Ep. 148 - Leftists Give Instructions On How To Speak To Your Relatives At Thanksgiving
A lot of people say you shouldn’t talk about politics or religion at Thanksgiving, or at any other time. This is terrible advice. Those are the two most interesting things to talk about. Also, a man is suing an airline for seating him next to an obese passenger. And an uncontacted tribe murders a man who tried to make contact with them. Isn’t it strange to have uncontacted tribes in modern society? Date: 11-21-2018
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, leftists have given us instructions on how to speak to our family members at Thanksgiving.
We'll go over those instructions obediently.
Also, what is the perfect Thanksgiving meal?
I have the answer to that question.
And a man is suing an airline because they seated him next to an obese passenger.
We'll talk about all of that and more on the show today.
Well, as you can see, if you're watching this on video, I'm starting to wear my Christmas colors.
You know, it's a day before Thanksgiving, so I figure I'm kind of late in starting to celebrate Christmas.
And can I just say that this is one thing I don't understand, that every year people complain about how, well, people are celebrating Christmas too early, and you're putting up the Christmas lights too early before Thanksgiving.
I don't understand complaining about that.
And I say that as someone who complains about everything.
I can find a reason to complain about almost anything.
A leprechaun could ride in on a unicorn right now and give me a pot of gold, and I could think of a reason to whine about it.
But even I can't think of a reason to complain about Christmas music in November or whatever, or people putting up Christmas lights early.
It's a happy, wondrous thing.
Why be angry about it?
Have you ever been driving in a car with someone at night in like early November, and you go by a house and there's Christmas decorations up, and they get really mad about it?
They're like, this is outrageous.
What are they?
Look at this.
It's November 2nd.
They've got Christmas lights up.
Why do they have Christmas lights up?
Calm down.
It's just, it's, they're just colorful lights on someone's bush.
That's what you're mad about right now.
Why would that make you mad?
I don't get it.
So I welcome the intrusion of Christmas into how Christmas is bleeding out and taking over more and more of the year.
I welcome it.
I think it's a wonderful thing.
All right, but speaking of Thanksgiving, a few things about Thanksgiving I want to talk about.
Let me start with the most important thing.
As you prepare your Thanksgiving meals, Just one thing here.
I want to tell you, this is the correct Thanksgiving meal, okay?
And it's important for you to understand this.
All other Thanksgiving meals are incorrect.
This is what the correct meal is.
Turkey, gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, A second green vegetable.
Now, this can be asparagus, broccoli, or Brussels sprouts.
Not all three.
You choose one.
Bread rolls, pumpkin pie, real whipped cream, beer, red wine, and then either scotch bourbon or rye whiskey.
If you want to do all three of the brown liquors, you can, but you certainly need one of them.
Anyone who puts a seafood dish on the table for Thanksgiving has committed a felony.
Salad is a superfluous, ridiculous thing to put on the table.
It's completely redundant.
We've already got the vegetables covered.
That's just filler.
You don't need salad.
More than two green vegetables is unnecessary and, frankly, kind of disturbing.
So if you're going to pad things out and add more dishes, the additional dishes should involve meat in some capacity.
Now, deviled eggs are not really a traditional Thanksgiving thing, but I will allow that.
I'll allow you to have that on Thanksgiving.
Here's one other note.
Really important.
That a lot of people don't understand, apparently.
Gravy is the most important item on the Thanksgiving.
It's more important than the turkey.
Because the meal will rise or fall with the quality of the gravy.
The gravy is essential.
People who don't like gravy are not real Americans.
They're not even human, I don't think.
And anybody who hosts a Thanksgiving dinner and does not provide gravy is a dangerous sociopath.
Now, I'm not making this up.
I once, if you can believe it, I once attended a Thanksgiving dinner where there was no gravy.
And then I said, oh, there's no gravy on the table.
You want me to go grab the gravy?
Maybe it's still on the stove.
I'll go grab the gravy for you.
And I was told, oh, no, no, we don't have any gravy.
And so I ran from the table crying, and I locked myself in the bathroom and wept for the rest of the night, as any man would do in that situation.
I just think all these points are important because people these days, they're far too eager to get cute and clever on Thanksgiving.
You know, they try to get away from the staples, and sometimes you'll see these articles online people share on Facebook or whatever about, well, here are some creative things you can do for your Thanksgiving meal.
No.
No, nothing creative.
See, some things should not be tampered with.
Some things are just perfect as they are.
It reminds me of the time where I was at someone's house and they served brownies, and I bit into the brownie, and then only then did I discover that they had put raisins in the brownies.
And then the person said, oh, I thought I'd do something a little bit different with the brownies.
Something a little different?
Why?
They're brownies.
They're perfect.
Any amount of different is a deviation from perfect.
You can only go down from perfect.
So whatever you're doing, it's going to be less than perfect.
You can't improve perfect.
Don't try.
Just make the brownies.
Stop being selfish.
Stop trying to make it about yourself.
This is what I said to them.
I was never invited back.
The point is, the same philosophy applies to the Thanksgiving dinner.
So stick to the staples and focus on those.
Don't get creative.
And everybody will have a blessed and wonderful Thanksgiving.
All right.
Another point about Thanksgiving.
Around this time every year, we are treated to news articles explaining how we should deal with our racist, conservative relatives at Thanksgiving.
You know, you see these articles every single year, and this year is no exception.
The New York Times published an article explaining how to have conversations with your relatives.
And they even gave a script.
They gave you a script of how they imagined this conversation should go.
So here's a sample of the script, okay?
In the New York Times.
Conservative uncle.
Trump has been great for America.
Just look at the economy.
It's booming.
You.
So how are you doing financially?
Conservative Uncle.
How am I doing?
Not that great, actually.
But things would have been worse under Hillary.
You.
What are your biggest economic hurdles right now?
Conservative uncle.
My biggest hurdles?
Well, no matter how hard I work, I can't get ahead.
I'm living paycheck to paycheck.
You.
So you feel pretty insecure money-wise, despite how hard you're working.
Conservative uncle.
Yeah, I do feel insecure money-wise, and I don't know how long I can keep up.
And then it just goes on, and then eventually the conservative uncle realizes that, oh yeah, you know what, maybe Trump actually is terrible because I'm not doing well financially.
Now, I have no idea why the New York Times is literally giving us a script of a fake conversation we're supposed to have with our fake uncles, but there it is.
Meanwhile, the website Eater, which is supposed to be a site about food, I assume, published an article with this title.
The title is, you are morally obligated to call out your racist relatives at Thanksgiving.
So here's a sample of that article.
It says, if you can safely do so, read, you do not fear physical or economic reprisal,
i.e. getting kicked out of your house for speaking up against bigotry,
you have an obligation to push back against harmful rhetoric
simply because others do not.
It is statistically very likely that a survivor of abuse or a person who could face anti-LGBT abuse from your family
will be sitting at your Thanksgiving table and they may not feel safe enough
to speak against the use of violent language and homophobic slurs,
Even if they're hurled by well-meaning family members What?
First of all, what?
So, even if a well-meaning family member is hurling violent and homophobic language, what does that look like exactly?
And what kind of Dinner table conversation is this person imagining the most of us have during Thanksgiving.
Just a bunch of well-meaning bigots hurling homophobic and violent language.
That's all.
It says, which means that if the only thing you've got to fear is an awkward silence as grandma cuts the turkey, you've got an obligation to let your relatives know that words and actions that demean the humanity of others are not acceptable in your presence.
It is highly unlikely that anything said across the dinner table is going to cause some kind of epiphany in the average bigoted person's mind, but that's not the ultimate goal of speaking out.
So, you know, I for one am going to take this advice.
And when I sit down for Thanksgiving meal, the first thing I'm going to say is, I will not tolerate bigoted or homophobic language at this table.
That's the first thing I'm going to say.
Just to kind of kick off, just as an icebreaker to kick off the conversation.
Now, there are a couple things that jump out at me about this kind of stuff.
First of all, of course, you have this absurd paternalism that's very common among leftists, where they think we need instructions on how to have conversations with our loved ones.
Now, I mean, I know that I just started this show by giving you instructions on how to prepare your Thanksgiving meal, but that's different, okay?
That's different.
That was okay.
This is worse.
But the second thing is, and this is the more frustrating thing in my view, you see how People are so worried about the potential of having serious and substantive conversations with their families.
Like, people think they need to apparently prepare, they need to practice, they need to rehearse before they have a substantive conversation about politics or whatever with their families.
I don't understand this attitude.
And I don't understand, and I've never understood, the people who say, hey, you know, the two things you should never talk about when you're in a group or you're with your family are politics and religion.
Never talk about that.
What?
The two things you should never talk about?
Those are basically the only things I care to talk about.
Politics and religion.
And you can throw sports in as well.
So those are the big three.
Why wouldn't we talk about them?
What a boring life people must lead if they have this policy of never talking about the most interesting topics.
I don't get it.
If you dispense with the interesting topics, any topic that might create a disagreement, and thus an actual discussion, Because that's the nature of a discussion, is that the people involved have different perspectives.
If everybody has the same perspective, then there's no discussion.
There's nothing to talk about if everyone just agrees on everything.
What's the conversation then?
You're all just taking turns saying things that everyone else can say.
Yep, I agree.
Oh, now it's my turn.
Here's my opinion.
Yep, we all agree with that too.
Is that how a conversation's supposed to work?
No, I'll tell you what you're left with.
If you get rid of politics and religion and any kind of discussion of an issue that might involve disagreement, you're left with banal, awful, pointless small talk.
You're left with one of those terrible conversations where someone shares a boring personal anecdote and then someone else shares a similar anecdote And then we just go around the table and everyone waits their turn to bore everybody else with an anecdote.
One of those conversations where no one is, it's not a conversation, everyone's waiting for their turn to just talk, no matter what they happen to be saying.
So you're left with that, or you're left with gossip, or you're left with, I mean, what else is there?
I was recently, I recently found myself sitting in a group of people where the conversation developed into people taking turns talking about their health problems.
And I just thought, why are we doing this?
What is happening right now?
What's the point of this?
What kind of conversation is this?
Or another recent thing I was in is people were taking turns complaining about bad service that they'd gotten in restaurants.
And everyone had a story about the bad service.
I just don't see the point in that.
See, it might surprise you to learn that in my personal life, I am sometimes accused of being quiet.
But I'm not, as you can tell.
I just have absolutely no interest in the dry, pointless, babbling small talk that a lot of people fill their days with.
And a lot of people think that's all you're supposed to do when you're in a group is have those kinds of conversations.
And if I'm in a group of people and I find the conversation to be boring and pointless and stupid, I'm not going to say anything.
I'm not going to contribute.
Why?
Because I have nothing to say about the topic because I think the topic is lame.
That's all.
So when someone says, well, why aren't you talking?
I'm not talking because you guys are boring me to death.
I just think this is a stupid conversation.
But I don't want to say that, so I'm just not going to say anything.
Now, if we could circle back to something more interesting, something with a little more meat to it, then you wouldn't be able to shut me up.
So I don't understand this reluctance people have to talk about interesting things.
We should talk about them.
These are the important things.
These are the things that define us.
I mean, think about it.
When someone says, don't talk about politics, don't talk about religion, what they're really saying is, never discuss your most precious convictions and your most deeply held beliefs.
Never discuss the ideas that you organize your life around.
Well, why?
Why shouldn't we just talk about that?
That's exactly what we should talk about.
I want to talk about that, and not just because I want to share my own beliefs and convictions.
I also want to hear other people share theirs.
That's how you really get to know somebody.
I don't think you get to know someone through small talk.
You get to know someone when they're telling you what they believe, what their real convictions and priorities are.
And that's how you get to know somebody.
And so that's why I'd rather talk about that.
So I wouldn't, not that anyone needs instructions on how to have conversations at the dinner table, but I would encourage everyone to have, forget about small talk, have big talk.
Talk about big things, important things.
And then you can really get to it.
We can really get to know each other.
A couple other things I wanted to touch on quickly.
Here's an interesting case.
A man is suing British Airways for sitting him next to an obese passenger.
The passenger said, I sat with his knees wedged against the seat in front and the rest of his body was over spilling into my seat by some inches.
I was immediately aware that this was going to be problematic for me and I could feel the weight of his pure bulk putting lateral pressure on my upper body.
And he says he suffered long-term injuries after undergoing this for the whole 12-hour flight, which, I mean, a 12-hour flight in itself sounds miserable, but to do it when you don't have a lot of room, I can see... It's hard for me to believe you would have long-term injuries, but I can see how that would be extremely uncomfortable.
Now, I just want to make a few points about this issue of obese people on airplanes.
First of all, People can be very cruel about this.
And it seems like a lot of people have no problem openly complaining about the obese on airplanes.
They have no problem mocking and ridiculing.
I've seen people on Twitter tweeting complaints about the large person sitting next to them on an airplane while that person is currently sitting next to them.
It's very cruel, as I said.
Obviously, someone who is that big and is sitting on an airplane seat, they're already self-conscious about it.
They're aware of how big they are.
They feel embarrassed.
They feel nervous.
I don't know how you could have anything but compassion and pity for someone in that situation.
I was once sitting next to someone who was a larger person, and they had to ask for a seatbelt extender, which I didn't even know that was a thing.
But the seatbelt wasn't large enough, so they had to ask the flight attendant for a seatbelt extender.
And they were obviously embarrassed asking for it.
But there was no way for... I was sitting in the middle and so there was no way for them to ask for it without me hearing.
And I just felt really bad for this person.
And I can't imagine being angry at them.
I could tell they were embarrassed and ashamed and that's a sad thing.
I felt bad for them.
So I think this is something where people just need to be human.
You just need to be a human being.
Big people know they're big.
They know how you feel about sitting next to them on an airplane.
You don't need to go advertising it.
You don't need to complain about it openly.
Maybe have a little bit of human decency instead.
And, you know, I'm not obese, but I've been in situations where I've been on an airplane and I've been the parent with a screaming child on a plane, which is the other kind of person that everyone complains about on airplanes.
And again, when you're a parent with a screaming child on a plane, trust me, you're aware of the fact, you know how everybody feels about you, you know how annoyed everyone is, and you are yourself way more uncomfortable, way more distressed, way more disturbed, and way more annoyed than everybody else on the plane combined.
So, it's not like you're oblivious to it.
You know how annoying it is for everyone.
You know how disruptive it is.
The last thing you need is glaring eyes and rolling eyes and rude comments and all that kind of... You don't need that.
There's no reason for that because you already know.
So, if you're on an airplane and there's a crying child behind you, here's what you don't need to do.
You don't need to do that thing where you look back and you give eyes to the parents.
Why are you doing it?
The parent knows that the child's crying.
Thank you very much for the look.
It's not necessary.
The parent knows that and is very uncomfortable with it.
But when a child is intent on crying, there's not always a way to stop them.
And if you're on an airplane 30,000 feet in the air, it's not like you can leave.
So you're stuck.
I don't know if you know this, maybe some people don't, kids don't realize this, but there is no switch.
It's not like there's a switch on the child's back or something where you could flip the switch and then they stop crying.
That doesn't exist.
The child is a person with a brain.
And so you can't, if they just are going to do this, you could try to calm them down.
You could try to bribe them.
You could try many different things.
But if none of that works, you're stuck.
So a little bit of kindness and understanding from the fellow passengers.
I think that's what's in order.
Because there's nothing the parent can do about it if the kid is determined to cry, just like there's nothing an obese passenger can do in that moment to change the size of their body frame.
It is what it is.
So we just have to all be human beings and kind of work together in that situation.
Now, on the other hand, And the reason why this story jumped out at me, because the article about, on the Daily Wire, the article about this, the airline lawsuit, has a quote from Peggy Howell, who is the spokeswoman for the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, NAFA.
And she, of course, blamed the airlines and said it's their fault for not having larger seats, which she's not wrong about that, by the way.
Airlines have been consistently shrinking their seats and their legroom so that now, unless you're underweight and undersized, you can't fit comfortably.
I'm, you know, six feet tall, a little bit more than six feet tall.
I can't fit in an airline seat anymore.
But the existence of something called the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance is a sad statement as well, because it just shows how you have these two extremes in our culture.
And on one extreme, you have cruel people, people who mock and ridicule and are very selfish.
And on the other extreme, you have this idea that we should accept and celebrate everything about ourselves.
We should celebrate even the flaws, you know.
Obesity is a flaw in the sense that it's unhealthy.
A morbidly obese person is hurting himself.
The condition will very likely kill him eventually.
It is an objectively negative condition to be in.
It detracts from health and quality of life and well-being.
So acceptance is not the way to go either.
Isn't there a happy compromise between abject ridicule and full-on acceptance?
Why can't we seek self-improvement and encourage others in that direction without mocking and belittling?
I think that's the strategy we should take here.
Rather than this constant back and forth of these two extremes.
I understand.
Things like fat acceptance and these body positivity movements.
I understand why they exist.
Because people who are overweight really do.
They are ridiculed and mocked their whole lives.
And it's a terrible thing.
I can't imagine having to endure that.
But the answer is not, and I think this is what we tend to do, where if we're, you know, if there's something about us that is, as I said, objectively not ideal, yet it is also changeable, and then people make fun of us for it, and they're very rude to us and mean to us about it, then we'll tend to kind of go into a shell, and we get on the defensive, and we say, well, no, no, no, now I'm not gonna change it, out of principle.
I don't think that's the right move either.
We can seek to improve ourselves.
And that doesn't mean that we're caving into the bullying or we're allowing other people to control us.
It's all about respecting ourselves and wanting to be as healthy as we can and to live as long as we can.
All right, one last story.
An American tourist Some reports call him a missionary.
I'm not sure if that's true or not, but he has been killed after attempting to meet and make contact with an uncontacted tribe on an island off the coast of India.
The Sentinelese, which is a tribe that's protected by law from outside contact, they're on this island.
And this man decided that he wanted to go, even though it's illegal, he decided that he wanted to go and make contact with this tribe.
So as soon as he went up on the canoe, and apparently as soon as he got up on shore, they started shooting arrows at him.
But he didn't turn around.
He kept walking towards them.
And then they ran in and put a rope around his neck and strangled him to death.
A rather unseemly way of greeting a stranger.
But I have to say, this whole uncontacted tribe thing, and You know, you have this across the world, in India, as well as South America, other places, where there are these tribes that are living basically in the year 1000 BC, while governments forbid anyone from going there and saying, hey, by the way, modern society is happening out there.
Now, I get that there is a concern about these people being exploited by outsiders, and there's a very legitimate concern about disease, because they don't have the immune system built up to deal with all the nasty modern germs that we carry around.
But I've still always found it to be super weird that we're kind of preserving them almost like they're a museum exhibit or they're animals in a zoo or something.
We're preserving them in what we consider to be their natural habitat.
We're preserving them in a time capsule and not letting them know that, hey, by the way, we've got air conditioning out there and we've got cars and medicine and the internet in the world.
Don't you think they have a right to know?
Isn't it quite possible that they'd prefer to live like the rest of us if they knew about it?
All these people that say, well, you can't contact the tribes.
Would any one of them want to live like that?
Would you like to go live in a mud hut?
Would you like to go and die from diseases that we can cure with antibiotics?
Would you like to go and, you know, have your teeth rotting out of your head?
Would anyone want to live that way?
No, that's an objectively miserable way of living.
Nobody would want to live that way.
It is a rough and miserable existence.
If I was there, I would prefer not to be.
I'd want to know.
I'd prefer to live in modern society.
So shouldn't they have that option?
It's just the weirdest thing to me.
Now I know that, as I said, when you've got these tribes, it's not like you can just open the floodgates and have all these tourists rush in and all that kind of stuff.
I'm not saying that.
But there should, I would think there should be a concerted, systematic, gradual effort made to introduce these people to civilization.
And to let them know about what's going on out there and then at least give them the, now, if they decide they want to still live in the mud huts and die of diseases that they could cure by taking a pill for a few days, if they'd prefer that, then they have every right to, but I think that they have a right, that they also have the right to make that choice.
And so do their children, by the way.
It's just, I think this stems from this kind of idolizing we do of indigenous cultures and indigenous tribes.
And it's really kind of ridiculous because this is... Now, I'm a critic of modern society for a lot of reasons, but even I would say that if I had the option to go live in the Middle Ages or to go live in the year 400 BC, I would definitely not do it.
I'd still prefer to be here.
I think there are a lot of legitimate criticisms to make of our society, but I like a lot of the stuff that we have going for us.
And I'm a fan of electricity, for instance.
And I'd prefer to have it.
It's a good thing to have.
Can you imagine how...
Wouldn't you be really annoyed and upset if you were in one of these tribes and then eventually somehow you found out about modern society?
And let's say you've been living in this tribe for 60 years and nobody ever told you?
Wouldn't you be annoyed about that?
Wouldn't you say, why didn't you guys ever tell me?
You're telling me you left me there for 60 years?
You never told me that this was happening?
You were enjoying your air conditioning, you never even told me about it?
I'd be upset personally.
So I think a gradual integration maybe would be in order.
But until that happens, I think it's probably not a smart idea to go by yourself to one of these tribes and try to say hello, as unfortunately this American found out the hard way.
All right, that's it for the week for me.
I hope you guys all have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I'll talk to you next week.
