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A new presidential candidate enters the 2024 race, a major luxury fashion house appears to peddle pedo themes, and the top Democrat candidate for House Minority Leader turns out to be an election denier.
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The field of candidates planning to take on Joe Biden in 2024 has just doubled.
Yesterday, a week after President Trump announced that he would seek re-election, Kanye West announced that he too will be running for president.
Oh yeah.
So you are running.
Yeah.
Yes.
That's awesome, Kain.
Simple.
Simple as that.
You know, if I tell me, you know, you should say this, you should say that, you know.
It's just we're moving towards the future.
So what we do here is I'll cut up a hundred hoodies From Yeezy, from Balenciaga, from the stuff we did at Gaff, from the stuff we did at Adidas.
And everything we do is going to cost $20.
We need to make sure that everyone can receive the same level of cuts, the same level of food, the same level of water, the same level of education, the curriculum, the engineering.
We're beings with engineering opportunities.
We're getting past the past.
We're focused on the future.
Focused on the future.
Some people are making fun of Ye's somewhat digressive campaign announcement, but he is certainly no less coherent than the current occupant of the Oval Office.
Another potentially disqualifying factor would be his recent nasty comments on race, particularly with regard to the Jews.
But then on that front, Kanye hasn't said anything more racially offensive than, say, Joe Biden or Richard Nixon or No.
Racist or anti-Semitic comments would not especially distinguish Kanye from past presidents and presidential candidates.
What does distinguish him from past presidential candidates and what connects him with the only other challenger candidate in the field right now is something much stranger.
Kanye West, like Donald Trump, is currently and consistently banned from large parts of the social media.
That is from the public square.
They've recently had their Twitter access restored, but they are both still banned from Instagram.
Trump is banned from pretty much all of social media.
We're currently living in a country in which the entire field of the sitting president's declared opponents are being largely censored out of the public square, the very heart of self-government.
We've never seen anything like that before.
Whatever you think of Donald Trump or Kanye West, that poses a far more direct threat to our republic than whatever either of them have to say.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show, Michael.
My favorite comment yesterday is from Crystal Parker, who says, Seems to me she just felt like she needed to explain it all away and make it okay somehow.
Would have been much better to just admit failure, since we all fail and sin from time to time.
That's so true, and it's something that in our culture, which largely views itself as post-Christian, which rejects the wisdom and truth of Christianity, we can't acknowledge when we sin and then repent and seek forgiveness.
Everything's got to be perfect.
Oh, it's good!
Oh, no, I'm really glad that I got divorced.
Oh, I'm really glad that I did a ton of drugs.
Oh, I'm really glad that I screwed up my whole life.
No, it's really good that I did that, actually.
Actually, when you really think about it, those are all wonderful things.
No, you don't need to pretend.
We all know that isn't true.
You're obviously just trying to convince yourself.
You can admit it.
You can say, I screwed up.
I messed up and it was bad and I messed things up for a lot of other people, too.
I'm sorry.
Please, God, forgive me.
You can say that, but it's very difficult to say that.
In a culture that no longer believes in God, because then you don't get forgiveness, and then you go crazy, as our culture has.
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Speaking of Kanye, you heard there in his sort of meandering campaign announcement, Kanye referred to Balenciaga.
Balenciaga is a very high-end luxury fashion house.
And Kanye had a deal with Balenciaga.
And Balenciaga has weird imagery for a long time.
I mean, one of their runway fashion shows was in a bunch of mud and dirt, black, and it all looked kind of demonic.
And it's weird to begin with.
Well, they just put out some ads.
That are more disturbing than anything that I had ever seen from them.
It's this ad.
It was right on their website of these two little girls, very little girls standing on a bed or on a sofa, surrounded by some Balenciaga products, holding little stuffed animals that are wearing weird sex gear, like weird S&M leather chains, harnesses, all that kind of stuff.
And so, that in and of itself is very disturbing.
And you say, why are these kids...
And the kids don't look particularly happy.
We blurred out their faces.
But the look on their face on the website, not very happy.
You say, why are these kids holding this weird, not just sexual symbol, but actually sadistic sexual symbol?
A kind of sexual symbol that involves pain.
That seems really, really weird.
But then, if you zoom in...
You can see that there are some weird papers underneath the Balenciaga handbag and some other items that they're selling.
And if you really zoom in on one of them, you can see speech coalition is just a line of text and it refers to sexual depiction, but some of it's covered up.
It's hard to read.
So, if you look up the text, if you just pull out some of the fragments of the sentences...
You see that the case that this comes from is United States v.
Williams.
This is a Supreme Court case from 2008.
And it was a decision by the Supreme Court that a federal statute prohibiting the pandering of child pornography did not violate the First Amendment.
So...
I guess that's good.
I mean, this was a good decision that said, yeah, you can ban people from not peddling kiddie porn, and that doesn't violate their First Amendment.
But it is just weird that the Balenciaga company is not only putting kids in these weird sexual associations, but then referring to child pornography, not all that subtly in the advertisement.
And then the case that is referred to within that case, United States versus Williams, is a case called Ashcroft versus Free Speech Coalition, which was a case that determined whether or not simulated child pornography was protected by the First Amendment.
And the Supreme Court wrongly concluded that simulated child porn was in fact protected by the First Amendment.
So we're not talking about child pornography of actual kids being exploited, but cartoons or very highly developed renderings that look just like kids, but they're not actually real kids, that that kind of porn is protected, which is really, really that that kind of porn is protected, which is really, really So now how do we read this?
It's kind of a strange juxtaposition here because you've got one case that was so wrongly decided that advances child pornography.
You've got the other case, which is the actual text that's there underneath the bag that suppresses child pornography.
And then you've got these kids with these weird sexual associations.
It's just...
I don't know.
I feel like a conspiracy theorist even bringing this up.
But then what have we learned over the past three years at least?
The difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth is about three to six months.
And we've heard little murmurs of weird child porn, child sex stuff throughout the culture.
And they're always poo-pooed as a sort of crazy conspiracy theory.
There go you radical right-wingers with your tinfoil hats again.
I don't want to hear that, okay?
Obviously, the weird kid sex stuff is happening.
That's not a crazy conspiracy theory.
We know it's happening.
We uncovered one of the biggest child sex rings in the world.
That was called Jeffrey Epstein and his creepy pedo island.
That was all real.
And it involved some of the most famous, wealthy, powerful people on planet Earth who took dozens of trips on the Lolita Express and Jeffrey Epstein palling around with royalty, with major CEOs, blackmail, compromat galore.
When Jeffrey Epstein was first prosecuted for this, according to then U.S. attorney, then future nominee for Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, Acosta was told, don't deal with Epstein.
Epstein belongs to intelligence.
So obviously this stuff is real, and I don't want to hear it, okay?
Okay.
I don't want to hear, oh, you guys, you're looking too much into this Balenciaga ad.
It's just, it's a totally harmless image of a little kid looking sad, holding an S&M teddy bear, standing on top of a Supreme Court case about child pornography.
I don't want to hear it.
All of that stuff is real, okay?
And right now, if you present to me CNN and Alex Jones or whoever, insert radical crazy conspiracy theorist right winger, I am going to be much more inclined to believe the latter.
The latter have a much better record.
And the former are not only dishonest and frequently wrong in their stories, but their shills for the power structure that is so obviously corrupt.
And so obviously creepy and weird.
Explain that ad to me.
Explain that ad to me.
In the world in which we know that the creepy petto island is real, explain that ad to me as something totally innocent.
I just don't see how you could.
Speaking of conspiracy theories, we found out another conspiracy theory is real.
CBS News, take it away.
As Republicans take control of the House, Hunter Biden, the president's son, will be a target for investigations.
And that means data from a laptop reported to belong to Biden could be crucial to the investigatory process.
CBS News has obtained its data.
Not through a third party or political operative, but directly from the source who told us they provided it to the FBI under subpoena.
And we commissioned an independent forensic review to determine its authenticity.
Senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge joins us now with what we found.
Catherine, I'm very interested.
Good morning.
Good morning, Tony.
The laptop data we had analyzed showed no evidence it was faked or tampered with.
You're confident, based on your analysis, this is Hunter Biden's data and that it's real.
Yes.
Wow!
Breaking news from CBS telling us something that every sensible person has known for two years.
But two years ago, we weren't allowed to talk about that.
We actually weren't allowed to talk about it even on social media, not even just publicly post.
You weren't allowed to privately message a New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop because the entire power structure clamped down on it and said, no, this is disinformation.
It wasn't.
It was completely true.
Now CBS is breaking news.
Our independent forensic investigators have proven.
Oh, you couldn't.
Could you guys not have hired those independent forensic investigators?
Sometime over the past two years.
Maybe during the presidential campaign or even like six months later, six months after that, or six months after that.
No, just now.
Just now that Hunter Biden is about to be investigated and it's all over and the Republicans retook the House, now is exactly the time.
It's so transparent what they're doing.
And it just, they're doing it to save face because when it's obviously the case that the Hunter Biden laptop is real, which we all already know, then they'll be able to say, no, we ran this report.
We're the serious news people.
It's so transparent what they're doing.
These guys are liars and hacks and propagandists, and they're covering up for very bad people, doing very bad things.
And there is no reason to take a word that they have to say seriously.
A random right-wing lunatic broadcasting from his RV on a shortwave radio has more journalistic credibility and a higher standard of ethics than CBS News and all the rest of the establishment media.
Speaking of conspiracy theorists, events.
The race for a Democrat minority leader in the House is on.
You know, Nancy Pelosi has lost her gavel.
She's no longer the speaker.
She's not interested in being the Democrat minority leader in the House.
So she's out.
Now someone's got to replace her.
The leading candidate to replace her is this guy, Hakeem Jeffries.
Hakeem Jeffries is a radical left winger.
If the name Jeffries sounds familiar, it's because his uncle...
Professor Jeffries was a CUNY professor who popularized the idea that white people are the people of the ice and black people are the people of the sun and the white people are intrinsically evil and the black people are intrinsically good and the white people don't really have souls and you remember all that stuff that Nick Cannon was talking about a few years ago how the white people are like animals and dogs and just evil,
evil people and then the Black people are the only good people.
Well, that comes from Hakeem Jeffries' uncle, who was allowed to get away with this for years and years and years.
Eventually, he sort of strayed into the anti-Semitic territory as well.
And so he really kind of broadened his attacks, and eventually he went down.
I mean, that kind of took him down.
But he was allowed to spread his bile and filth for a very long time.
I don't mean to imply guilt by association here for Hakeem Jeffries, but when we hear Hakeem Jeffries say radical leftist things, it's important to know the context.
This guy comes from an extremely radical, somewhat prominent family, especially in New York.
And so Hakeem Jeffries has peddled the most left-wing kind of wacky theories, including that the 2016 election was illegitimate.
Take a listen.
There's a cloud of illegitimacy hanging over the White House right now.
Russia interfered with our election for the exclusive purpose of trying to artificially place Donald Trump at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
He wants to continue to play footsie with Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump's going to continue to stand for Vladimir Putin and that's shameful.
They're under criminal investigation in terms of the Trump campaign's possible role in colluding with Russian spies to attack our democracy.
It seems that the Trump campaign conspired with Russian spies to sell out our democracy.
And now you have members closely affiliated with the Trump administration and possibly the president who are engaged in the cover up.
Seventeen different intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered with our election, attacked our democracy for the sole purpose of artificially placing someone at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
He's officially placing Trump.
Trump is an artificial president.
Trump is an illegitimate president.
What does that sound like to you?
It sounds like Election denial!
He's a denier of the election!
Oh my gosh, he's like the January 6th people, except he's not.
Yes, it is a little bit awkward and a little bit hypocritical To think that the Democrats who have spent the last two years screaming until they're blue in the face about the evils of election denial and the threat that that poses to our sacred democracy and how if you ever question the results of an election, you're evil, you're a terrorist, you need to be cast into the outer darkness.
It is a little bit awkward if those Democrats now make an election denier their leader.
But it won't matter.
I'm telling you now it won't matter.
And Republicans are probably not going to figure it out until it's too late and we're going to waste a lot of time shouting, look at the hypocrisy!
Look, if the shoe were on the other foot!
Look, can you imagine if the roles were reversed?
They don't care.
They don't care.
They agree with Hakeem Jeffries.
They do think the 2016 election was illegitimate.
Whether Vladimir Putin did anything or not, the Libs believe that any time the Republicans win an election, that that is illegitimate.
That it was either the result of some fraud, or even more broadly, it was the result of the misinformation that has lulled people into a false consciousness to vote against their interests because no sensible person would ever vote for a Republican.
So that's what they believe.
And so anytime the Democrats win, that's legit.
Anytime the Republicans win, that is not legit.
To quote Adrian Vermeule, the great Harvard law professor, as I quote him frequently, it's not hypocrisy, it's hierarchy.
It's just they get to play by a different set of rules, okay?
And so it won't matter.
It's like when Republicans say, well, Democrats are the real racists, right?
Democrats accuse us of being racists, and then the Republican response is, no, you're the racists.
That's never going to work because, by definition, according to the left, the Republicans are racists.
And they're always racists.
And the Democrats are not racists and can never be racists.
Racism, according to the Democrats, is whenever someone does something that the Democrats don't like.
That's racism.
I will never forget when a liberal caller to a talk radio show, coincidentally hosted by David Webb, was disagreeing with him over something.
I don't even remember what the issue was.
And she said on the radio, well David, you only say that because of your white privilege.
And this was very funny because David Webb, for those of you who know him, is very much a black man.
He is not a white man.
But this was radio and the caller couldn't see him.
And she just went to that.
She just goes to that because that's just what the Democrats go to.
Whenever you disagree with them, you are a racist, you're a white supremacist, you have white privilege.
And so it won't matter.
And it is a fool's errand to retort and say, well, no, you're the real racists.
They don't care about that.
They just care about beating you.
They don't care about election denial.
Of course they don't.
They're the ones who deny the elections going at least back to the year 2000, and they've denied elections a hell of a lot more than Republicans have, and with far less reason than Republicans have had.
They just want to beat you.
You can say, no, but don't you see the hypocrisy?
Maybe they do, but they don't care.
They just don't view it that way, which is why we need to win.
We need to stop trying to convince them of their own hypocrisy about which they do not care.
We just have to win.
And so you're seeing a major fight play out in the Senate right now, and very few people are talking about it.
The liberals aren't talking about it because they think they've got the fight in the bag.
And the Republicans aren't talking about it because they're absolute cowards and moral idiots.
But we need to focus on this.
This is a very important fight.
It's over the redefinition of marriage and the not only destruction of the institution of marriage, but the obliteration of religious liberty from American public life.
And this is through something called the Respect for Marriage Act.
Most preposterous euphemism we've ever had in American law.
And what the Respect for Marriage Act does is it not only enshrines the legal definition of marriage from Obergefell, which is preposterous, But it actually goes much further than that, and it prevents lots and lots of Americans from objecting in any significant way to that radical redefinition of marriage.
So if you believe, as do Christians and Jews and Muslims and sensible people throughout all of history until five minutes ago, if you believe, as did Barack Obama in 2011, well into his first term, that marriage exists It's a disaster,
and a dozen squish, morally vacuous Republicans and intellectually vacuous Republicans voted for this thing.
So they voted to get past the filibuster, which means now it's on a fast track to get a vote.
We can still hold this thing up a little bit.
We're not going to defeat the bill.
The bill is going to pass.
But what Mike Lee, the great senator from Utah, who came pretty close to losing his re-election bid, and we had him on this show because it was just awful to think that Mike Lee was not going to win re-election.
Well, Mike Lee coming to the rescue here with the Lee Amendment...
To give protections for Christians and Jews and Muslims and sensible agnostics and atheists, too, to be able to express the real meaning of marriage without facing punishment from the federal government in the public square.
And we'll get into what that amendment does because it should help you rest a little bit easier at night if we can get it through.
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Mike Lee coming to the rescue here.
To insert this amendment into the new redefining marriage bill in the Senate.
Why does this matter?
A lot of conservatives write in.
They say, you know, Michael, I'm with you on a lot of things, but I just don't care about this marriage stuff.
If the gays want to get married and be as miserable as the rest of us, you know, who cares?
That's fine by me.
And ha ha, yes, I know, we all tell that joke.
It's a little bit glib, but I get it.
It's a kind of funny barb.
However, it obviously matters.
It obviously matters because marriage is the fundamental political institution.
It's the building block of all of politics.
The libs think and want for the building block of politics to just be the individual.
Because it's much easier to dominate individuals when they're atomized and broken up from intermediating institutions, most notably the family.
The conservatives understand that the family is...
And the family is not just some socially constructed institution where we can say, okay, we're going to make a polycule with three girls and two guys and a goat, and that's going to be the new definition of a family.
No, marriage is not socially constructed.
there are social aspects to it and intellectualized and ritualized aspects to it, but it is a natural institution.
As Aristotle observed, as St. Thomas Aquinas observed, as smart people throughout all human history have observed, because man is naturally a pairing being, we are drawn to the complementarity of the sexes and by the complementarity of the sexes.
And within that unit of one man and one woman, there is the possibility of life.
And marriage is instituted for the good of the spouses and the sake of the generation and the education of children.
That is what the thing is for.
If you find yourself in a position where you say, I just don't care, I just don't see what the big deal is, then maybe ask yourself, why don't you see what the big deal is?
Maybe just take a step back and say, with a little bit of humility here, This institution has been viewed for all of human history by all the smartest people and pretty much everyone else too as extremely important.
And it still remains viewed as extremely important by the liberal activists who are trying to radically redefine it.
And actually, the only people ever in the history of the world who don't think this thing matters is just like me and some of my live and let live kind of laissez-faire libertarian friends.
Why is that?
Maybe, maybe you're missing something here.
Maybe a lot of people are missing something here as to why this thing has been viewed as so important by pretty much everybody ever.
So what the Lee Amendment proposes is based on an infamous exchange from the Obergefell decision that redefined marriage.
And it was when Sam Alito, conservative judge, asked whether religious universities that were opposed to same-sex marriage would lose their tax-exempt status if marriage were redefined at the federal level.
And Virilli, speaking for the government, said, it's certainly going to be an issue.
I don't deny that.
I don't deny that, Justice Alito.
It is going to be an issue.
So Mike Lee writes, it is an issue.
The Burger fell did not make a private right of action for aggrieved individuals to sue those who oppose same sex marriage.
It did not create a mandate for the Department of Justice to sue where it perceived an institution opposed same sex marriage.
But the Respect for Marriage Act will, this radical bill that the libs are pushing through, that the squish Republicans are going along with.
What we can expect should this bill become law is more litigation against those institutions and individuals trying to live according to their sincerely held religious beliefs and And even most absurdly, the people who are going to be on the back foot here and who are going to have to constantly defend themselves against lawsuits are going to be the people with sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions that are correct.
They're not just sincerely held.
They're true.
And they're going to be the ones who are going to be destroyed by this.
We're all going to be Jack Phillips.
We're all going to be Masterpiece Cake Shop.
It will obliterate any defense of what is now...
It's going to obliterate what remains of that defense from the public square.
I urge you, call your congressmen.
Call your senators.
Tell them to vote against this bill at least until the Lee Amendment is adopted.
It might be a largely lost cause for the moment.
We can, I think, still get the Lee Amendment through.
Call your senator, especially if your senator is one of the dozen squishes who voted to override the filibuster and get this thing on a fast track.
Call your senator and tell them to stop this nonsense.
Speaking of LGBT politics...
LGBT politics, identity politics is everywhere these days, including the head of FIFA, including the head of the International Soccer Organization, who made this odd declaration the other day.
Today I feel gay.
I don't have much commentary for that.
I think that's just the whole quote.
The head of International Soccer says, I feel gay.
There it is.
It's everywhere.
That identity is everywhere.
Even at the World Cup in Qatar.
That's very much in the zeitgeist.
It's very much in the spirit of the age.
We need to make sure, though, that these sorts of political fashions do not go so far as to destroy the institutions and building blocks of society.
Speaking of the Middle East...
I don't know if you heard about the biggest, most important news story ever, according to the liberal establishment media.
Joe Biden is not going to destroy U.S.-Saudi relations at a time of a major energy crisis, where we are reliant on cooperation with Saudi Arabia not to plunge the world even further into recession.
Biden is not going to throw all that away over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.
Do you remember Jamal Khashoggi?
Well, I won't tell you.
I'll just tell you what the Washington Post and the liberal media say about Jamal Khashoggi.
Jamal Khashoggi was a Washington Post columnist.
He was a journalist who was targeted by the evil Saudi regime and murdered because he stood up for journalism and the intrepid free press and Joe Biden is letting this man get away with murder.
Okay, and that's basically the gist of the statement issued by the Washington Post.
Now, the problem with that narrative is it isn't true.
Or it's got a little kernel of truth that gives it credibility, but that kernel of truth is stretched in such a way that it hides the reality of this man.
I'm not defending the Saudis killing this guy, Jamal Khashoggi, but what I am telling you is they didn't kill a Washington Post columnist.
Jamal Khashoggi was a career political operative and spy for Saudi Arabia, who was on the outs with the now dominant part of the Saudi royal family.
Jamal Khashoggi was palling around with Osama bin Laden decades ago.
Jamal Khashoggi is not some columnist.
Yes, he wrote some columns.
We've all written some columns, okay?
The column thing, the writing for the Washington Post thing was a cover for his actual job, which is that he was a political operative in a very dangerous part of the world, in a very dangerous kingdom, doing very dangerous stuff, including espionage.
And he wound up being assassinated by a rival political power.
It's ugly.
It's an ugly business.
But this is not a man-bites-dog story here, okay?
This sort of thing happens all the time in the world of power politics and espionage, okay?
And what's really interesting about the story is not that the Saudi regime killed a dissident.
That happens all the time.
What's interesting about the story is not that a political power has gone after and punished dissidents.
That happens all the time, too.
That happens in every regime ever.
What's really interesting here is the way that the media were able to spin up this whole narrative to get people to pull their hair out, to rend their garments over Jamal Khashoggi.
If you were one of the people that got really worked up over Jamal Khashoggi, Did you ever ask yourself why?
Did you ever say why?
This guy I had never heard of before, all of a sudden I am meant to really, really feel for.
And I'm feeling very emotional over this person.
And it's actually happening.
It's not only that the Washington Post wants me to feel that way, I am feeling that way.
Did you ever ask yourself why maybe that you're being manipulated?
You see this with every current thing.
Whatever the current thing is, people just get wrapped up in it.
The war in Ukraine.
War in Ukraine is a very sad thing.
War is a very sad thing.
There are lots of wars going on all over the world right now.
Why the war in Ukraine?
Why did everyone change their picture on Twitter to be the Ukrainian flag?
Why?
Why are you—you—I'm not saying you.
If you're listening to this show, you're probably more knowledgeable about politics than 99.5% of people in the world.
But for the people who just change their flag, who don't really pay very close attention to this stuff— These people, I promise you, don't know anything about Ukraine.
They don't know anything about Russia.
They don't know anything about the millennium-long conflict in that region.
They don't know anything about the stakes of the war.
They don't know anything about the 2014 revolution, Maidan revolution.
They don't know anything about international participation in Ukrainian politics.
They don't know anything about the expansion of NATO. They don't know anything about anything.
But they're just convinced.
They get wrapped up in that.
And then...
A week later, they're gone.
They forget about Ukraine.
Remember net neutrality?
Remember when we were all going to die from net neutrality?
People actually said, prominent blue check people, said, if net neutrality goes through, people will die.
Most people don't even know what net neutrality is.
But net neutrality was repealed.
It had been instituted.
It was repealed.
And no one died.
It was okay.
You remember Kony 2012?
Many of you are probably too young to remember.
There was this social media phenomenon.
Kony 2012.
Everyone changed their pictures on Facebook.
We're going to get Kony.
Who's Kony?
He's some random guy running around Africa doing all sorts of bad things.
But no one, he's just some minor warlord.
But he just, he became the current thing.
Whenever one of these causes happens, these sort of cause celeb, these cause du jour, I don't know why I'm speaking French so much, but they have a lot of phrases for the thing that I'm describing.
When this stuff pops up, the current thing, Before you change your Twitter picture, before you let your blood pressure go up, the first thing you've got to ask yourself, Why am I being made to care about this?
By whom and for what purpose?
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Speaking of things not to care about...
On the order of net neutrality, the Jamal Khashoggi affair, all the things to really worry yourself about.
There's another one to add to the list.
Michelle Obama is complaining.
Not exactly a major breaking news headline.
Michelle Obama does nothing but complain.
But Michelle Obama is complaining this time about how when her husband was elected president, Americans were not ready for her natural hair.
I don't know what Michelle Obama's natural hair looks like.
I truly couldn't possibly care less what Michelle Obama's natural hair looks like.
Michelle Obama was giving an interview to Ellen DeGeneres.
This was reported by The Independent.
We don't have a clip of it, but we do have the quote.
She said, let me keep my hair straight.
Let's get healthcare passed first.
They tripped out when Barack wore a tan suit, you know?
The great indignity, the scandal of the Obama administration was when Barack wore a tan suit.
So everyone was on edge to criticize Obama.
And she just said, I don't know if I can wear my natural hair.
The code of ethics at a workplace.
As black women, we deal with it.
The whole thing about, do you show up with your natural hair?
I would get my staff all worried, too.
I was thinking about getting braids.
That's the African-American experience.
But women in offices that are worried, should I wear skirts?
Should I wear pantyhose?
I hate pantyhose.
But when you're carrying all this other stuff, this mask...
These differences, and you're trying to do your job.
It's just an extra burden on overcoming.
So I'm going to get that out now.
You know, I know some people like it when I play ukulele, or sometimes guitar, so I'm just going to pull out.
And there it is.
The world's tiniest little Stradivarius violin, which There we go.
Just play that out for the burdens of Michelle Obama to overcome the completely absurdly perceived stigma again about how she wears her hair.
The people of the United States had just elected her husband, Barack Hussein Obama, to be the President of the United States.
We had been at war against, at least initially, a man named Hussein for five years at that point.
And really, actually, much longer.
U.S. policy against Saddam Hussein had gone back to the early 90s.
And we are told that what the American people just were not ready for.
It was Michelle Obama's hair.
Barack Obama wore his natural hair, by the way.
First black president.
No, but it's all about Michelle.
America elected the first black president, but no, they're still evil and racist.
The American people, they gave Michelle Obama an absolute fairytale life.
No, it's so awful for her.
It's so terrible.
This is the burden of overcoming.
This is what black people, this is what makes their lives so difficult.
You know, do you show up with natural hair?
Now, I defer to the black listeners of this show.
Is that the biggest problem in your life?
What hairstyle to have at the office?
I bet not.
I bet not.
When I think about long conversations with my black friends, they don't usually bring up how to wear their hair as the biggest challenge.
They have real problems.
But Michelle Obama doesn't have any real problems.
And so she has to make up problems.
Because the Obamas, like the Libs broadly, cannot take yes for an answer.
They can't take yes for an answer.
There's always got to be a problem.
Racism will never go away.
It can't go away, according to the libs, because that's the premise they're starting from.
They need it.
Oppression, suffering, All these things.
Look, evil never will go away.
Not during this period of Earth.
Not until the second coming.
We're not going to see it.
This is a fallen world.
So there's always going to be evil and suffering.
The good way to react to evil and suffering is with a spirit of resignation and with virtue, and so that you can allow suffering to sanctify you.
This was a line, I think, from St.
Jose Maria Escriva, who said, never say, that person annoys me.
Say, oh, that person sanctifies me.
We're all going to be going at Thanksgiving to visit our family.
Maybe you've got a difficult family.
Maybe you've got some sibling or cousin or in-law or something that drives you crazy.
No, that person doesn't annoy you.
That person sanctifies you.
And if you cultivate that attitude, I promise you, it doesn't matter how terrible the suffering is.
You will be buoyant.
We talked about this earlier, I guess it was last week, with Jay Leno.
Jay Leno just suffered horrible burns, but he's buoyant.
He bounced right back.
He was giving out cookies to the kids in the hospital that he was being treated at.
If you cultivate those virtues, no amount of suffering is going to keep you down for very long.
If you don't, if all you do is cultivate resentment and envy and anger and all the stuff that Michelle Obama does...
Then no amount of privilege will ever make you feel happy.
You can be the first lady of the United States and you will still be angry about how you, in your fantasies, your hair might be perceived, okay?
There is no limit to the things that you will complain about if you cultivate those things.
Vice and virtue are habits, okay?
And you get what you do and what you cultivate.
Now, speaking of vices, queen of all vices, pride.
And there was a very strange claim made on The View yesterday.
This is by Sunny Hostin, who, she's kind of the B team of The View.
She's not Whoopi, she's not Joy Behar, but she's one of the libs on The View.
Well, they're all libs on The View, but she's one of the more eccentric ones.
And she made a theological claim that, I'm no trained theologian, but it left me scratching my head.
They were in a place that accepts them for who they were, and someone came to that place.
I don't know that they hide behind religion, because I said this on this show once before.
Jesus would be the grand marshal at the pride parade.
I don't mean about gay people.
I mean in every argument we have, you weaponize religion.
Here's my question.
But it's wrong.
If you're so afraid, why are you going over there?
Yeah.
If they scare you so much, leave them alone.
Jesus would be the grand marshal of the pride parade?
What does that even mean?
I get, in a sense, Christ is king of the universe, and so he's grand marshal of all of creation.
And I guess there are pride parades in some places in creation.
But what is that?
I don't think that's what she's referring to.
What does that mean?
Jesus would be the grand marshal of the pride parade.
This is something that the libs do all the time when it comes to religion.
And it's totally incoherent, but what they will say is, they'll say explicitly, or implicitly at least, they'll say, look, I think Christianity is dumb and stupid and wrong and backward and dated and just complete nonsense and all you people are lemmings and fools and idiots for following the teachings of Christianity.
And also, my views are much more Christian than yours.
They'll say, Christianity is dumb.
I don't believe in it.
I don't believe in any of that stuff.
I don't believe in God.
I'm just going to do me, man.
I'm just so much smarter than everybody.
I'm a really smart, genius atheist with a fedora that I tip.
But also, I'm much more Christian.
You don't even understand Christianity.
It's just ridiculous.
Ridiculous line from people who, I promise you, have not even a passing familiarity with the religion.
It's this phenomenon of...
Oh, this is the worst one.
You'll hear from Libs sometimes.
They'll say, Listen, I went to Catholic school for 10 years.
And so I'm basically St.
Augustine.
I'm basically Thomas Aquinas.
Because I briefly went to a Catholic high school.
And I'm a complete apostate and fallen away from the faith.
But let me tell you about your religion.
And that's what they all do.
And why do they do it?
They do it because they reject religion as an intellectual matter.
But they recognize, at least subconsciously, that man is a religious being.
And so they have to make religious arguments.
They recognize the strength of religion, even in their own lives, even in how it pulls on them.
And so what they do is they align their views.
They claim that their views are the views of God.
What Christians do, what religious people do, is that they...
Using their moral conscience and their faculties of reason and their respect for tradition and their reading of the scripture and their participation in the liturgy, they ascertain what God wants.
Yes, they can.
And then, when their behavior doesn't jive with what God wants, they change their behavior and attempt to change their behavior and repent, which means to change your mind, and to bring their views and behaviors into line with what God wants.
What the libs do is exactly the opposite.
When they realize that there's a huge gulf between what God wants, as stated, in the scripture, in the sacred tradition, as perceived by our moral conscience and our reason, a gulf between that and their own behavior, they try to conquer God's will.
They say, my will is God's will.
They try to make of themselves gods.
They do what the serpent tells Eve in the Garden of Eden.
They say that we shall be as gods.
And this is what Whitaker Chambers said is the very heart of communism is man making themselves gods.
It's the heart of radical leftism.
That is all they're going to do.
Well, if you've got to live in a world in which God is the grand marshal, in which Christ is the grand marshal, Or the world in which Sonny Hostin is the Grand Marshal?
