually, the Washington Post has had to pick it up, which we'll get to in a second.
But Stephen Crowder covers the story.
That was enough.
Here is what the YouTube lawyer wrote to Stephen Crowder.
On October 30th, Mr.
Crowder uploaded another video that YouTube has determined continues his prior conduct.
The video contains a segment that targets the transgender community in an offensive manner, for example, by indicating that trans people pose a rape threat to women.
Alright, I'll finish reading it before we answer this.
YouTube has removed this video from the service and assessed a strike against the Stephen Crowder channel.
Per YouTube strikes policy, this results in a one-week upload freeze for the channel.
Further violation of YouTube's hate speech policy will result in additional penalties.
This is an acceleration of the policy that I violated a couple of weeks ago, where our social media team caught it in time.
But do you remember this?
There was a portion of my show that was censored on YouTube.
It was last week or two weeks ago.
And the terrible thing that I did, the awful misconduct I engaged in, was that I quoted the director of the CDC.
Dr.
Rochelle Walensky.
I don't know, am I even allowed to say it now?
Well, I'll say it, and if they censor me, I guess Stephen Crowder and I will go down together.
But what the CDC director said was that the coronavirus, and in particular the Delta variant, was being transmitted even among vaccinated people.
That the vaccines did not prevent the contraction and transmission of the coronavirus.
I did not suggest that the vaccine doesn't do anything at all.
I did not suggest that the vaccine doesn't have any potentially positive upside with regard to these things.
I just played the clip from the director of the CDC. We were told that you can't do that.
Can we get away with it now?
Because I'm just talking about what YouTube is saying, because the YouTube policy says you can't say this thing that the CDC director said.
What Steven Crowder did was he just read our news story.
He just read a news story that now even the Washington Post has to carry.
But because the reality...
This contradicted the left's narrative, namely that letting men into the women's bathroom can never result in any bad thing happening to women.
Letting men into the women's changing room can never result in any bad thing happening to women.
Because reality contradicted the lies of the left, Stephen Crowder doesn't get to have a YouTube channel, at least for a week, possibly not yet.
Forever.
That's an actual sacrifice.
Crowder is sacrificing money right now.
A lot of money.
He's sacrificing his voice.
He's sacrificing his career for stating a plain truth.
And it is going to get worse.
As the reality continues to contradict their narrative, they are going to turn up the censorship.
We're seeing it happen in real time.
Welcome to my show!
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This weekend's Sunday special is going to add to this kind of craziness that we've been ginning up here at The Daily Wire.
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They sit down, they make sense of what's going on, so go check that out on the Sunday special.
We'll be right back with a lot more.
Steven Crowder, I hate to say nice things about the guy, but he's actually sacrificing something right now.
He's telling the truth, and he's being punished financially, professionally, maybe personally soon enough.
And he's not the only one.
Kyrie Irving.
This is someone that I wasn't paying particular attention to.
More than a month ago.
I do not follow sports all that closely.
The only sport I really follow is baseball.
Kyrie Irving is a basketball player.
But Kyrie Irving has caught my attention.
And he's caught my attention because he is taking a stand and he is being punished for it.
Kyrie Irving, one of the most prominent athletes in the world, is being benched because he refuses to take the Fauci ouchie.
You think I really want to give up on my dream to go after a championship?
You think I really just want to give up my job?
You think I really just want to sit at home and not go after the things with my teammates that I've been able to grow with, to learn with, to learn that it takes sacrifice in this space?
Because we could be easily at home chilling with our families, but we're choosing to go out there and perform.
And even in that job, that's a dream come true.
I've been working on that since I was in fourth grade.
You think I want to give up my livelihood because of a mandate?
Because I don't have accommodations?
Because I'm unvaccinated?
Come on.
I'm not going to be used as a person in this agenda.
I'm not even going to speak on that.
I'm just saying it should not be divided amongst all of us.
It should just be understood and respected.
A principled stand.
As I've mentioned before, there are plenty of reasons why one would not get the vaccine.
Kyrie Irving might be looking at the fact that he is a young, ostensibly very healthy person, and the chances of him going to the hospital or dying from the coronavirus are exceptionally low.
He might be looking at the way that the vaccines were produced.
I don't know.
I'm not saying this applies directly to Irving.
I'm saying these are reasons that people might object to taking the vaccine, because they were developed, and in some cases produced, with Stem cells derived from aborted fetal lines.
That would be one reason why.
He might be looking at a study from UC Davis, which showed that for some young men, the risk from the vaccine is actually greater than the risk from the virus itself.
The study came out not that long ago.
He might be looking at the many widely acknowledged side effects from the vaccine.
The side effects that we're told occur in rare cases, but don't forget, the risk to young healthy people from the coronavirus is also quite low.
Risks from the vaccine like myocarditis, pericarditis, nerve damage, blood clots.
We've seen these.
These are real.
They have been acknowledged by the CDC and the FDA. Maybe Kyrie's making a prudential judgment here, and he's going to pay the price for that.
He is going to be benched in the prime of his career, making a lot, a lot of money.
He's going to stop making all of that money.
He's going to stop getting to do the thing that he's...
Best known for, that he's flourishing in, that he really loves to do, he's making a real sacrifice.
That's pretty admirable.
And when people make these kinds of sacrifices, the truth has a funny way of getting out.
The truth has a funny way of getting out.
So Crowder right now, because he was reading our story on Loudoun County, now his channel's down.
But you know what?
the establishment media have to pick up the story.
This was a pretty shocking thing.
I saw it yesterday.
Loudoun County student accused in sexual assault at two county schools, sparking outrage from parents.
That's in the Washington Post.
This, I think, is the first time that reporting has gone in this direction.
Usually what happens is the left-wing media investigate and report on stories, and then the right-wing media read those stories, try to take out the BS, and try to tell you what actually happened based on the investigative work of the left-wing outlets because investigative journalism is very expensive, and it requires a big ecosystem, and conservatives, until very recently, and it requires a big ecosystem, and conservatives, until very recently, haven't really had it.
So that's usually the direction it goes in.
In this case, Daily Wire broke the story, and the Washington Post had to pick it up.
And they won't give us credit for it, and they won't even acknowledge us.
But what this means is that, at least in some cases, it is now conservatives who are setting the news cycle.
It's conservatives who are setting the agenda.
This is just one story.
How many other stories are there like this?
When you're seeing these protests right now at the Loudoun County School Board, Just the other day, more than 60 concerned parents, students, and residents spoke up at the school board meeting, many demanding the resignation of the superintendent.
Scott Ziegler, in the wake of allegations that he and the school district covered up sexual assaults.
Now, Ziegler said over the summer in a meeting that this school district did not have, quote, any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms, and it turns out that that was not true.
This guy should go down.
He should lose his job.
He might be a nice guy.
If he was lying, he obviously wasn't a particularly nice guy.
Doesn't matter.
The fact that these parents are showing up and demanding that these people get fired, that is a good thing.
That is the first step back into reasserting some kind of political power.
This is the way to do it, okay?
Desiccated culture.
We are told that compassion is when you go really soft, and you're just really nice, and you don't rock the boat, and you just go along to get along.
And that's compassion, right?
No.
Sometimes compassion means you've got to be tough.
Sometimes compassion means you've got to pick a side.
There's a story that very few people are reporting on that I think actually tells you a lot about this culture right now.
It's a story over in the United Kingdom, and it has to do with churches.
Michael Nazir Ali, I might be mispronouncing that, he's the former bishop of Rochester, he's one of the best known Anglican clerics in the world, is reportedly about to be ordained a Catholic priest.
He's converting from the Church of England to Catholicism.
And because of that, he was a bishop, but he can't be a bishop in the Catholic Church.
He's married, it wouldn't work out all that well, so he's taking...
I think a promotion, obviously, in the church that he's now going to be a member of, but he's taking a demotion in terms of his role in that church.
The reason I bring this up is not even to make a religious point.
It's to show that this is a deeper representation of a phenomenon that we are seeing in politics.
Namely, distinctions are becoming clearer.
People are not really standing in the middle of the road anymore.
If you stand in the middle of the road, you're going to get hit by a truck.
The Church of England, especially in recent decades, has really fallen, and they've embraced all the wokest, most radical left-wing trappings of the world, and they seem to have really, really, really lost their way.
And people have always viewed the Church of England as a kind of middle ground between the low church of evangelicalism and the high church of Catholicism.
They want to have a sort of middle way.
But there is no real middle way here.
Okay?
You've got to pick a side.
Regardless of your views of these religious questions, we're seeing this play out at every aspect of the politics and of the culture.
And clarity can be a very good thing.
It can lead to a little tough road, a little bit of a bumpy road in the meantime.
And we're seeing that throughout our economy, our political system, and our spiritual life, frankly.
But that clarity can be a very good thing.
Clarity is...
Obviously, it helps you see.
It helps you sanitize your culture.
Hopefully, it gives us a path forward.
We've got to get to the mailbag, my absolute favorite time of the week.
All right.
First question up from James.
Michael, I've heard your stance on dating in high school.
As a high schooler who listens to you, I would like to ask, what is the point of a high school relationship?
You're most likely not going to get married, so what is the point?
Well, I think you ought to write this question to my wife, who also happens to have been my high school sweetheart, James.
Maybe you should write this question into my grandparents, who also happen to have been high school sweethearts, James.
I think people can.
I've joked about this on the show before, but I said my wife and I dated in high school.
Then we split up for college, which I think is now a statutory requirement in our modern culture.
And then we realized that was crazy, and we shouldn't have broken up after high school.
And we got back together, then we got married, and now we have our cute little child.
And so I think, actually...
Dating in high school can be a very good thing.
It obviously can lead to marriage.
It can lead to bad marriages.
But some of the best marriages I've ever seen have been between high school sweethearts.
And the reason for this is...
The way that we look at marriage today is that marriage is something you do once you've really completely grown up and you've done everything you want to do and you've traveled to all the places you want to go and you've slept with all the people you want to sleep with and you've had all the fun, wild, crazy experiences that you wanted to have and now you just need someone to settle down your life and you're going to have a partnership and you're going to produce a child together and you're going to agree on these certain things and check a bunch of boxes.
I don't think that's really how it works.
I asked my grandfather on, I think it was the occasion of his 60th wedding anniversary, I said, how do you have a good marriage?
You guys have the greatest marriage I've ever seen.
How did you do it?
He said, well, patience is very important.
Shared experience is very important, going all the way back to those early, early days.
And in his case, because he was a Navy captain, frequent absence.
He said that doesn't hurt either.
But certainly we can agree on the first two.
And that shared experience thing is very important because in some cases people will grow apart.
If they have a bad marriage, they're probably going to grow apart.
But also you can grow together.
My wife and I do not think the same things that we thought or view the world in the same way that we did when we were in high school.
And it's not that we even viewed the world exactly in the same way as each other when we were in high school, but we have grown together.
So we now have this kind of different view, and that view, every single minute, more and more resembles the way that she and I see the world together.
So I think that is important.
I'm not...
I think what you're getting at in your question here is you're saying, why are people screwing around in high school?
That's not a good idea.
They shouldn't do that.
Yeah, people should probably...
Not make the mistakes of youth, and probably many of them are going to make the mistakes of youth, and they shouldn't get carried away and do sorts of bad things.
But I think dating in high school can be a very, very wonderful thing.
I'm living evidence of that.
Next question up from Adam.
Dear Mr.
Knowles, as you are Italian, I have a few questions for you.
What is your favorite pasta?
Favorite Italian dish?
And what is and isn't acceptable on pizza?
And what is pineapple?
Why is pineapple not allowed on pizza?
Thank you for everything you do.
I really enjoyed Speechless.
My favorite pasta dish, speaking of my wife, would be my wife's lasagna, which is a fresh homemade lasagna with the homemade...
Pasta itself.
You know, you do it in the little grinder thing.
And it has a nice pork kind of ragu, but it's got a nice bechamel, and it's just absolutely delicious.
What is my favorite...
Italian dish more broadly, I don't know, veal saltimboca maybe.
What is...
Oh, and why is pineapple not allowed on pizza?
Because it's gross and weird and, you know, I don't think...
Christopher Columbus never had it.
Marco Polo never had it.
Okay, it's weird.
It's not good.
The impulse to put pineapple on pizza is that you want a little sweet and a little savory, right?
That's why it goes with ham on pizza.
But that is very...
De classe, my friends.
Now, if you want the sweet and the savory on the pizza, you need to order the greatest pizza toppings, which is sausage and onion.
The sausage is better than the ham, the onion much better than the pineapple.
Both a little subtler in the way they play with those flavors, and very, very delicious.
Thank you for enjoying Speechless.
From Mike.
Hello, fellow Michael.
I wanted to ask you why you think most people in Hollywood are libs.
Are they selling their soul to the devil, living in fun now, but damned to eternal damnation?
Why is it so disproportionately liberal?
Sincerely, a fellow COVID-19 survivor.
Yes.
Yes, in part, to your suggestions.
People who work in the arts tend to be a little unsettled, tend to be a little bit kooky and eccentric.
And so that, I guess, would allow them to...
We're impel them to be a little more liberal.
But there's a really practical reason as to why Hollywood itself is so liberal.
It actually has to do with the Supreme Court.
In the old days, there was something called the studio system.
During the studio system, actors and actresses and people working on movies had real jobs.
And so they would sign a contract, and they'd sign a contract with a studio, and they would just make movies with the studio.
And they'd get a regular sort of salary and regular compensation, and they could look forward to the kind of work that they were going to do, and they actually worked for a company.
The Supreme Court struck that down, In the middle of the 20th century, the Supreme Court strikes down the studio system, says it's got all these various problems, and so then everyone became a freelancer.
And freelancers are nuts.
I mean, I remember this.
I have worked in Hollywood to varying degrees over the years, and if you've ever met an actor or someone working in the arts, you know their schedules are all over the place.
In some ways, I guess it's a return to the More natural state of artists.
I'm thinking of Pinocchio.
You know, hi diddle-dee-dee, the actor life for me.
Hi diddle-dee-doo, you sleep till after two.
You know, you're staying up really late.
You're sleeping in.
You're going to work on Tuesday but not work on Thursday.
And that kind of tumultuous life leads people into a more liberal lifestyle because it's just not as settled, certainly not as disciplined, and it can allow your passions to run away with you.
From Sarah.
Michael, I want to get your opinion on a few things.
All right, well, I've got my opinion to give, Sarah.
One, as a religious person, what level of language, violence, sex is acceptable to consume in a movie?
I'll take these one by one.
I think that any degree, just about, can be acceptable...
Depending on the context.
So, for instance, the Bible includes lots of pretty gory, raunchy stuff.
Mass slaughter, incest, lots of yucky things, lots of very bad things.
Ritualistic killing, the passion, for goodness sakes.
So, In the context of the Bible, it's obviously not pornography.
It's serving a very important purpose.
The most important narrative purpose that there could be.
Namely, leading toward your salvation.
So there, I think it's fine.
But there are movies and TV shows that include much lower levels of raunchiness and sex and gore and violence and things like that that I think are not acceptable because they do not serve a purpose and they're just merely titillating or just merely shocking and they're basically just pornography.
There is actually a difference here between obscenity and real art.
And as Justice Potter Stewart famously put it, although he is derided for it, you actually can know it when you see it.
Second question you ask, what level of those elements would be acceptable to take part in if you were acting in it?
This is a tricky question.
I used to think that anything was acceptable.
You know, you're an actor.
That's your job, so you're going to kiss someone, sleep with someone.
That's no big deal.
That's just your job, and don't worry about it.
But it is...
I've actually rethought this view because the way that acting is taught these days and the way that actors are trained for the past hundred years or so is in systems that were derived from Freud and then kind of systematized by the Stanislavski system, the Stanislavski school at the Moscow Art Theater, and then developed by Lee Strasberg into The Method or by Stella Adler into her technique or Sanford Meisner or the various people associated with the group theater.
But it all comes from the unconscious.
So the idea is, if you want to put on a good performance, And pretend, play act, that you're in love with this person on screen, that the best way to do that is to actually sort of fall in love with the person.
Because then you're not just making these conscious, representational kinds of choices as an actor on screen, but you're actually behaving organically.
This is the buzzword in modern acting.
But if you are doing that, if you're really acting organically, then you really have fallen in love with someone.
And in that way, it is sort of a betrayal.
And so...
My friend Drew Clavin very often would remind me, especially back in my actor days, that actors historically are associated with criminals and prostitutes.
It's a little bit of a writer dig at the actors.
But there is something to that.
I mean, you are playing a dangerous game.
So that, I don't know.
If I hadn't hung up my spurs, I don't know if I would still feel comfortable doing that.
And three, who would be the worst Daily Wire personality if they booked a role in one of these new movies?
Well, I'll give you the real answer, and he would agree with this 100%, is Ben.
Ben can't act.
Ben can barely keep a straight face if we're doing a 10-second video shoot.
And I suspect his answer to this would be, yeah, because I don't want to play pretend.
Facts don't care about my feelings.
I just want to give you the straight facts, and I'm not going to do that.
And it is really one of his strengths.
But as a result, yeah, he's not the best actor.
From...
Lindsay, Michael, I had a rough go in the dating world as of late.
I would love to hear your advice on dealing with being led on.
I was recently talking to a guy and thought things were going well.
He said a lot of things to me that suggested he was interested in something long-term, but then ghosted me.
We had plans to see each other again, but haven't heard back from my last text about plan details.
I don't want to double text again, but can't understand what happened and know that it'll bother me for a while.
My friend says I should let it go and that if I move on, guys like this always come back after you no longer want them.
Would love to hear your advice on what to do when this happens or any insight you might have as to why it does.
Sincerely, apparently the ghosts have come out early this year.
Great sign-off.
Well, you've contradicted yourself here.
You've said, look, maybe I'll move on.
And the best part about moving on is he might come back to me.
Well, then you haven't moved on.
If you're waiting for him to come back to you, then you obviously haven't moved on, so it hasn't worked.
Yes, do men get more attracted when you...
Don't throw yourself at them.
Yes, of course, that certainly happens.
So if you're doing this as a tactic to try to entice this guy to like you more, then tactically I suppose that would probably work.
But I would just be direct.
I'm a big fan of directness in these sorts of things.
If the guy is not interested, he should tell you that.
He should not lead you on.
Certainly, you shouldn't ghost people.
That's not nice.
So I would just say like, hey buddy, look, I had a nice time, but if you're not into it, that's cool.
It's no big deal, but just let me know.
No hard feelings.
I would not allow a man to remain in this squishy kind of middle ground.
Because one suspects what he's doing is just kind of playing his field, checking out his other options, but he wants to keep you in the back pocket in case it doesn't work out.
And I would not let him do that.
I mean, that's not much of a man.
A man should be decisive and should follow through on his decisions.
Wish you the best of luck, Lindsay.
The guy sounds like a jerk, so frankly, if I were you, I'd probably ghost him.
But if you want closure, I would send him a text.
From Arun.
Hello, Arun.
Dear Dr.
Kofefe, You've regularly discussed your thesis that the left wishes for the appearance of the thing rather than the actual thing.
This is true.
This is why libs drink, you know, decaf coffee.
This is why the libs call relationships that are not marriage, marriage.
Because they want the appearance of the marriage, but they don't want to actually do the things that, or they're not willing to do the things that are actually involved in marriage.
This is exactly how I feel about your impression of Dr.
Fauci.
I could listen to your approximation of his voice for hours.
But to hear him speak for even a moment about his love of tyranny is infuriating and insufferable.
Does that make me a leftist?
No, it means you have common sense, my friend.
Because when I do the impression of Dr.
Fauci, you know, the Dr.
Fauci impression is not going to harm you.
The Dr.
Fauci may harm you and take away your liberties and your way of life, but the Dr.
Fauci impression probably will not.
Final little bit here from Brandon Michael.
now and save it as the slogan for my political campaign in 2032 against my future party rival, Knowles 2032, the authoritarian moment.
Yes, these are both very important slogans.
It's tough because I obviously agree with both of them and strongly support both of them.
There's more to Brandon's question.
We're going to have to save that for next week.
I'm going to try to get this back in the mailbag next week, because I don't want to leave Brandon here.
Look, we're all very supportive of Brandon.
Let's go, Brandon!
And then I'll see you all on Monday.
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The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring.
Our technical director is Austin Stevens.
Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky.
Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico.
Associate producer, Justine Turley.
Audio mixer, Mike Coromina.
And hair and makeup by Cherokee Heart.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2021.
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