The Megyn Kelly Show - 20211229_the-year-of-the-parent-a-2021-megyn-kelly-show-ret

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Dec. 29, 2021 - The Megyn Kelly Show

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Awkward Bonding and Diet Culture 00:14:12
	And now, watchers of Kicks.
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	Who's Kicks?
	Beauty Unlimited.
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
	Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
	We have a great show for you today, looking back at 2021 and what we're calling the year of the parent.
	Parents became political, social, and cultural forces in 2021, and fighting back on behalf of our children became an imperative for many of us.
	From COVID to CRT to the dangerous effects of tech, we are using this show to look back at some of the highlights of 2021.
	Interviews with parents on all sorts of relevant topics.
	First up, we have our friend Dr. Drew Pinsky, who joined us not long ago with his daughter, Paulina, to talk about what it was like for her to have Dr. Drew as a dad, social media and society, and much, much more.
	All right.
	So I have to tell you that this book makes me feel better about life because if Dr. Drew can raise somebody who's as open and honest about their struggles as you, I feel like I can totally fuck up my kids and they're going to wind up just fine.
	I think that's.
	Just you can live by that phrase, generally.
	Generally, that is true.
	I would say the 10 years of therapy helped.
	Oh, how dare you!
	Well, so I love this.
	Okay, so first of all, you were born a triplet, and let me just kick it off there because triplets are still rare, even with IVF, they're still rare.
	And how do you think that affected your life?
	I have theories about this.
	As the youngest and at the top of the stack nearest my mother's ribs, I feel like it must have been traumatic for me to have my two womb mates.
	Exit the womb before me.
	So, my first interaction with the world was my brother's leaving me.
	That's just my theory.
	It's true.
	Gosh, I never really considered that.
	But you must have seen that.
	I must tell you, I've got to interrupt you, Megan, that there was, Paulina, there was literally 55 seconds between those guys being out and you.
	Yeah, I always imagine it's like pulling noodles, except it was pulling babies.
	Oh, nice.
	Yeah, ew, right?
	That's a lot.
	Really, the true trauma was your mother's.
	And so, I'm sure she's.
	Address absolutely.
	Yeah, every Christmas she would say, This wouldn't have happened if I didn't love.
	Like, you, you be grateful for Christmas because I'm the one that brought Christmas.
	Well, and to be fair, to be, to be fair, we were faced with reduction.
	They, our obstetrician sat down and said, Hey, don't have triplets.
	Don't do it.
	He goes, Here's the data.
	The marriages don't survive.
	The mental health of the kids suffer.
	Don't do this.
	Have twins.
	And I'll send you out to UCLA and we'll reduce down to two.
	Oh, my God.
	That was a heavy, heavy, Heavy thing we sat with for a couple days and then just went, We can't do that.
	Forget it.
	Right.
	Right.
	It's like, So we have to end the pregnancy with one baby or end our marriage.
	Right.
	Like, what kind of a weird choice is that?
	That's so false.
	It's not true.
	I mean, maybe it makes it tougher, but statistically, it was, you know, it was, it was actually, he just handed me the papers and I said, Okay, I'll look at him.
	And statistically, at the time it was, and I literally felt like a poker player who just took all the chips and go, It doesn't, I'm going all in.
	We're just going all in.
	That's it.
	And it turned out to be a good bet for us.
	Oh my God.
	I mean, I had, we did IVF and thank God I was able to use all of our embryos, but that is a tough choice for any parent to have to make.
	Okay, so let me talk to you about growing up Pinsky because your dad, in addition to being a child, that should have been the title of the book.
	I know.
	That would have been a better title.
	Which.
	Which poses its own, you know, interesting challenges being a triplet.
	But you've got a famous dad, and you talk in the book about sort of growing older and realizing that you have a famous dad, and then he's getting more famous and he's getting busier.
	And you are pretty honest about forgive me, Dr. Drew, sort of an absentee dad situation and how that was not easy for you.
	So, back to the title of the book, it doesn't have to be awkward.
	Is it awkward to write about that and talk about that with him sitting right there and sort of say, yeah, I needed you and you weren't there?
	Yeah, I am.
	Well, I've been working on a memoir for the past five years.
	So, writing about my life is, you know, routine for me at this point.
	And ultimately, because we have open discourse, I've been very vocal about the fact that his workaholism did impact all three of our childhoods.
	We were, you know, obviously provided with privileges that are, you know, incomparable for a lot of people in this country.
	And for that, I'm grateful.
	But ultimately, you know, there was sort of this opening maw hole in which, you know, dad wasn't there.
	He did show up for ice skating competition.
	He did show up for football games.
	You know, he was there for the big events, but the day to day was a little bit more mom's domain.
	That's the word I'm looking for.
	So, Drew, did you know that?
	Well, I was aware that I was a workaholic.
	When she's talking really about when they were younger, before I started doing media, when I would get up at five in the morning and I would struggle to get home by 10 at night.
	And that was, you know, I had.
	Or midnight.
	Or midnight.
	Yeah, well, later it was midnight.
	But it was, I had multiple careers going simultaneously.
	You know, I had a Intensive care practice at a hospital.
	I had an inpatient medical practice and outpatient medical practice.
	I was running medical services in psychiatric hospitals.
	I was running their addiction services.
	It was super, super, super crazy for many years.
	And that's the part where I feel bad that I might have been able to balance things out a little bit better.
	But that's the part where I'm there.
	But do you think full, you know, back to the radical honesty, do you think it had anything to do with the fact that you had triplets at home?
	That is hard.
	And I mean, I joke, I used to be married to a doctor.
	Before there was Doug, there was Dan.
	He was a doctor, my first husband.
	And one of his doctor friends, and you know, it's tough to be a doctor, but one of his doctor friends was saying when he leaves his house in the morning and sort of hits the security code, leaving the kids, all the many kids he had inside, he used to say, Ah, time to go to that spa called work.
	I didn't feel that way so much as I was in a panic.
	I had, you know, I had a depression era dad that sort of traumatized me around finances.
	And I lived in a panic for many years that I wasn't going to be able to support this family.
	All of a sudden, Like I said, all the chips were in.
	We were this family of five all of a sudden.
	We went from this young, cool couple, we were on our own.
	All of a sudden, family of five.
	I just put the pedal to the metal.
	And I kind of knew there could be consequences.
	It wasn't that I was without awareness that my absence could have an issue.
	So I did the best I could.
	I just did the best I could.
	How do you think it affected you, Paulina?
	One therapist would say, no, I'm just kidding.
	No, I think for me, I think it played out in my romantic life.
	I think for a long time, I was.
	This is radical honesty.
	Let's go.
	I would, you know, pine over people who were emotionally unavailable, ultimately because I wasn't used to having a parent who was there to meet my emotional needs every single day.
	What age were you when that stopped, do you think?
	Because some, I'm asking only because to some extent, most adolescents do that kind of stuff, you know?
	But did it go well into adulthood?
	I would say like 26, 27.
	That was around the time that I sort of.
	And she's doing what every.
	Daughter of an unavailable dad does.
	Thank God I wasn't abandoning.
	I didn't leave because that would have been then the preoccupation.
	Which is what?
	Put more meat on those bones, Drew.
	She's doing what every daughter of an.
	Which is the.
	There are various ways of sort of talking about this and thinking about it, but there are things called, some people call love maps.
	There are things that were fitted with.
	And our family of origin create those romantic fittedness.
	And if they were insufficient, the drive to fit that becomes even more powerful.
	And, you know, therapy is the way out of that.
	So I'm grateful that you did that work too.
	Well, in fact, by the way, I am, there's nothing, you know, I know I'm not a perfect parent.
	And when Paulina first told me she was in therapy, I was like, oh my God, I'm so, oh, that's so great.
	And you're participating.
	You can't imagine how many people there are in this country that do go into mental health services, but don't participate.
	You have to, you have to, you have to.
	Be in the experience in order to get something out of it.
	And I was just thinking, I thought you were going to say, I was like, oh, thank God you're going into therapy where they'll definitely blame it all on your mother.
	Well, maybe not.
	There was that.
	It did happen.
	But it was more that I was just, rather than feeling guilty and sad, I was grateful that, oh my God, she's grabbing onto this good.
	I know I'm not perfect.
	Totally.
	I love therapy.
	I've been in therapy for years and I recommend it if you're at all interested.
	It's just sort of a gift you give to yourself.
	But it is one of those things you only get out of it what you put into it.
	So if you're going to hold back and you're not really going to put cards on the table, You're not going to get much out of it.
	And you definitely put cards on the table in the book, in your writings prior to the book.
	I've read a lot of them.
	And one of them is can we talk about virginity?
	Because I'm like, this girl, she's fearless.
	So you talk about, you knew it was coming at some point.
	Obviously, you're going to lose your virginity.
	And your dad is Dr. Drew.
	Awkward, awkward.
	It doesn't have to be awkward.
	But tell us what your mom said to you that stayed in your head from eight years.
	I have an eight year old from eight years forward.
	We were driving to ice skating practice to Burbank, California.
	We were on the 134 freeway.
	And my mom looked at me and said, When you lose your virginity, your father's going to broadcast it on the radio.
	And somebody consulted me about that.
	Well, I understand the impetus behind that, right?
	She was trying to communicate to me that because I was a girl, there were different pressures on me.
	I would be a topic of discussion.
	If I messed up, I would be ridiculed.
	And, you know, I kind of experienced that.
	I mean, To a certain degree, when I first started writing about my bulimia, you know, the reason it went national is because the New York Post pulled out the hook of it and was like, Dr. Drew's daughter has an eating disorder.
	And in that moment, it was, you know, almost worse than my virginity being broadcasted on the radio.
	It was like, yeah, it was kind of the same phenomena, but a deeper secret.
	But ultimately, because one is like, everybody eventually loses their virginity, and one is like, shame, shame in some corners, still, unfortunately.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And, you know, I think, Because I have proximity to my father's platform, it's been very important to me to speak honestly and authentically about these experiences because I can't be the only one, you know, dealing with purity culture or dealing with eating disorderslash body image issues.
	And so it's been sort of foundational in my writing practice to practice radical honesty and really be transparent about, you know, what I've been through and what it means to be in proximity.
	And I was just, I was smiling to myself, Megan, because I'm, And I've gotten used to it.
	I just sort of tighten my gluteal muscles and prepare, prepare, prepare for whatever punch comes my way.
	Yes.
	But you have a more authentic relationship.
	Oh, absolutely.
	It's been great.
	And listen, this is forging those adult connections, right?
	And again, that's what our book ended up being about.
	We really, it's not about all this stuff so much, although this does get in the book.
	That will be in the memoir.
	Yeah.
	That's more of the memoir.
	This is, it's more about, it was written, this book is written for sort of, Well, we say 14 to 20 year olds.
	14 to 20.
	And helping them navigate relationships.
	I want to go back to the story, Paulina, of you as a competitive ice skater.
	That was a big, big piece of your life for many, many years.
	And not surprisingly, it, I don't know if we can say led to, but involved what ultimately became an eating disorder for you.
	Very open about that.
	Would you say caused?
	I would say that is, it is in the fabric of the ice skating culture.
	I would say, you know, your friends are your competitors and your competitors are your friends.
	And, you know, I was actually speaking to a childhood friend of mine last night who's actually in one of my writing workshops.
	And we were talking about how dieting was a means of bonding with.
	Your friends and how you would dole out secrets with each other.
	I think ice skating, honestly, is on the track of needing sort of an exposure like gymnastics.
	I'm sort of waiting for that moment to happen because I think that it's a really toxic culture.
	But ultimately, you know, it really fed my performance spirit.
	And that's really where I learned how to be a performer.
	But ultimately, you know, I couldn't talk about it for years and I couldn't write about it.
	And it was a very incredibly painful, complicated.
	Uh, relationship, uh, ultimately because ice skating was the foundation of my identity for 13 years, and some of those relationships were very powerful and important.
	The coaches, oh, yeah.
	I mean, my coach, Erica Shore, and Barbara Sussman, uh, you know, they are mothers to me, and you know, they fundamentally helped me move through my childhood, my adolescence in a way that you know really fostered my spirit.
	Um, and then you know, there were the coaches who were like, you know, you gain weight here, and you know, you got to lose weight, and all that stuff.
	But why couldn't you talk about it?
	Was it the Was it the culture of ice skating?
	Like, it's shameful to talk about it, or because you didn't want to let it go?
	You know, if you talk about it, it's the first step toward letting it go.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I think that weight loss and thinness is sort of the subliminal messaging of the entire culture.
	Well, I mean, you're trying to get off the ground with, you know, and do these incredible things that.
	Yeah.
	You're hurdling yourself off the air on a toe pick and then landing on a toe and then landing on a razor.
	It's like insane.
	It's such an insane thing.
Extreme Ice Skating Pressures 00:07:04
	Yeah.
	You shouldn't be doing that anyway.
	No big deal.
	Yeah, I mean, I just have memories of mothers being like, How much do you weigh?
	My daughter weighs this.
	You know, like there's very much a toxic, specifically, you know, iTanya is my favorite ice skating movie because Alice and Janney, excuse me, is the quintessential ice skating mother, you know, just like the kind of shrew like woman with a parrot on her arm, you know, like that is the, you know, when I would walk into the ice rink, there would be a pack of mothers smoking cigarettes.
	And they would stop whispering when I would walk up, and I'd be like, Are you talking about me?
	And these are grown adults.
	And I was 14.
	And so this is why I'm waiting for ice skating to have its day in the sun.
	Ultimately, I think.
	I think you could write a book about that.
	That's really interesting.
	You should write an expose.
	You should go contact other ice skaters and get them to talk to you.
	I'd read that.
	I'd put you back on.
	Okay, fantastic.
	Yeah, I tried to write a piece about it last spring, and nowhere would pick it up.
	Ultimately, because I think there's an investment.
	In keeping ice skating sort of this pristine princess like sport.
	Well, what's interesting to me is the mom thing.
	That's an interesting observation because what I saw was a way for moms that were immigrant or lower middle class to try to propel their daughters into a different strata.
	Yeah.
	And they would not let go, they were just wild about it.
	So, well, yeah, I mean, one of my dear friends, Ryan Agassu, who landed the triple axle at the Olympics, you know, we were in the same preschool together.
	And there's video footage of us at the Esmeralda dance recital.
	And, you know, I'm like, Like twirling around, flirting with the camera, and Mariah's, you know, doing beautiful tandus.
	And so to me, there was always like a very clear distinction of like who was going to make it.
	And for whatever reason, I was like, Mariah's going to the Olympics and I'm going to college.
	Like, that is our trajectory.
	But going to college for ice skating is good too, right?
	I mean, is there an ice skating at college?
	I don't know.
	Is that one of those sports you can take to?
	There is.
	It's a club sport.
	And originally, when I was 14, I was like, I'm going to go to Columbia and be on the ice skating team.
	And then I kind of gave up on the Columbia Gym, went to Barnard, didn't realize that it was part of Columbia, and then I joined the rugby team.
	So different to that story.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	Probably very few people have that exact line.
	So before you talk about this, your mom was fine with that one.
	She was not sort of the working class mom looking to sort of make it for the family through you.
	You guys had already made it.
	And there was some conflict there.
	Like you write about how when you told your mom that you'd been forcing yourself to throw up, and one time it was eight times a day when you had stayed home on spring break, her response was, We're going to get your teeth checked.
	And I wondered, man, you are so honest.
	Like it's very brave of you to talk about this, given that your dad's famous and famous for mental health talk and so on.
	So, what of your relationship with your mom and how that played into the eating disorder?
	My mom and I were both invested in ice skating.
	It was the foundation of our relationship.
	She would drive me to every ice rink in Southern California, which is the largest network of ice rinks in the country.
	Five o'clock in the morning.
	Five o'clock in the morning.
	I have memories of being nine and her waking me up at 4 a.m. and just dutifully combing my hair and me manifesting early signs of OCD that would eventually manifest as an eating disorder.
	But I would make her do my bun.
	Eight times, and I would just scream at her.
	And, you know, that was early anxiety playing out, but it was kind of this routine that we were in, right?
	And the singular goal being we got to get her on the ice, we got to get her to perform.
	And for a long time, it really was, you know, as a triplet, I needed my thing, right?
	My brother Douglas was playing piano, my brother Jordan was good at math, and I was the ice skater.
	And so what became a hobby or an activity was swiftly an identity.
	And, you know, I write about my relationship to my mother, which is, you know, leaps and bounds more communicative and stronger.
	Because I have written about it.
	And ultimately, I think it's a privilege that my parents allow me to write about it and don't disown me.
	And, you know, I think also what was unusual about my situation is I was sent to a childhood nutritionist from ages 12 to 18.
	And I think that was really where the nexus of the eating disorder culminated.
	Ultimately, because I was getting waved every week, I was being told what I can and cannot eat.
	And ultimately, I, You know, I have a lot of resentment for that nutritionist because there was never a moment in which she questioned my motivation or checked in with me or anything.
	Ultimately, she was invested in a paycheck, which is a symptom of diet culture.
	So ultimately, you know, I had my go around with diet culture in a very extreme way.
	And figures hating was the motivation for that.
	So, how did you get out of it?
	Because it's so hard to break an eating disorder.
	I, my freshman year of college, started watching other people eat.
	And I realized that other people were able to feed themselves based on instinct rather than controlling portions or, you know, obsessively weighing themselves or whatever it was.
	And so it was because I was taken out of my childhood context that I was able to see that I was the unusual one.
	And as you cited earlier, you know, it was my freshman spring break.
	I went home and The emotional reality of being home and trying to differentiate myself as a New Yorker and being in Pasadena and kind of.
	Forced back into the space in which I felt like I was a different person.
	Ultimately, I perched eight times in one day.
	And that was when I was like, oh, something is wrong here.
	And so I went to my school's mental health services.
	They gave me a list of referrals.
	And thankfully, I was paired with an amazing therapist who incorporated feminism into my care.
	And ultimately, I feel really lucky because a lot of the ways we teach, not teach, Treat eating disorders is by, you know, sending them to a clinic and sort of focusing on gaining weight and focusing on meal control.
	And I had none of that.
	It was more like, how do you feel?
	How do you remain neutral?
	How do you feed yourself based on instinct?
	And for a long time, that meant eating spicy tofu pad thai every single day.
	But then, you know, that didn't feel good anymore, right?
	And it was because I had spent so many years abstaining and restricting that I kind of went overboard.
	And then once I started really feeling.
	Better about myself and more attuned to myself, I was able to learn how to feed myself based on instinct.
Silencing Parents at School Boards 00:15:03
	Coming up, two guests from a show we did in October called Moms Fight Back.
	You know where this is going.
	Stay tuned.
	Shortly after the insane letter from the National School Boards Association to the Biden administration, equating parents speaking out at school board meetings to domestic terrorists, we brought on two moms.
	Who both identify as current or former Democrats.
	But circumstances have changed.
	And Maude Marin and Natalia Marakver's stories reminded us of the power all parents have when they fight back on CRT inspired teaching in schools, on COVID, and more.
	Just for those who may not be as up to speed on it as you are, can you explain how Merrick Garland and the DOJ and the FBI got to the point of seriously now taking a look at cracking down on parents like you?
	Me and our other guests today as potential domestic terrorists.
	Right.
	It sounds crazy because it is crazy, right?
	It's a really, the language is over the top.
	And the language comes from a letter written by the National School Board Association, an organization I had never heard of, despite being elected to the school board where I live in New York City and Manhattan, and having served on that board for four years.
	The National School Board Association wrote this letter to President Biden.
	But I guess it wound up on Merrick Garland's desk, saying that they were documenting what they saw as criminal activity of parents at school board meetings.
	And they explicitly asked that the federal government intervene by looking at parents as domestic terrorists, their language, not mine.
	And they explicitly asked the FBI to use, among other things, the Patriot Act to deal with what they saw as the problem of parents at school boards.
	And what they're upset about is.
	Is alleged a disturbing spike in alleged harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against board members.
	But no evidence of that has been provided.
	And so we went back and we actually pulled the letter.
	We looked at the 26 individual examples of people allegedly harassing, intimidating, or somehow criminally threatening school board members.
	And the evidence that they provide, Maud, shows nothing of the kind.
	There's maybe one or two where you're like, oh, that was bad behavior.
	But for the most part, I read these examples.
	I'm like, I'm very proud of these parents.
	I'm inspired by these parents who went out to their school boards.
	And stood up to them.
	Okay, yes, some obscenities were yelled.
	That's not illegal.
	They were carrying let them breathe signs at certain times.
	A small disruptive group forced their way inside of the district office.
	They were politely asked to leave but refused.
	The horror.
	One school board may now limit public input after some meetings got, quote, disorderly.
	And one man was cited as having the nerve to ask if all the board members had their high school diplomas.
	Okay, I'm waiting to feel the outrage, I'm waiting for it to kick in.
	Here's another one.
	Grand Ledge School Board goes into recess due to public disruption.
	Board meeting had to go into recess twice.
	Once because someone went over their three minute time limit.
	This is their evidence to get the DOJ involved.
	A second time was after public comment when two board members were speaking to one another and the audience kept interrupting.
	So annoying.
	One time, another place they had to kick out a resident who refused to wear a mask.
	The horror.
	They started.
	Comparing the mask mandate to Nazis.
	Oh, sure, that's cause for the FBI to now get involved.
	That sort of loose talk.
	I mean, you hear that everywhere.
	It goes on and on.
	I can't believe that the DOJ took a look at this and said, we're in.
	Right.
	Look, and just to make clear, Megan, like there are behaviors that are inappropriate that people shouldn't do.
	Inappropriate is not even a bar or the threshold.
	For state law enforcement to get involved, right?
	We could all agree that we want people to be respectful or not.
	Like sometimes protest isn't always respectful, but you weren't just told that during the George Floyd protests?
	Well, yes.
	Well, yes, there's that.
	But what I wanted to say is if even if any of the behavior alleged was criminal, we have laws, we have law enforcement, we have state courts that are responsible for and do a very good job of enforcing the laws.
	I've worked in state court as a public defender.
	Representing people accused of crimes for years.
	So the looping in the federal government is really peculiar because it's not how it works.
	If someone in New York State disorderly conduct is a violation, it's not a crime.
	You can go to jail for up to 15 days for disorderly conduct.
	In other states, it actually is a misdemeanor.
	But regardless, if someone behaved in a disorderly way such that you thought you should call the cops, call the cops and they can come and make the determination as to whether or not they should make an arrest.
	That's not what's happening at our school boards.
	Overwhelmingly throughout our country.
	And if it does happen, call the police.
	Looping in the federal government is about something else.
	It's about silencing parents, and it's really, really troubling.
	There's a reason there's that expression, well, I'm not going to make a federal case out of it because that's an elevation.
	That's an elevation.
	And normally, the DOJ would absolutely laugh at this kind of a thing.
	And the fact that they're taking it on makes me wonder how it was orchestrated in the first place.
	Did the DOJ request a letter like this?
	Right?
	Were they just the innocent recipients or did they orchestrate the Biden administration, the whole thing?
	I was struck by the fact that it took two business days for the highest law enforcement person in our country, Merrick Garland, to respond to the National School Board Association as if he was just sitting around waiting for incoming from the NSBA.
	I mean, that's a really fast turnaround.
	So I'm suspicious about it.
	I don't have any evidence that the DOJ was anticipating it or was involved in it.
	But look, we know that in May, when the CDC told us we could take our masks off, Randy Weingarten, who's the head of the teachers' union, didn't much like that.
	And then that advice got peddled back.
	So we know that our government officials can be influenced by pressure from groups that want them to say different things than they're saying.
	Meanwhile, you and I both know as attorneys, it's not unlawful to even say mildly threatening things.
	I mean, in order to get to the only kind of speech that really is unlawful, and we went through this with the second Trump impeachment incitement, I N C I T E meant.
	Is it has to be immediate.
	It has to be obvious that it's about to cause immediate harm to somebody.
	You cannot prosecute somebody, which is what they're asking for, and the DOJ is threatening here, for saying, I'll get you if you keep that mask mandate in place.
	This is bullshit, and I know where you live, even if they pass something that's whatever, controversial.
	That's not unlawful.
	And I understand it could make some people feel uncomfortable, but the DOJ has no jurisdiction here.
	100%.
	And I'll tell you, I was at a rally yesterday in New York City.
	They're trying to get rid of the gifted and talented program, or Bill de Blasio has announced that he's getting rid of the gifted and talented program in New York City.
	And a lot of parents are unhappy about it.
	And we were on the steps of the Tweed Courthouse, which is where the Department of Education is located in New York City, protesting, yelling, holding up signs, making a case, arguing the facts about why we should have more gifted and talented programs and not be eliminating them.
	That's part of being a good person.
	Parent, it's part of being a good advocate.
	It's part of, you know, it's a basic American right to get out there and yell and protest and make demands on your public officials.
	And honestly, with all but a couple of exceptions, that's all that's alleged in this document.
	It's not, in no way, is it the stuff we saw the media defending during George Floyd destruction of property and burning buildings and even shootings.
	It's like, no, I won't put my mask on.
	Okay.
	The contrast is very illustrative, right?
	We saw the local law enforcement.
	Choose to not even prosecute looting and clear illegality in our streets last summer.
	And now we have the federal government coming in because parents are pissed off about what's happening in their schools and talking about it at school board meetings.
	The contrast is pretty overwhelming.
	The other thing is, in this letter complaining to the DOJ, which the DOJ now accepts, they claim on the subject of critical race theory disingenuously, quote, this propaganda.
	Being pushed by parents who need Merrick Garland to police their speech.
	This propaganda continues despite the fact that critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K 12 class.
	This is so infuriating.
	This is like, I feel like guys like Chris Ruffo came up with a term, critical race theory.
	I mean, it had existed, but they sort of co opted it to just be the bucket.
	Into which all of the crazy race peddling that's going on in our schools would get thrown because there's not a good short form way of referring to it, or there wasn't before that.
	Right.
	So it doesn't necessarily have to be the capital C, capital R, capital T race theory taught in law schools in order for it to be the problematic racist messaging that we parents are complaining about.
	This is such a dodge, right?
	It's like this is such a dishonest way to raise the argument.
	They know very well what they're teaching in K through 12, and it's all race.
	Race is the prism.
	Through which virtually everything gets taught now?
	Well, the people who know what's being taught in school are the parents.
	We've had it in our homes through Zoom, and we see it in what our kids are reading, and we see what's going on.
	You know, look, critical race theory is a theory.
	It's not math, right?
	And it's a theory that says you look at our society, at our institutions, at our laws through the lens of race.
	There's nothing wrong with that.
	It's a legitimate analysis that you can come up with.
	But what happens is that everybody who is a proponent of this theory winds up coming up with the conclusion that America is irredeemably racist.
	I look at some of the same facts they look up and come up with a different conclusion.
	Having that conversation, About whether or not we teach those conclusions to our kids, it's a legitimate conversation.
	And somewhat incredibly, Megan, I think, and this is why you see with this response to the Merrick Garland letter, is the fact that parents on the right and the left, Democrats and Republicans, parents all over are in agreement that they should be able to go to their school board and talk about these issues.
	People who agree and disagree with me have been showing up at school boards to talk about these issues.
	So, wherever you may be a proponent of CRT, But you should still be able to come to a school board and talk about it, as should the people who I would be inclined to agree with who think that it's deeply problematic and should not be in our schools.
	I feel like I want to say to these folks okay, I don't know what you're calling it, but why was the diversity group at my old school demanding mandated reading for faculty that said in every classroom where white children learn, there is a future killer cop?
	I don't give a damn what you call that.
	I don't know.
	You don't have to put it under critical.
	Stop teaching that.
	Stop saying that.
	Stop filling the heads of the teachers who have access to my children with that racist nonsense.
	So they can pick whatever label they want.
	What they want to do instead is say that nothing controversial is being taught and that anybody who wants to go protest at their school board meeting otherwise is a criminal, is a terrorist.
	We watched a woman on this program last week, I think it was, or when Carol Markowitz was on, railing in Virginia about, I mean, it was truly.
	Disgusting stuff about pedophilia in a school book in the library.
	And yeah, and it was very graphic.
	This is not like, oh, my virgineers.
	I mean, it's deeply disturbing stuff celebrating child abuse, I mean, child sexual rape.
	And she got up there, she was mad.
	The mom was mad.
	As she had every right to be.
	Yes, and this is a woman who could be treated as a domestic terrorist under this new approach because she was mad, she was yelling, she wouldn't stop when they tried to cut her mic.
	And that's by design.
	They want people like her to be quiet.
	Right.
	I mean, I think that's what's happening is that we see an impulse to silence parents, right?
	And the letter's very effective in that way.
	With someone who had wanted to go to their school board and speak up, says, wait a second, they're calling parents domestic terrorists.
	There are plenty of parents who are going to think twice before they sign up to go and speak.
	And that's a deep problem.
	It's the chilling of speech.
	And we are Americans who have a First Amendment that we value, or many of us value.
	I used to think most of us or all of us value, but there's been a strange, A strange question mark put on our First Amendment values by some folks who are prioritizing their sort of love of some of these theories over the free speech rights of people who disagree with them.
	Right.
	Let's just spend a minute on the scared parents because I think a lot of folks outside of these very blue cities might be like, What do you mean?
	Why are you afraid?
	This is nonsense.
	You got to go in and fight against that stuff.
	It's racist.
	You know, if it were racist against.
	Black people, you'd have no problem going in there and fighting it.
	And just racist against white people, just equally bad, go in there and fight.
	But the truth is, it's really scary because, especially in the blue cities, you're talking about I don't want to lose my job if I'm on the nightly news in a clip.
	Saying, quote, the wrong thing.
	I don't want my spouse to lose their job.
	I don't want my kid to have it held against him or her.
	It's complicated.
Fighting Mask Mandates Nationwide 00:04:29
	And I feel like they know it.
	That's why they're doing this.
	I know something about losing a job because you said words that weren't approved by ideologues, right?
	Yeah.
	I had that happen to me.
	And it came out of literally my advocacy on a school board.
	I ran for my school board.
	I got elected.
	I wound up running for the president of the school board and I became the president of my school board.
	And some people liked what I have to say and some people didn't.
	That's to be expected.
	That's normal.
	But the people who didn't like what I had to say, didn't agree with me, really waged a campaign against me.
	And that wound up also going to my workplace where the people in my workplace put out public letters and got the You know, my bosses basically signed on to these public letters saying that because of what I believed and because of what I wrote and because I'm white, I couldn't do my job.
	I know you're in this group, you're in another group with a pal of mine who I absolutely love who's fighting for sanity too.
	How, like, what's the plan, right?
	Like, I'm out here talking about it.
	Parents are showing up at the school board meetings.
	Now they're being threatened with being treated as domestic terrorists.
	So, what are the plans being kicked around?
	This is really a good time.
	I think that there is a groundswell at this point where parents really are starting to question what the mitigations that have been implemented, and especially schools, are and what is absolutely essential because now it's become a long haul and they're seeing kids who really are suffering and there's no end in sight.
	So we have realized as a group of parents across the country that our biggest Disability has been that we're fragmented.
	We don't have a union.
	There's no one place where we can go and really just connect and try to implement best practices for kids that really don't vary from California to New York.
	Kids are kids.
	They need to be able to breathe.
	They need to be able to move.
	They need to be able to be largely unrestricted and feel like school is a place they want to go to rather than a place where they're confined in.
	So we've started, you know, just talking.
	We talk with parents in California, in Oregon, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, you know, all over the country, and really try to implement an awareness campaign.
	Obviously, we don't have the power to unmask our children, and that's so frustrating to so many of us, but we can challenge adults to mask like children.
	And I think that that's harder than most adults imagine.
	These children have to put on those masks.
	Often at 7 30, 8 o'clock in the morning, many of them in New York City, especially, they don't get breaks.
	It's explicitly written into the DOE guidelines no mask breaks, don't take it off outside, no recess, no gym breaks.
	So you're kicking a ball around, sweating in a mask, suffocating, but nobody can really see that and nobody cares.
	I mean, that's an incredible message to send to our kids, too.
	But we're trying to raise awareness that this is how kids actually mask, and we're going to have a mask like a kid day.
	Which is going to challenge politicians.
	Our governor, Ho Chul, who always appears on camera, unmasked, and communicating with the masses unmasked, because she obviously knows how much easier it is to communicate and establish connections unmasked.
	I'd like to see her mask.
	I'd like to see reporters mask.
	I'd like to see, you know, people who are just walking around on the street mask like kids.
	So 8 a.m. to, you know, 3 o'clock in the afternoon, a 20 minute break for lunch, but a mask the rest of the day.
	And by the way, you can't just access water anytime you want to just because your mouth is dry.
	For instance, in New York City, in some schools, I know that kids are forced to leave the classroom, stand three feet apart at designated times just to get a sip of water.
	That's what masking like a kid means.
	And I don't think any adult is experiencing that and that kind of loss of agency.
Water Restrictions and Parenting 00:04:30
	That's a great point.
	My eight year old just told me yesterday that if he wants to get a drink of water at school, they make him, you can pull down the mask to take the sip.
	And then before you've even swallowed, you have to have the mask back over your nose.
	They're putting into these kids, they're treating these kids like they've got some hideous communicable disease, that any breath caught out into the open could be lethal for one of their.
	It's not.
	True.
	And I resent them scaring my eight year old when my husband and I have done such a good job of not doing that, right?
	Like, it's like we're fighting against the schools on this, not with them.
	Coming up, my friend Steven Crowder joined us to talk about all sorts of topics.
	He's hilarious and brilliant.
	But what did he have to say about parenting?
	That's next.
	And remember, you can find The Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon East and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/slash Megan Kelly.
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	Here's a different take on parenting Steven Crowder was recovering from the major health problem.
	When his life changed in a different way, he became a parent for the first time to twins.
	Here's his hilarious and personal take on that.
	You know what it is?
	I think for me, so I have my little girl, I connect with her more just because the boy wants his mom and he doesn't really react to me.
	Whereas with her, I can do a bunch of voices and I do impressions.
	Like I sang 99 bottles of beer on the wall and I actually got all the way down with a different impression for every single bottle.
	Wow.
	And she loves it.
	So, I can calm her down and kind of interact with her, whereas he wants his mom at this point.
	So, I think for men, when you interact is when you connect with them.
	For me, right away with the birth was, and again, kind of with my temperament was, oh my gosh, this is real.
	I got to do this.
	I got to do this.
	I got to make sure this.
	I got to take care of them this way.
	And yeah, there was love, but it was a really overwhelming sense of responsibility.
	And keep in mind, they were born a little early, you know?
	And I just remember thinking, how could anyone have, Children like have babies like this and still be pro abortion.
	I do remember thinking that, like, how could because they were born, you know, as twins premature.
	I'm going, this would be legal.
	It would have been legal just today in Virginia to do that.
	And it really, that to me was a, I've always been pro life, but there was this visceral reaction where seeing them and seeing that they're a living thing.
	And especially with twins, because you can see the personality differences right away.
	You know what I mean?
	It's not just a fetus.
	It's not just a.
	Well, even earlier.
	I mean, of course, as you know, early on in the pregnancy, that, you know, that whole heartbeat thing is like, You see and hear the heartbeat of this little tiny shape.
	And it's like you can debate whether abortion policy is good, bad, legal, not legal to the cows come home, but you can't tell me that that's not a life.
	I mean, that is, that's science.
	That is science.
	Yeah.
	No, it could not be sustained outside the mother's womb at that point.
	But is that the relevant question?
	There's no, you see that heartbeat, whatever your position was before, it's got to give you some pause.
	Like, wow.
	And to be clear, it was very special with my kids.
	But I'm kind of a, because of what I do and running a business and, you know, having a target on my back with YouTube, the truth is I don't really have the luxury in my life to sit very often and enjoy the present moment or feel pity for myself.
	So I kind of like, okay.
	I'm the moment I was out of the ICU, kind of like, okay, boom, done, go, okay, boom, done, go.
	That's what I have to do.
	And especially in a landscape that's constantly changing right now with social media, with the way media is, with the bad faith actors, who they are.
	But it was obviously very, very special to me to first, they brought up my son first because he can only have one person.
	They have to be in a sip with the COVID thing.
	So I kind of had to do one at a time.
	And also, one thing is I still can't really hold both of them at the same time because of what's going on with the bars and the rib cage.
	But It was, yeah, it is one of the things I don't, I still, I never really liked kids that much.
The Peak of Parenthood 00:03:03
	I still don't love other people's kids, but everyone says my kids are cuter, but the difference is I'm right.
	And you know what?
	I have to say, they really do get better and better.
	It's like, I feel like in some ways I'm more like a man when it comes to children.
	Like, most of my women and friends are like, oh, when they were toddlers, I'm like, oh my God, thank God that period's over.
	My kids now are 12, 10, and eight, and it's so awesome.
	And it's been awesome for a good like four years, like eight, six, and four was also awesome.
	I just think, People, I don't know whether you're having any of these feelings or not, but if you're not feeling like a yes, nailed it, this is amazing, just know it actually gets so good when they become more like little people and they can talk and you can see their brains working and they're funny and they fire up things in you and you can relive fun things like your favorite.
	It's just like the next phase of parenthood, people need to be told just in case they're not absolutely loving the babyhood phase.
	I appreciate it because a lot of people just go, Oh, it only gets harder.
	I'm like, I don't really know if that's the case because right now, every two hours, we're trying to make sure that they don't die.
	That's literally, they lay there and I go, please don't die.
	How do I make you not die?
	That's about it.
	And if people want to know too, it sort of occurred to me what we think is cute about babies or young children is really just the kind of behavior where if an adult behaved the exact same way, you would think they're an idiot.
	But to kids, we think it's cute.
	Like with a baby the other day, she just started, she started like, Finding her hand, you know, she couldn't, and then she kind of finally, like, look, she's finding her hand.
	If your cousin, if your friend Bob was like finding his hand, you'd lock him away.
	So that's just, that's what we think is cute about them.
	But I will tell you, there's nothing cuter.
	There is nothing cuter than we have a, you know, a big, big dog, Joe Lewis.
	He's a Doug Argentine, 110 pounds.
	And we figured he was going to be really good with the kids.
	And of course, to people out there, you should never leave any dog alone with children, particularly big dogs, no matter how good they are.
	But the, There's something so cute about bridled control, a dog that is a protective dog, a dog that is a powerful dog, moving gently up to interact with the kids and kiss them and understanding the difference between the little ones.
	So, Joe Lewis has just been great with them.
	He's been perfect.
	And that's been really cool for us to see the interaction.
	They cry a little bit.
	He runs up, he checks on them, waits in front of the nursery.
	We go in.
	He's like, okay, I've done my job.
	So, you know, there's a lot of love in the house.
	That's something a lot of people skip over.
	Joe Lewis is, he's sort of another version of Steven Crowder.
	Like that, this big tough guy who takes on all these massive battles and challenges and doesn't back down.
	But, like, there's a softer, more protective, sweet, kind, loving side.
	I've seen it in you repeatedly.
	Steven Crowder is brilliant.
	Trust me, if his political leanings were left wing, he would be hosting one of those late night shows right now.
	He's kind of like a Greg Gutfeld in that way, but he's killing it on YouTube, so he doesn't need them and on his own platform.
Raising Teens in Social Media Age 00:15:55
	I have to say, it does change, right?
	Motherhood, parenthood.
	For me now, my kids are 8, 10, and 12.
	And I have to say, I feel like I'm peaking.
	I'm peaking in terms of my parenthood experience.
	My kids are delightful right now.
	They haven't yet hit the annoying teenage years.
	So they're They're awesome.
	They're super fun to spend time with.
	And they're out of the toddler years, which were not my faves.
	Like, Abby is much more of a caretaker than I am.
	So she enjoys those years a lot.
	I'm like, hmm, hmm.
	And if we could rush ahead to four when you're a little bit less dependent.
	So I'm loving it because I've got my babe, my little guy, eight, that's still little.
	He wants me to lie with him every night, right?
	Moms, don't you love that?
	We do our little book that we're reading.
	And my older two are like real people now.
	You can talk to them about anything and they learn from me and I learn from them, right?
	Like, I've learned a lot from all three of my kids, but as they get older and wiser, then they have institutional knowledge of you.
	Then they can give you a hard time.
	Then they can give you, you know, life advice.
	Anyway, right now, it's never been any better.
	And of course, because I'm Irish and I'm Catholic, that just makes me worry about when it's going to fall apart.
	Instead of enjoying the moment, it's when's it falling apart?
	It must be soon.
	Teenagers, they're coming for me.
	But no, for the moment, it's delightful.
	And I hope it's delightful for you too.
	And if it's not, just remember.
	Right around the corner.
	Goodness could be coming your way.
	More coming up on Parenting in the Age of TikTok and Instagram, on Mama Bears, who may have flipped Virginia Red, and much more.
	We heard from all sorts of parents this year on our show, and you can go back and find all the shows in our archives on YouTube or Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, the SiriusXM app.
	We're everywhere.
	One of the first interviews we did after we joined SiriusXM was with Scott Galloway, a Fascinating author, professor, and podcast host with a focus on tech.
	He's also a parent, and we talked about how he grew up and the alarming rate at which boys are seeding ground in the world of education to girls.
	But we also talked about what it's like to parent kids in the age of social media.
	It's a hugely important topic, right?
	Now, all you're ever told is like, no, don't get my phone.
	But is that realistic?
	What about if your kid's the only one in the school, right?
	In the class who doesn't have a phone?
	I mean, that's a tough situation, to be honest.
	We talked about it and we talked about it honestly.
	How do you deal with it in your household?
	As Galloway says, it's something every parent is struggling with.
	And here's part of my interview with Scott.
	You have more, I don't know, is it fair to say working class roots?
	I've heard you describe your background in different ways.
	Yeah.
	Raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died a secretary and, you know, was really, Megan, transformed by kind of big government, the generosity of California taxpayers and the Regency University of California, went to UCLA and Berkeley.
	For undergrad and grad, for a total of tuition of $7,000 in the 80s.
	And even more importantly, back then, the acceptance rate at UCLA was 70%.
	I had to apply twice to get in, and now the acceptance rate is 12%.
	So things have changed a lot.
	Well, and it was at a point where young men were still going to college.
	I mean, I know this is one of the things you've been pointing out, but where are all the young men going to college now?
	They're going another way, or I don't know what they're doing, but they're not going to college in anywhere near the same numbers as they used to.
	It's a really interesting issue.
	I'm sure you saw the Wall Street Journal article, but it's now 60 40.
	Women to men in college, which sounds bad, but it's even worse when you consider that if your son shows up to college, there's 50% more women there, and seven in 10 high school valedictorians are girls.
	Some of this is good, some of this is catching up, some of this is just warranted.
	Reward for young women and girls who are overachieving academically, but also it signals, I think, something very dangerous.
	And that is, men are not attaching to school, they're not attaching to work, they're more likely to be unemployed, more likely to have opioid addiction.
	And also, this is a strange stat.
	In 2008, 8% of men under the age of 30 had reported never having had sex.
	And while people hear the term and their brain fires a bunch of different ways, just assume it's a key component of establishing a relationship.
	That number as of last year is 28%.
	And the reason why that number is so scary is if men aren't attaching to work, they're not attaching, or young men attaching to work, school, or a job, they're very dangerous.
	Our most unstable societies have what is too many of the most dangerous person in the world, and that's a young, broken, alone male.
	So when we hear that men continue to not pursue college, we really do need to look at it.
	We're producing too many of this cohort.
	Do you think it has to do with politics at all, with how, you know, In particular, the white male has been so demonized, and they know what's going to happen on college campuses.
	They're at the lowest on the totem pole in terms of economic or socio status.
	And I don't know.
	I'm just talking to my friends who are very worried about their son, who's a conservative.
	He's a senior in high school, but he's been really attacked and demonized by the faculty at his school.
	And they're thinking it's only going to get worse when he goes to college next year.
	I think they'll still send him.
	But I wonder how much of that plays into their unwillingness to put themselves through those four years.
	I don't think it's discouraging them from going.
	I think other reasons discourage them from going, but I wouldn't be surprised if it lends to more of them or disproportionate amount of them to drop out.
	I do think there's an unhealthy gestalt in universities right now where just informally we say on freshman orientation, okay, oppressors over here and oppressed over here.
	And we start from an unhealthy place of identity politics.
	And universities have become especially.
	Rough and tumble places around this where people's comments are taken out of context, they've made a caricature of it, and then they're shamed.
	And I would argue, Megan, that it's actually their fellow students who are less forgiving than faculty.
	And I've seen it happen play out in class where someone makes one false move.
	And universities are generally the most progressive places in the world.
	I think we've become really made a ton of progress being more accepting of people who don't look like us.
	Where we have failed is we have become increasingly intolerant of people who don't think like us.
	2% of the faculty at Harvard identifies as conservative.
	And universities are supposed to be a place where we debate and have provocation and welcome the dissenter's voice.
	And around politics, we just don't tolerate it anymore.
	So I wonder if a lot of young men show up and immediately say, All right, my freshman orientation kind of told me I was an oppressor.
	Maybe this isn't the place for me.
	So I do think there's something there.
	I don't think it's discouraging them from going to college or enrolling them.
	I think it might be just encouraging them to drop out.
	I know you've written a book on happiness.
	For just a short form.
	It's called The Algebra of Happiness Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning.
	And I do wonder, because I feel like you've written so much on big tech and it's so ubiquitous in our lives and these companies that have all these tentacles and they're manipulating us in ways we don't even fully understand, but we can feel it, whether we know it's as a result of all the hours we spend on Facebook or not.
	Just how big a role those big tech companies are playing in unhappiness, whether it's of young men or in particular of young women?
	We'll get to a story that just came out today from Facebook.
	How Meaningful, do you think their role has been?
	I don't even think it's meaningful.
	I think it's profound.
	My colleague at NYU, Jonathan Haidt, wrote this fantastic book called The Coddling of the American Mind.
	And we have An epidemic or an emerging epidemic in teen depression.
	And he identified two sources of that or two drivers.
	The first is our fault as parents, Megan.
	I know you're a parent as well.
	And that is our concierge or bulldozer parenting has led to this sort of approach where we use so many sanitary wipes on our children's lives that they don't develop their own immunities.
	And we develop this princess in the P generation where they show up to college and get their heartbroken or get their first C and literally freak out.
	The second thing, though, is that social media has been.
	Proven, and even Facebook knew this and decided to hide it, to result in greater levels of depression.
	That levels of depression in young men and especially young women are correlated with social media use and specifically around Instagram.
	And it used to be when you and I didn't get invited to a party in high school, it was bad, and that happens to everybody.
	But now you see it play out in real time on your phone.
	And it's especially damaging to girls and young women because men or boys bully physically and verbally.
	Women or young girls bully relationally.
	And we've put these nuclear weapons in their hands.
	And we keep waiting for the better angels of these companies to show up.
	And it just doesn't happen.
	How could they?
	I want to get to the Facebook news in one second because it confirms everything that you've been saying.
	And we know, but how could they?
	Because, for example, my friend John Stossel, who I love, he's a libertarian.
	If he were here, he'd be saying, they're very successful companies.
	There's a reason they became so successful.
	The American people voted.
	You know, with their dollars and with their eyeballs and with their time.
	And, you know, therefore, it's clearly what people want.
	And it's not a place for government to step in and protect people from themselves.
	So, what could they be doing differently that would protect our kids more, but not totally abandon American capitalism and the way it works?
	Well, I'd be in favor of age gating.
	I remember when my son posted a video of his handstand on YouTube and he got a like.
	And then all he could think about was checking back on YouTube.
	And then someone made sort of a snarky comment and it really upset him.
	And I wonder if 12 year olds should even be on YouTube.
	I think there's a capitalist argument to be made that if we, in fact, broke these companies up and had more options than one social media network or one search engine, that it might result in emerging players that say there are advertisers and parents who would rather have a video search engine that doesn't radicalize young men.
	There are, I think we need a photo sharing app that advertises it will not allow people under the age of 16 and it will not allow bullying or it'll come up with some sort of affirmation.
	That doesn't make people feel worse.
	So, I think competition is an answer here.
	I think regulation is an answer.
	And if your show, Megan, could be reverse engineered to girls cutting themselves, I don't think this show would survive because I think there are other podcasts and other media personalities that advertisers would rally behind.
	Unfortunately, in this environment with social media and search, there are no options.
	So, they don't have any real incentive to be good citizens and attract dollars.
	So, I think the answer is a capitalist argument that your friend was making.
	And that is we need more competition because there's a lot of advertisers that aren't.
	Down with what's going on.
	And a lot of parents, you know, what choice do you have?
	I don't want my son on YouTube, but where do they go?
	So I think the capitalist argument is to break them up and competition would solve a lot of this.
	But I do think we need regulation in age gating.
	The Facebook story out today in the Wall Street Journal, the headline is Facebook Knows Instagram, it's the same company, is toxic for teen girls.
	For the past three years, Facebook has been conducting studies into how its photo sharing app, Insta, affects its millions of young users.
	About 22 million teens log on to Instagram.
	In the US every day, 5 million teens log on to Facebook.
	And they say that they've been doing a study internally, their researchers, and they found Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of these teens, especially the girls.
	32% of teen girls said when they feel bad about their bodies, Instagram brought them there.
	Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves.
	They make body images worse for one in three teen girls.
	That's their own conclusion.
	Make body images worse for one in three.
	And that they're actually blaming the teens, recognize it's to blame for the increase in anxiety, depression among teens reporting suicidal thoughts.
	13% of British teens said, and 66% of American users said, the desire to kill themselves was rooted to Instagram.
	I mean, it's bad.
	Yeah, it's just frightening.
	And if you talk to, I'm involved in this wonderful nonprofit called Jed, which is committed to teen mental health.
	And a lot of times, unfortunately, your kid is suffering alone.
	You don't know they're suffering and they're ashamed and they go into the room and on their phone and they end up making one false move or for whatever reason they feel bad about themselves or the mob seizes on them.
	And it ends up in a level of emotional anxiety in a time when kids are facing increased anxiety from a variety of different factors.
	What's most disturbing here is that Facebook knew about this and they decided to, you know, Facebook's innovation is how to overrun government to ignore these concerns.
	Rather than saying, how do we address this?
	What changes can we make?
	What incentives could we put in place to really try and counteract some of these negative externalities?
	The majority of their efforts are around not making Instagram a healthier thing.
	And there's some very good things about Instagram.
	It's about delay and obfuscation.
	And so, just as the cigarette companies were lobbying companies sitting on top of a consumer products company, Facebook has really become an organization of delay and obfuscation and government overrun such that they can ignore these types of issues.
	And that's This just takes it to a new level.
	I mean, it's one thing, like I said, you know, you have kids, I have kids.
	You have your world of work, you have your world of friends, you have your world of fun.
	When something comes off the tracks of one of your kids, the entire universe distills down to that kid.
	And the thought that this one company doesn't have this sort of empathy or concern for our children, it's just really, it's just continued evidence that this company is bad for the Commonwealth and is kind of part of what I would call the head of the class of a menace economy that is arbitraging depression, circumventing minimum wage laws.
	It's just more than anything, Megan, it's just really disappointing.
	Mm hmm.
	Head of a class of a menace economy.
	Yes.
	I am dealing with this right now to some extent because we have three kids, as you point out, and my mom, boy, girl, boy, almost 12, 10, and 8.
	And my almost 12 year old turns 12 in about two weeks.
	And years ago, when he started pressuring me for a phone, right?
	Because all these kids have phones.
	When can I have a phone?
	My husband and I were like, oh, when you're 12, when you're 12.
	And then we learned more, we listened more, and we were like, there's no way he's getting a phone when he turns 12.
	He's not getting it.
	Maybe a flip phone.
	Phone for emergencies where you can just dial us.
	That's it.
	And now, you know, kids remember.
	And he's like, Guess what I want for my 12th birthday?
	And I had to say, You're not getting one.
	And he said, What do all my friends have?
	They all have iPhones.
	You know, can I please have an iPhone?
	And I'm like, You can't have it.
	You know, I don't know what to tell you, honey, but dad and I have done more research and you're not getting it.
	He's disappointed.
	But what do you think?
	As a dad of two kids who's been watching this industry very closely, do we get our kids' phones?
	Do we let them have social media?
	Because of course, their reaction is every single one of my friends.
	It's a really tough call.
	And the people who take a purist argument and say no screens until they're 16 and no iPhone, that means they don't have kids.
	Because what you recognize is, I mean, it sounds terrible, but at some point you want time for your own screen time.
	And then also, they do get it's balancing the very real negative impacts of kids on their phones and specifically the social media platforms.
	And for some of the problems we referenced before, it's balancing that.
	Versus them being ostracized because there are some positive things.
	My sons play video games and they do a lot of their socialization that way.
	When they were When we were remote this summer and they couldn't be with their friends, one way they caught up with their friends was on video games.
	And I think actually some of that's healthy.
	And I would argue that video games, and there's research to show this, aren't as damaging on the psyche or psychological well being of kids.
Video Games vs Toxic Platforms 00:04:31
	You know, we're struggling with this as well.
	What we're trying to do is we demand their passwords and we demand to see their activity.
	So we're never surprised about stuff.
	And we try to give them some license, even when stuff's a little bit off color, if you will.
	And we're also just putting a certain time limit on it.
	And we take their phones from them, we give them their phones for, I think it's one hour.
	At night during the weekdays and two hours in the mornings on weekends, and then we take them back.
	But if you're looking for someone who's figured it out, you'll hear the arguments at our house that just prove we have not figured this out.
	I think every parent is struggling with this.
	Well, I mean, I should say he has an iPad, but that's only he can only use that when we're there and he does games occasionally and he had to use it for remote schooling.
	But we, social media is what we're trying to avoid and YouTube rabbit holes, right?
	I mean, we've done enough research on what that does and to young girls too, what that does and pulling you into just dark places that we.
	If I'm there, that's one thing.
	It's quite another to have it in your pocket all day long when you're that young.
	And to your point earlier, the Snapchat, that's the thing that shows you where all your friends are Snapchat.
	So you can see where all your friends are.
	And like you just said, now you can see, oh, where's Jane?
	Oh, where's Donna?
	Oh, where's Mary?
	Oh, they're all right here together and no one's responding to my calls or my texts.
	And I've been ignored, I've been excluded.
	It hurts.
	Yeah.
	And the question is, you know, I don't know if the answer is to keep them off it.
	I think it's, Some of it does fall to us to teach them good values.
	You know, we gave our son a phone at about 13, and we've demanded that he's kind and that he not take bait when people slight him.
	And we review his social, but we do give him his phone and just the utility of it.
	I mean, if you want your kid to have any freedom, and I was always worried that we were not letting our kid out of the house enough, you know, I used to leave at the age of seven or eight, and my mom would say, be home by 10, and that was about it.
	Same.
	And now, you know, kids like, you know, we practically have them in armored cars, it feels like.
	So I think, Giving them their phones so they can walk.
	We call it the Avenue down by Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach.
	I think that's liberating and it's good for them to have independence.
	It's good for them to walk home in the dark every once in a while and get a little bit scared and walk by the house with the strange, mean dog.
	I think some of that is actually good for the kids.
	But we're absolutely struggling with the notion around when and how.
	And I do think parents and schools have a role here.
	We're in a lovely school in Florida, and they basically say you're not allowed to bring your devices.
	And you can get in trouble for them.
	And they've said, and they've said also, your activity on social, and I don't know if this will stand up in court, and I'm sure it'll be challenged.
	Your activity on social, if you bully another kid or do something, then we can take punitive action against you in the school.
	I think everyone's trying to figure this out.
	This is a tough one, but what we have to realize is that the company's not going to figure it out.
	They're going to continue to manufacture this stuff.
	That's the thing.
	They're not an ally.
	Wouldn't it be nice if you knew that Mark Zuckerberg was in some way your ally in this battle and trying to protect young kids from the damaging?
	Effects of it, the addiction that comes from looking at your phone 45,000 times to see if you have a like and so on.
	It's hard enough for an adult to resist it, never mind a kid.
	And he's not your ally.
	I mean, that's really sort of the bottom line.
	The social media companies are on the other side of this.
	Yeah, there are some companies.
	There's a great company called Roblox that was hugely successful, multi billion dollar market capitalization.
	And they do have a lot of content moderators.
	It's a game platform for children.
	About half of kids under the age of 16 have been on Roblox and they are taking.
	This issue very seriously.
	I do think TikTok, I don't know if you spend much time on TikTok, Megan.
	It seems to me that's a little less toxic or they're trying to.
	But isn't that just China gathering my child's data?
	Could be.
	Could be.
	I personally don't see evidence of that so far, but I think that's always a risk.
	You have to assume any Chinese company that the data there is probably subject to inspection by Chinese authorities.
	So I don't want to pretend that's not a real issue.
	What I would say, though, is that when I'm on, When I'm on TikTok, it does feel more optimistic.
	It does feel a little less, you know, you go on Facebook and you go on Twitter and it feels like the algorithms are just constantly saying, fight, fight, fight.
Mama Bear Protects Her Child 00:02:02
	And Twitter's, but isn't Kara?
	Kara's always saying that her kids are like, Twitter's for old people, mom.
	Like Twitter's not really the popular venue for the youngins.
	But Facebook is obviously huge and Insta's enormous and not harmless.
	I mean, I think people see the pretty pictures and it's like, oh, yay, influencers.
	And it's like, no.
	And for every one influencer who will post something without a filter to show her actual rear end or face, there's just millions of opposite doing the opposite, right?
	So you get in a young girl's heads.
	And even with apparent counter programming, which I'm sure you try and I try, it's hard.
	Coming up, my conversation with a mama bear who may have personally helped turn Virginia red and give Glenn Youngkin a surprising victory over Terry McAuliffe.
	In early November, Republicans across the country saw victories in elections, big and small.
	But all eyes were on Virginia, and Glenn Youngkin's win over Terry McAuliffe shocked many.
	What helped push Youngkin across the finish line?
	One person who was personally involved was Azra Nomani, a Muslim immigrant, single mom, and former progressive who became a self described mama bear, fighting back against what she described as anti American propaganda in the schools.
	Can I tell you, one of my closest, dearest friends who would describe herself the same way voted yesterday.
	This is in New York, across the board Republican.
	And it was a moment for her.
	I think she felt a little teary about it.
	She felt emotional.
	It wasn't because she's gone, you know, hardcore pro Second Amendment.
	It was because she's a mama bear, like your shirt says.
	She's a mama bear like you.
	This isn't a Republican Dem issue.
	Yeah, it's such a tragedy that the Dems right now cannot see the humanity of their base.
	Because they're so caught up in the politics of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and AOC.
	They're just chasing the extreme.
Democratic Party and Bad Ideas 00:15:17
	And they've left them behind, the centrists like myself.
	I, like you said, I only moved to Virginia in December 2008.
	I remember it precisely, Megan, because I was living in DC and I needed to find a new place.
	Well, the election had just happened in 2008.
	And I grew up in West Virginia.
	So I grew up, you know, really feeling.
	Pride in our state of West Virginia being on the correct side of history on the issue of civil rights, slavery, this big issue of slavery.
	Well, it was only when the state voted for Barack Obama that I said, oh, it's ready for a Muslim immigrant, progressive feminist like me.
	I raised my son here, and then all of a sudden in June 2020, the principal at my son's high school told me that I and the other Asian, mostly Asian, mostly immigrant parents had to check our privileges.
	And on it goes.
	You're the perfect person to talk to about this lie.
	We keep hearing over and over from the mainstream media, from the Democrats, all over cable news last night that CRT is a unicorn.
	This is not something being taught.
	In K 12 schools, they say it like it is a factual assertion.
	They are correcting this nonsense record that conservative crazies, white supremacists, keep pushing.
	I mean, your take on it, because I will tell you, I just said earlier in the show I don't care what you call it, I don't care if they're not teaching the actual legal doctrine that you learn in law.
	That's not what parents are saying.
	You're teaching racial division.
	CRT is a catch all phrase for parents who don't know quite how to categorize the insanity you're delving out.
	Yeah, my colleague, the president of Parents Defending Education, You've spoken with her, she said, I don't care if you call it magical unicorn theory, right?
	We are just opposed to it because it's bad news.
	Like behind me, Megan, is all of the books on Islamism that we would talk about for years, the extremism within my faith of Islam and how we had to challenge it.
	Well, now I have here critical race theory and all of the extremism of wokeism.
	And it is very much real and happening in the state of Virginia.
	First of all, you know, just to start off with your audience, You know, critical race theory says that we have to look at all issues through the lens of race.
	It's just a very simple premise.
	So, that was a fundamental problem on this issue of my son's school because they wanted to have racial demographics at the school matching the racial demographics of the county 20% Asian, 70% Asian in my son's school.
	So, right away, they changed admissions.
	So, it's getting in the weeds a little bit here, but I just want to let people know how it is that they started messing with schools.
	Through the lens of race.
	And then, one example I have here that I wrote about in National Review, I think you talked about it a bit, is this class called How to Be an Anti Racist Educator.
	And I didn't get this into the National Review piece, but the premise of this class that's taught at Marshall High School right now to educators there in Virginia is yeah, in Virginia, just right down the road from me here, is that they have to discuss in lesson number six exploring and understanding whiteness.
	So, this is again looking at people and society through the lens of race.
	And they use this book, Courageous Conversations.
	And Courageous Conversations is the bad ideas of this man named Glenn Singleton.
	That's who they brought to my school in New York.
	That's one of the schools we left.
	Yeah.
	So, he, you know, because you know how in Islamism we had to study where did extremism come from?
	And then we learned it's the Muslim Brotherhood, right?
	It's this guy named Haradawi.
	Who are the vessels of these bad ideas?
	And it's this guy, Glenn Singleton.
	And that's what they are now teaching these courses in here.
	And they're going to include in the next coming weeks here in Virginia, right down the road from me, the Privilege Walk, right?
	You know, all of these anecdotes, Megan, that have just, you know, seeped into our school systems.
	And it's always bad ideas from really like, you know, not very sophisticated intellectuals who are just.
	Now, making millions of dollars.
	And, you know, over here, I have the receipts, the contracts from a neighboring county, Talbot County, next door in DC.
	It's money, it's bad ideas, and it's ultimately trickling down into our schools.
	And that's what we know.
	We see it every day as parents.
	We hear about it, and we're not stupid.
	You know, we get it.
	And just like you guys just talked about, we are not going to let anyone get in between.
	Ourselves and our cubs.
	That's right.
	And you talk about, I mean, in your piece for National Review, which was wonderful, and I recommend it to everybody Virginia parents have had enough.
	Of woke lies at their schools.
	This is a couple days ago before the election.
	Woke lies.
	We heard so many more of them.
	But last night, when CRT is not being taught, it's not being taught, it's not being taught.
	Okay.
	Well, one of the examples you gave was of that anti racist educator you just talked about and who the encouragement that people listen to Bettina Love and promote Bettina Love.
	We've seen this all over Virginia.
	We've seen it actually coast to coast.
	Bettina Love is a problem.
	This is a woman who says whites need therapy to overcome their racism, ignorance, and history of harm.
	In the school setting, who doesn't believe that children can learn well from teachers of the same race, who says public schools do not see blacks as human and they're guilty of the systemic anti blackness and the spirit murder of black and brown babies, that whites are directly responsible for the plight of quote dark children.
	What?
	I don't care.
	She is a critical race theorist, but even if those words aren't used, the fact that these Democratic politicians and media pundits will not acknowledge.
	That stuff is trickling down to our children, it is at their own peril.
	You tell me, it's at their own peril.
	Yeah.
	You know, James Carvel was a consultant to the Terry McAuliffe campaign, and I signed up for the newsletters.
	And every day I'd get, you know, another missive from James Carvel or whoever else they brought in.
	And you know, Megan, that James Carvel called out the wokeism earlier this year in the country and said that it was going to cost the Dems.
	But his voice is not prevailing.
	And in fact, All of this character assassination last night of the voters of Glenn Youngkin reveal that they are only going to continue to try to smear us.
	I know Wajahat Ali very well.
	He is part of the Muslim network in the United States that has now embedded itself in the Democratic Party.
	And, you know, he was just a kid who would write to me from time to time and say, Oh, can you help me place an op ed in the Daily Beast?
	Well, now he has a coveted role as a contributing columnist to the New York Times.
	And he.
	Sounds off about all of this absurdity.
	But Megan, this is really important, and it's like only with you that I can really connect the dots.
	In the state of Virginia, the Muslim individuals who have been part of this network of political Islam that's called Islamism live right here.
	They're right down the road from me, off of Route 7.
	They have contributed mightily to the Democratic Party.
	They had, as a favor, then the Virginia Education Secretary installed during the Northam administration.
	He became the vehicle through which Ralph Northam saved face from his whole Black faith debacle.
	He was the one who launched this whole war against merit at my son's school.
	He put in all of these ridiculous ideas about critical race theory and equity.
	Hala Ayala, the lieutenant governor nominee, she's part of that whole network.
	They want to keep that unholy alliance alive between the Islamists represented through people like Ilhan Omar and the Democratic Party.
	This is a rejection of that alliance.
	And the Dems are just going to continue to lose if they keep thinking that that is America, because it's not.
	It's regressive ideas that are actually very illiberal and racist.
	And as you know, Ayan Hirsi Ali has been making the same connections and saying exactly what you're saying.
	And it's bold of you.
	I know you get blowback for that, but it's bold and it's true, it's factual.
	Can I show you this is for our listening audience at home.
	This is a cartoon that embodies the way the press.
	Is reacting to the Virginia victory of Youngkin last night.
	It was retweeted by, among others, Nicole Hannah Jones.
	And what it shows is Glenn Youngkin in his little fleece sweater vest kicking a young black girl and she's falling and her books are going everywhere.
	And it says the campaign's final stretch.
	And in her, I can't see it from here, but the names on the book, what are the words on the books, guys?
	It says something like history or racism.
	It's like her trying to educate kids on history and he's kicking her and making her fall.
	And that's how they sum up.
	What your movement is about, what parents defending education, what all these parents who took to the polls last night to try to say, don't divide our kids based on race, do teach history, but don't teach one's an oppressor and one's an oppressed just based on melanin.
	That's how they describe the movement.
	Yeah, you know, I have this signs here because I wanted to just illustrate.
	I've got a sign that says Grannies for Glenn, Democrats for Glenn, Sportsmen for Youngkin, Parents for Youngkin, because I stood there in the ballroom, about 1,000 people packed shoulder to shoulder.
	And I'll tell you, There was me.
	I voted for Glenn Youngkin.
	I am a Muslim immigrant feminist and I am a mother of color.
	And I am what they are now claiming white supremacy looks like.
	Beside me was this amazing mom, Suparna Dutta, who came here from India and she had just dollars in her pocket.
	And Megan, she was never involved in politics, but the school board, the 12 Democratic school board members in Fairfax County, just ignored her.
	And Yu Yan, this mom from China, and Hemong, another dad from India.
	Just ignored us all these months, just like you just said.
	You know, they treated us like we were invisible.
	They would mute us.
	And we got to have the last word, as you put it last night.
	And they, Soprano was dancing, Megan.
	She felt like she had defended the American dream that she had come sacrificing so much to experience.
	Asra, I can relate to this.
	I've never been a political activist, I've never been an ideological person.
	As a journalist, I've always kept my.
	Cards close to the vest.
	This is a different thing.
	This is about the future of our country, about loving America and teaching a future generation that it's okay to love America and it's a good thing.
	And it's about shaming, shaming of one's immutable characteristics in a way that would be very damaging on the psyche of an entire generation of children already facing record suicide rates.
	If you don't speak out against that, you're complicit.
	You're complicit.
	And so I too felt joy to see the message being sent back to these politicians that parents do get a say.
	That the parents are the ones in charge.
	Stay with us, one more parent to get to an emotional and important discussion with a New York City dad who I will never forget.
	Up next is a dad who joined us in an episode from May before we started on SiriusXM, Triumph Channel 111.
	Andrew Gutman was not looking to become a household name, but he did because he decided to write an open letter about why he was pulling his daughter out of her New York City private school, Brearly.
	Been there.
	And prior to interviewing Andrew, we had interviewed Paul Rossi, the dad at another, the guy at another New York City school who was a teacher, bravely speaking out there.
	Remember, he taped the head of school because he had a feeling it was going to go south.
	And then they started to tell different stories about Paul.
	Both of these guys told similar stories to the ones that I myself have experienced, which is schools that had been reasonable in teaching accurate history before turning into far left social justice machines.
	That try to shame the white students and try to diminish the black students as incapable.
	And to the consternation of parents, and as it turns out, some faculty.
	New York went 86% for Joe Biden.
	Manhattan did.
	It is a very, very leftist place.
	Until now, that didn't manifest in too offensive a way in the school system.
	This past year, two years, things have changed.
	And as we now know, it wasn't just in New York City, though that place is a canary in the coal mine.
	And what happens there tends to spread across the country.
	And I believe that's happening too when it comes to crazy radical trans ideology.
	Being taught at schools, CRT, inappropriate sexual content, and more.
	Andrew Gutman saw it, and he came on to explain to me why it was so important to him to take a stand.
	Let me answer this because, I mean, I think certainly this is where it really is right now, but it's where a lot of these schools across the country are right now.
	This was a response posted to your letter by somebody named Claire Potten at seminar.org.
	And she said, let me just quote in part.
	Claims that children are being harmed by critical race theory are a thin cover for returning to a world where white people don't have to feel bad about racism.
	She says the tribalism and division that the Brearly dad, you, claim critical race theory is causing already exists, as does the harm Paul Rossi fears it is causing.
	Prestigious private schools offer real opportunities to black students, but it can come at a very, very high emotional level.
	And intellectual cost to them and their parents.
	Basically, what she's saying is, and this is the end quote, that white people, including you and Paul, make it all about themselves.
	That is what white people often do.
	But in this case, it also shows that these men also understand what's at stake in anti racism work their own power and the position of their white children as uniquely authoritative and special in a multiracial society.
Silent Kindergarten and History 00:13:50
	Any thoughts on that?
	Okay, sure.
	You can, you know, what do you want to do?
	So, what do you, okay, I would ask this person and ask this school, same thing, okay, what do you want?
	What do you want to do?
	Okay, you want me to admit, because I'm white, I'm guilty, right?
	I mean, my family, you know, a lot of them perished in the Holocaust.
	We weren't, you know, we didn't have slaves.
	We weren't in this country.
	We weren't in this, you know, a lot in the Jim Crow era.
	I mean, all right, so what do you want to do?
	You want also all white people to admit what?
	Where does that get you?
	You know, at the end of the day, this is, you know, the Marxist argument for equality of outcome.
	Not a quality of opportunity, which will destroy us, I think.
	But you're trying to teach a kindergarten kid that they should feel guilty for the color of the skin.
	And this stuff is in kindergarten, right?
	I mean, I heard of a.
	Oh, I know.
	My mom told me, so when my daughter was in kindergarten, they had to do a project.
	They all given a silhouette of their head, a blank head, draw whatever you want, draw however you look, draw your freckles, draw your hair, whatever you want to draw.
	Well, this exercise, apparently, in kindergarten this year, They were only given skin color crayons, and it was look, we don't care about anything.
	The only thing that we want you to focus on is getting your skin tone right.
	So, this is kindergarten.
	This is kindergarten.
	I'd be like, I don't need a crayon.
	Just leave the paper as pasty as it came.
	I'm just going to do an outline of a face.
	Just as pasty as you think, even pastier.
	We have to fight this.
	We're not saying there's no racism.
	We're not saying we shouldn't teach the stains in our history.
	We have terrible stains in American history of slavery and Jim Crow and what we did to Native Americans.
	No question, right?
	I maintain, I wrote in this follow up, which again hasn't been published.
	I think we're the least racist country.
	I think we're the most diverse country in the world.
	I think we're the least racist.
	We're the only country or one of the very, very few that has even attempted to address these issues.
	What other country is even attempted, right?
	What other country is diverse like we are?
	Are there issues?
	Of course.
	Are there, you know, are there racist cops out there?
	Of course there are.
	But what benefit is there of telling a kindergarten kid to feel guilty for his or her color of her skin?
	Where does that get you?
	What does that do for you?
	That's my response.
	They're incapable of paying for the sins of those of somebody else's fathers.
	I want to read this piece just a bit.
	Forgive me a lot of reading today, but there's been some great stuff I've been reading lately.
	This is from Ross Kaminsky at the American Spectator.
	And his piece is called The Cancer of Critical Race Theory.
	And he says this.
	He says, he does say that he thinks America is awakening to quote the cancer that is critical race theory.
	And he says, it should infuriate you that schools across the nation, keep that in mind.
	Our audience knows it's not just really these sort of Tony New York schools.
	It's public schools across the nation, places like Iowa.
	It should infuriate you that schools across the nation are telling some kids that other kids are evil or that they themselves are evil.
	for things over which they have and never had and never will have control, such as the melanin content of one's skin or the particular shape of one's eyes, and for the distinctly un-American practice of teaching that free speech, critical thinking, and questioning authority are simply indications of one's own irredeemable privilege.
	And he ends by saying, the problem is that even this initial national awakening is very, very late.
	We are in the midst of a stage four societal cancer.
	Critical race theory has metastasized from Harvard outward through other universities and from there into almost every other internal organ of our nation, from businesses to governments to schools to everywhere you look.
	So that brings me to the question that you mentioned when we started.
	What's next?
	What do we do?
	You did the parents at Brearley and everyone else a favor by not staying quiet about it, by going public.
	So, what is next in fighting the stage four societal cancer?
	Well, let me say first, I 100% agree with what you just read.
	This is terrifying what has happened.
	I've had a lot of people reach out to me that grew up in the Soviet Union or communist Eastern Europe that has said, but we left there to come to America.
	We've seen this movie being played before.
	This is terrifying what's going on.
	And we never thought this could happen here.
	And it is.
	And it's not just critical race theory in schools.
	It's beyond schools.
	It's the cancel culture.
	It's the whole woke religion.
	It is incredibly scary.
	I think if we don't fix it, we go down a very, very dark and scary path.
	I mean, we end the Enlightenment.
	I think the country cracks up eventually.
	I don't know when.
	What do we do?
	I'm trying to figure out.
	Look, I promised a lot of people who reached out to me I would continue to speak out on this because I believe in it.
	And I will.
	And I'm going to join FAIR and get involved in FAIR, which you mentioned.
	Seriously, I've had people encourage me to start a school in New York City, and that's something I'm seriously thinking about.
	But the bigger issue is this we don't solve, in my view, we do not solve the school issue until we solve the cancel culture issue.
	Too many parents are too fearful to speak up.
	And you mentioned Coca Cola maybe reversing themselves a little bit on this after the Georgia and baseball all star game incident.
	Such cowardice generally in the corporate boardrooms, in these school boardrooms and administrations, but just such cowardice in these corporate boardrooms to cower to the woke Twitter mob here.
	That has to stop.
	We need some courageous CEOs and business leaders to say, look, We recognize that our employees are going to have some different opinions on things.
	Some of them might be controversial.
	We acknowledge that some of those opinions in the day and age we live in are going to wind up on Twitter and in social media.
	And we will not terminate them for their views.
	We will not penalize them for their views because they're preventing parents.
	I've heard this so many times in the last few weeks in these hundreds of emails.
	They are preventing parents from speaking out on behalf of their children.
	And on behalf of their children's education.
	So that has to stop.
	I think we have to solve the cancel culture issue.
	This is a huge issue.
	This is not just schools.
	This is not just critical race theory.
	This is this anti intellectual illiberalism, Marxism.
	We're going down that path in so many different scary ways.
	I don't have the solutions, all of them.
	I don't, you know, most of them.
	But we need to talk about this.
	You know, again, I said this earlier.
	You know, democracy, we've been led to believe in the media lately that, you know, what is democracy?
	Democracy is all about how many people vote.
	Right.
	And that's why there's such issues over who can vote and voting, you know, registration and restrictions and stuff like that.
	That's not what democracy is.
	That's not what democracy works if people vote.
	I think it's two things.
	It's, and I wrote this in the letter you have to have wise and virtuous leaders.
	And I think of both political parties, we have very few wise and virtuous leaders.
	And I wrote that in the context of really being the training ground for these leaders.
	If they don't learn the education, they're not going to be that.
	And that's scary.
	And the other thing, you know, for democracy to work, You have to be willing to have discussions of these issues.
	Again, race, COVID, guns, immigration, all these issues, climate change, that we're not allowed to discuss.
	You have to be able to discuss them.
	So, somehow, and look, media polarization is a lot of this, which I don't know how to solve.
	But if you're not willing to discuss these important issues, democracy doesn't work.
	And I'm really scared.
	I mean, I'm hopeful.
	That we have made a little dent.
	I don't think the dam is broken here on critical race theory, but I think we're starting finally to get people to speak up.
	And I'm hopeful we make a dent there and this movement continues.
	But these are bigger issues that we are completely forgetting, losing, destroying, toppling statues of the foundations and principles of this country.
	And again, that's not to say there aren't stains on this.
	Thomas Jefferson's controversial, and he should be, and he should be taught it that way.
	But that doesn't mean you ignore the Declaration of Independence.
	That is the founding principle of this country, and we should strive to meet it.
	And maybe we failed in a lot of ways in our history, but to not teach it and to lose those founding principles.
	Sorry if I'm preaching here, but to lose those founding principles, that's what's happening.
	And that's really, really scary the path we're headed down, I think.
	Yeah, it certainly is.
	No, I agree.
	Mitch McConnell, he was out there just saying, and it was great.
	I was happy to see him object to the 1619 project, which has been totally discredited being taught in schools.
	Now, Nicole Hannah Jones has been given.
	A journalism professorship at UNC.
	Yes, they give her a Pulitzer Prize, which a bunch of scholars, black and white, have demanded be pulled back, be revoked, because the 1619 project is so non factual.
	It is so counterfactual.
	And she's totally gotten away with it.
	Now, instead of having the prize taken away, they're elevating her to a journalism professor at UNC.
	Anyway, McConnell came out and said, Ask for this.
	There is no mandate to teach our children that America is inherently evil.
	That seems like something that should have been run by us before we innocently sent them back.
	I wrote this in the letter, and I'll say it here.
	This country will not survive teaching our children to hate our own country and to hate its history.
	No other country in the world does that.
	And that is what we are doing.
	We will simply not survive as a country.
	I don't know what happens.
	We break up, civil war, I don't know.
	I don't think anyone can predict that.
	But I'm unfortunately confident saying if we teach our children to hate our own country and its history, we will not survive.
	Or this way of life, the foundation of freedom and liberty and prosperity and equal opportunity, not equal outcome, equal opportunity, which has been the beacon.
	For the rest of the world for 250 years, right?
	And yes, we haven't always lived up to it, but we have been the beacon of these principles for 250 years.
	If we teach our children to hate our own country and hate its history, we won't survive.
	And our way of life will not survive.
	And that's terrifying to me.
	I do want to say to people go to fairforall.org, fairforall.org.
	And you will see a lot of faces there that you know and love, like Barry Weiss, like Glenn Lowry, like Coleman Hughes.
	Like Eli Steele, John McWhorter, who's coming on the show this week, and so on, Daryl Davis, all there together, me, I'm there, trying to fight back against this and try to make it easier for you to connect with other parents in your schools or businesses or elsewhere who are silently objecting but don't know how to come out with it publicly for fear of being canceled or punished.
	So that is one of our core missions.
	Go just check it out.
	I don't make any money off of this.
	This is not a money making organization.
	We're just trying to, it's a, It's a group of people trying to fight for reason and wellness in the country.
	So I've become a preacher for them.
	I want to proselytize about them.
	And we're just getting our act together, too.
	It's going to grow and it's going to get better organized and all that.
	But it's a place to start.
	And I think you'd be amazing.
	We need millions more just like you.
	So the founder of Bion, I've met a bunch of times now online and in person.
	And we're talking about how I can get involved because I absolutely do want to get involved.
	Well, as you heard in our show with Azra Nimani in 2021, quote, the parents are the ones in charge.
	And that should just be the beginning.
	Listen, I was recently speaking to a group at the Federalist Society at Yale Law School, and they're just as concerned as we are.
	They're concerned about their own education and their own future.
	These are young people.
	So it's not just parents.
	Kids who have been through these systems are now coming out, understanding people are trying to brainwash them and their thinking.
	And my message to them is the same as it's been to you and continues to be fight.
	Fight.
	This is the time to stand up and fight.
	You could sit quietly and let it pass you by, and you'll lose.
	And so will we all.
	And when we've lost, we'll look around and figure out how it happened.
	Do you want to be one of the ones who can raise your hand and say, I tried to stand up for what is right?
	Or do you want to be one who says, No one ever called me a name and I remained silent the entire time?
	And now I must remain silent forevermore.
	Now's the time.
	I joke with them what are you going to do?
	You're going to keep silent now?
	You're going to keep silent to get your first job?
	You're going to keep silent through that?
	And then, 60 years when you're dying in your bed, you can fall off the side saying, I had conservative viewpoints.
	I was against CRT.
	Speak out now.
	It's not too late.
	This fight is on, and we need everyone in it that we can get.
	So honored to have spent this past year with you guys, to have been trusted by you to deliver the news.
	We'll be back with new shows on Monday.
	Have a great new year, and we'll talk to you in 2022.
	Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.
	No BS, no agenda.
	And no fear.

Chapters

00:00:00 Awkward Bonding and Diet Culture
00:14:12 Extreme Ice Skating Pressures
00:21:16 Silencing Parents at School Boards
00:36:19 Fighting Mask Mandates Nationwide
00:40:49 Water Restrictions and Parenting
00:45:20 The Peak of Parenthood
00:48:23 Raising Teens in Social Media Age
01:04:19 Video Games vs Toxic Platforms
01:08:50 Mama Bear Protects Her Child
01:10:52 Democratic Party and Bad Ideas
01:26:10 Silent Kindergarten and History