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July 13, 2018 - The Matt Walsh Show

21:01

Ep. 61 - The PC Mob Gets Another Head For Its Trophy Case

The PC mob's latest victim is Papa John. He said the N-word, while quoting someone else who said the N-word, and now he has been forced to resign in disgrace because of it. This is absurd. A word itself cannot be racist. A word is just a word. But this is really about the Left's mission to control language and thus control society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	So this is a case that I think provides us with a helpful illustration of the PC mob and how it operates and why it operates the way that it does.
	The CEO of...
	I've got to make sure I turn my mic on.
	I did. Which you probably already knew because you could hear me.
	The CEO of Papa John's, John Schnatter, or Schnader, Or Schnatter.
	Anyway, we'll just call him Papa John.
	Papa John was forced to resign this week after saying the N-word during a conference call a few months ago.
	And this happened, I think it happened back like in April or May, and it's just now coming out for some reason.
	So he resigned.
	He also resigned from the University of Louisville's Board of Trustees.
	The MLB canceled a promotion that it was supposed to be doing with Papa John.
	And I believe I also saw that a gymnasium named after him in his hometown is now being renamed, all because of this.
	And after all of that, the final penitential act is that he's going to be strapped to a donkey and covered in pizza sauce and sent out into the wilderness to be devoured by wolves.
	But even that will not be enough to assuage his guilt for saying a word.
	And why did he say it?
	It's being reported that Papa John used a racial slur.
	And think about the phrasing there.
	He used a racial slur.
	But what actually happened is that he was having a conversation with a marketing agency, and they were talking about the NFL and racial issues.
	And so in that context, he pointed out that the founder of KFC would often say really terrible things about race and yet never faced any backlash for it.
	And so Papa John said, well, Colonel Sanders called Black people the N-word, only he didn't say the N-word, he actually said the word itself.
	So he was quoting Colonel Sanders.
	And not in a positive light.
	But as I said, the media is reporting that Papa John used a racial slur.
	Saying that he used it When all he was doing was he was quoting somebody else.
	But saying that he used it, that'd be like if I was trying to tell you about the dangers of heroin addiction, and in the effort to educate you, I pulled out a heroin needle and I showed it to you and said, this is what a heroin needle looks like.
	Okay, you don't want to inject this into your body.
	And then later on, you told everybody that you caught me using a heroin needle, which It's true in one sense.
	I was using it. I mean, I was using it in an effort to educate you about it.
	But it's not true in the sense that you are clearly implying in an effort to slander me.
	And so when the media reports that Papa John used the racial slur, they're obviously trying to imply in the headline that he was saying it himself, not as a quote, but in an effort to communicate his own racism.
	And this gets even crazier because during the call, apparently, Papa John was, you know, like I said, they were just talking about race.
	And he mentioned some of the racial violence that he saw growing up or heard about growing up.
	And again, he talked about this in the context of condemning racism.
	But some media reports have taken that and And they've said that, well, John Schnatter used a racial slur and described graphic scenes of violence against African Americans.
	Obviously trying to imply that this was some kind of like Michael Richards' racist meltdown, when it was nothing of the sort.
	I've even seen some leftist blogs accusing him of launching into a racist rant.
	Rant? I mean, that's like if I walked into your house and I said, hey, it's a nice day outside.
	And then later on, you told all your friends that I barged through the door ranting about the weather.
	It's not a rant and there's nothing racist about it.
	But here's the thing.
	In reality, we all understand that in that context, there was nothing racist going on.
	But according to the rules, according to the arbitrary social rules that our culture has set up, saying a word, saying that word especially, in any context is enough to make you racist.
	Papa John is now a second-hand racist.
	He came too close to racism and thus became racist himself.
	It's like some kind of plague or disease that he contracted by coming too close to it.
	By quoting a racist, he became racist.
	Even though the intent and the context were not racist and were actually anti-racist, still, he became racist by some kind of sorcery.
	It's like Harry Potter.
	It's a magical spell where if you say a certain word, it has this effect to transform.
	So I don't know. I've never seen or read Harry Potter, but...
	Because I have, what do you call it, good taste.
	So maybe in Harry Potter he says a spell and someone turns into a frog or something.
	So now if you say this word, it's like a magical spell that turns you into a racist.
	It turns you into a racist frog.
	Traditionally, you see, outside of Harry Potter and outside of the fevered minds of leftists, that's not how human communication works.
	Usually, intent and context are very important.
	They are, in fact, indispensable aspects of communication in that you cannot analyze or understand what someone's saying unless you have also taken into account the context in which they said it and their intention behind saying it.
	So the words themselves also matter, but you can't evaluate somebody's words Without understanding the intent and context behind them.
	This is one of the reasons why text messaging can be so confusing.
	Because often with a text message, all you have are the words, and you don't have intent, you don't have context, you don't have tone.
	Because with a text message, people don't usually take the time to write full sentences that may also communicate all that stuff.
	So you just have a few words to go on.
	And that's why you could read a text message and it could simply say okay.
	And the word okay could seem like this passive-aggressive or angry thing because you don't have, especially if there's a period, but we all know that.
	Anytime you send a text, a one-word text message with a period is passive-aggressive.
	I think we all should understand that by now, but there are some people still seem not to.
	The problem, though, is that the PC mob...
	They want to treat everything, they treat all communication like a text message, where they take the words themselves, separated from intent and context, and they analyze those words on their own, kind of in a vacuum.
	And the N-word especially is treated like this word that somehow transcends intent and context.
	It is, I guess, probably the one word in the English language that is just beyond intent and beyond context.
	And so it carries with it this mystical power to turn into racists all who happen to utter its syllables.
	Well, of course, I got to back up for a minute.
	It can turn you into a racist if you say it, provided you have a certain skin pigmentation.
	So if your skin looks like mine, and you say this word, regardless of context or intent, then you're racist.
	But if your skin is darker than mine, and you say the word, then it's not racist.
	That's the rule. Those are the ingredients.
	So skin pigmentation, a lighter skin pigmentation, combined with these syllables arranged in this particular way, create racism.
	Nobody can explain how the process works that way, but we've all just decided that it does.
	And it's madness, of course.
	Words are not actually magical spells.
	Words are just words.
	Words themselves cannot be racist.
	A word is just a word.
	It can't be anything. It's just a word.
	Intentions can be racist.
	People can be racist.
	But if a non-racist person with a non-racist intent says a word, well, then there's nothing racist about the word, no matter what the word was.
	That's how it works.
	But what we've done is we've turned the English language into this kind of game where certain words have to be avoided by certain people for reasons that nobody can really justify.
	And if the word is said by the wrong person, then they're going to face the prescribed penalty just because that's the way it goes.
	So in monopoly, if you roll doubles three times in a row on one turn, you go to jail.
	Why? Well, just because that's the rule of monopoly.
	There's no other reason for it besides that's just how you play monopoly.
	And in life, If a person with a light skin color says this word in any context, they lose their job.
	Why? Well, just because.
	Those are the rules.
	That's all. That's just how we play the game.
	Now, to be clear, I'm not arguing that white people ought to be able to say the N-word.
	I have no interest in saying it.
	I think it's a nasty word that nobody ought to say.
	I do not have within myself any deep desire to say it.
	There are certain words that I do have a desire to say that sometimes I'll even just say if there's nobody around just because they're fun to say, like flabbergasted, for instance, is a word like that.
	But the N-word is not a word in that category.
	It is a vulgarity, like many other vulgarities, and I think it's best if we all try to avoid Vulgarities and profanities.
	But I also think it's completely insane That even now, as I speak, I have to find ways to refer to the word without saying the word itself for fear that my very livelihood could be destroyed should I make the mistake of articulating the actual word that I'm already conveying to you by using euphemisms for it.
	I think that's crazy.
	And we all know that it's crazy.
	And yet there are people probably watching this video and they're just, they're waiting for me to slip up because I'm talking about the word so much and they're waiting to get me on the technicality.
	Am I going to slip up and say the word itself?
	And then, oh, he said it. His life's over.
	Take his job away. He's done.
	That's just, that's not how society is supposed to work.
	And it's purely semantics anyway.
	I think this when it comes to not just the N word, but honestly, any word that we say, oh, the F word, the S word, it's all kind of dumb.
	Because if I say the F word, or if I say the N word, I am still conveying the word to you, right?
	If I say to you the phrase, the F word, if you're an adult, I have just put that word into your head, have I not?
	I've communicated it to you.
	I have successfully communicated the word to you without saying it, so what was the point of not just saying it?
	I am causing you to think it.
	I mean, isn't this what it means? To communicate, for me to communicate with you, what that means is that I'm taking a thought, and I'm taking words that are in my head, that are floating around in the ether in my mind, and I'm taking them, and I'm funneling them through my vocal cords, and then I am putting them into your mind.
	I'm trying to get thoughts from my mind into your mind.
	That's what it means to communicate.
	And so if I have communicated the N-word to you, then what's the difference between saying the N-word and thus communicating the N-word and actually saying the word itself and thus communicating the word itself?
	Either way, I'm communicating the same word.
	Am I not? So what we're saying is it's okay to communicate it, to convey it, to put it across, Yet it's not okay to actually say the syllables themselves.
	Because the syllables themselves have this magical power, I guess.
	It's just, it's so...
	The only time that this whole game makes sense to say, oh, the blank word, rather than just saying the word.
	The only time it makes sense is when there are children around who maybe have never encountered this word, and so you're trying to, you know, spare them for a while.
	The inevitable process of them being corrupted by these vulgarities.
	But when you're around adults and they all know the words you're talking about, what is the point of dancing gingerly around it when in the end the result is the same because I have put the word in your head?
	And now as I'm saying this, and I wrote about this yesterday, and there were people who accused me of cowardice.
	Because they said, well, why don't you have the courage of your convictions?
	I mean, just come out and say it.
	Your intention isn't racist.
	You're talking about the word.
	We're all adults here.
	You think people should be able to talk about a word without dancing around the word they're talking about?
	You think that we shouldn't have to follow these completely arbitrary and ridiculous social customs of avoiding certain words in any context whatsoever?
	So why don't you go first and just come out and say it?
	Well, I'll tell you why.
	Maybe I am a coward.
	I don't know. But I tell you this, I'm not willing to have my whole life destroyed over it.
	That's why. It's always been clear to me that to do this job, if you're going to have a job where you're getting up publicly and giving your opinions and taking stands and so on, if you're going to do that, you have to be willing to lose it all.
	You have to be willing to lose the job if you're going to have this job.
	To do it effectively and to do it with integrity, you can't be too attached to it.
	And you have to be willing to face potentially a backlash that could end with you being fired or potentially even worse consequences.
	And I've always realized that and I've accepted it.
	And I am willing to face that penalty if need be.
	And plenty of times in the past, I have said things that I thought maybe could destroy my career and my livelihood, potentially.
	And there have been a few things that almost did, but then not quite.
	But this is just not one of those things.
	Because we live in an environment where so many dumb things can ruin you.
	And there are so many dumb, arbitrary, ridiculous rules that have been set up by the PC brigade that you have to exercise some prudence.
	And you have to say to yourself, is this particular thing, is this stand worth losing everything for?
	And I think it really is cowardice if you ask yourself that question and you always come to the conclusion that, no, it's not worth it, because some things are worth it.
	But there's a reason why the left, there's a reason why they like to take really petty and insignificant things and attach this huge significance to it.
	So there's a reason why they make these rules, these really arbitrary rules, like this one, where don't say this word in any context.
	And then the penalty for breaking that rule is catastrophic.
	Like, you could lose everything if you break that rule.
	And I think from the outside, sometimes we tend to look at that and we say, why?
	What do you care? Why are you doing it?
	Well, because it's about control.
	Because they know that they can control you.
	You know, they know that if they say, if they take some really huge important thing and they say, well, don't do this, or you're going to face this consequence.
	Well, there are people who will do that because they're saying, you know what, that's a hill I'm willing to die on because that is big, that's important, that's significant.
	And then you create martyrs, basically, when you do that.
	So the smarter strategy from the left perspective is to take a lot of different small things And to say, well, no.
	To set a lot of little small landmines.
	Because then it's really easy just to walk over them and not bother with it.
	Another example when it comes to language is all this stuff with pronouns.
	Where You're not allowed to say certain pronouns.
	People have their own pronouns now, and they make up even fake pronouns, and you have to figure out what's someone's pronoun and refer to them by that pronoun.
	And if you break this rule, especially in a professional setting, you could lose your job, you could lose everything.
	So it's a small, stupid, insignificant thing to which they have attached a huge penalty.
	And so I think a lot of people look at that and they say, fine, I'll just play the game because it's not worth it.
	You know, I'm not going to lose my job over this.
	Personally, I think when it comes to manipulating language, that is a hill worth dying on.
	Because with that, what the left is asking you to do, or telling you to do, requiring you to do, is to tell a lie.
	When they say, yeah, this person's a biological woman, but refer to this person as a he, I think a lot of us will just play the game and say, fine, I'll do it, because if I don't, then the penalty is too severe.
	I think that is a hill worth dying on, though, and potentially losing your job over, because to play the game in that case is to tell a lie.
	And when the left can get you to tell lies for them, well, then they own you.
	I mean, they have your soul at that point.
	But something like this with the N-word, it's not telling a lie to just say the N-word.
	And to play the ridiculous game, and so I play it.
	But it is, I think we all do recognize that it is just a game.
	And it is a game that has pretty severe consequences, and it did for John Schnatter in this case, who's been completely, I think, unfairly slandered and maligned and is now suffering severe consequences for it.

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