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March 7, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show

49:15

Ep. 213 - Football Player Is Acquitted Of Rape Charges But His Life Is Still Destroyed

Today on the show, a former star football player has finally been found not guilty of rape charges, but the accusations have permanently damaged him. We’ll discuss. Also, the Girl Scouts go all in on abortion advocacy. Finally, why is it that really successful people often do poorly in school? Date: 03-07-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Today on the Matt Wall Show, a former star football player has been acquitted of rape charges, finally, but the accusations have permanently damaged his reputation and his career, so we're going to talk about that.
	Also, the Girl Scouts have gone all in on abortion advocacy, and why is it that really successful, rich people often did poorly in grade school?
	There's a problem with our education system, a fundamental problem that leads to stuff like that.
	And I want to talk about that as well today on the Matt Wall Show.
	Okay, so I've been meaning to talk about this case for a few days and I haven't really
	had a chance to get into it yet. So let's do that now.
	As the Daily Wire reported this week, a former star football player for Baylor University and certainly a surefire early round pick, probably a first round NFL draft pick, was acquitted in a high-profile rape case a few days ago.
	So the accuser claimed that the player, whose name is Shawn Oakman, we don't know the accuser's name.
	The media reports don't include it because she's an alleged rape victim.
	She says that Oakman raped her in his apartment near campus, near Baylor University.
	But it took the jury only about two hours for them to come to the conclusion that he's not guilty.
	And that's not a long deliberation, especially for a case like this.
	But when you look at the specifics of the case, it's kinda easy to see why it didn't take them very long.
	And it makes you wonder why this ever went to trial in the first place, because there is such a lack of evidence to support the accuser's claims.
	Basically, the only evidence, the prosecution had three avenues of evidence, if we can even call this evidence.
	They had the word of the accuser, obviously, They had the testimony of a few of her friends who say that, now they didn't witness the assault, but they talked to her after the fact.
	And they found her disheveled and distraught and crying, they say.
	And she told them what she claims happened.
	And then, and then they had injuries, especially genital injuries to the woman, which medical experts for the defense testified could have easily been sustained in a consensual encounter with a I mean, this was a, you know, man is 300 pounds, six foot seven.
	So.
	So that was that's what they had.
	That's pretty much it.
	The defense, though, had quite a bit more evidence.
	Number one, the woman texted Oakman.
	Oakman, with whom she'd previously had a sexual relationship, she texted him to come meet her at the bar on the night when the assault allegedly occurred.
	Then she willingly went back to Oakman's apartment, even texting a friend on the way to indicate that she was okay.
	Oakman's roommate, who was in the apartment, When the alleged assault took place, he testified that he didn't hear any screams.
	He didn't hear any indication of a struggle coming from the defendant's bedroom.
	The woman said that she was too drunk to consent, but then multiple witnesses came forward to say that they interacted with her that night.
	She seemed perfectly lucid.
	There was also evidence that the accuser... Well, I don't want to get too graphic.
	Based on DNA evidence, the accuser alleged that certain sexual acts took place against her will, that she was she tried to leave, she was physically prevented, and then she was pinned down and certain things.
	Well, they were able to, you know, they do DNA tests, make a kind of reconstruct what sorts of sexual acts took place that night.
	And that did not match with What the accuser said.
	Also, a forensic digital analyst took the stand and said that somebody deleted text messages from the woman's phone.
	The text messages where she asked Oakman to come to the bar.
	Someone deleted those text messages.
	Which is highly suspicious.
	So, Oakman had physical evidence, circumstantial evidence.
	Physical evidence would be, you know, the DNA evidence.
	Circumstantial evidence would be the fact that she asked him to come out, then she went back to his apartment.
	They had a previous sexual relationship, so we can assume that she She knew what was going on when she went back to the apartment and she herself had certain intentions in mind.
	And then he also had eyewitnesses.
	I mean, he had someone that was in the apartment when this was supposedly happening, who said that there was no indication of anything like what she's talking about.
	So it's no wonder that the jury came to the conclusion that it did.
	That's the only conclusion it possibly could come to.
	There's just no reason.
	To convict the guy, unless you're just going to believe the woman's story, even instead of all of this other... It wasn't not just a he said, she said.
	It was a she said, he said, plus he has all this evidence.
	So there's no way that the she said can outweigh all of that, or at least it shouldn't.
	But the thing is, the story doesn't end there for Oakman, because he's going to have to wear the accused rapist label around his neck for the rest of his life.
	You don't just go through something like that and then go and live your life like it never happened.
	For the rest of his life, he's going to be the guy who was accused and went to trial for rape.
	Um, and he's never going to be able to escape that, escape that.
	And even if he's still able to salvage some kind of a football career, which, which seems likely because given his talent and the fact that he could now be, uh, I'm sure some team will take a chance on him and financially, it's going to be low risk for them because they're not gonna have to pay him very much.
	Um, which just shows that he also lost quite a bit of money.
	If he had gone in the first round, well, there's gonna be a lot of money and a lot of professional prestige.
	Um, And job security that comes with that, that now he's not ever going to be able to recoup.
	That's just gone, right?
	Now, of course, it's still possible.
	It's still possible that Oakman did what he was accused of doing.
	We don't know.
	Court cases are not designed to prove anyone innocent.
	But just to decide whether the prosecution has succeeded in proving them guilty.
	So all the jury is saying is, the jury isn't saying this guy's innocent.
	The jury is saying you, the prosecution, did not do your job.
	You did not succeed in proving him guilty.
	So who knows?
	And that's sort of the point here, that if he is innocent, which perfectly Uh, possible, plausible, maybe even likely that he is innocent.
	Well, if he is, uh, you know, it, it just shows even more of the injustice that the rest of us have to say, you know, it's possible that he did it.
	I mean, I, I don't know.
	Um, it, it, it's, he certainly did not, uh, it was certainly the right decision to not find him guilty.
	Uh, but who knows what actually happened.
	And there are a few, you know, there are a few factors that do weigh in the accuser's favor.
	I think primarily the fact that she did not wait 30 years, you know, like Christine Ford, to make this accusation.
	She made it very soon after the fact, and she told her friends, you know, shortly after it happened.
	They found her, and she was crying, and she was clearly distressed about something, and she told them what happened.
	That is a You know, that fact alone is probably why the deliberations lasted two hours rather than two minutes.
	Because you do have to weigh that.
	You have to say, well, I mean, did she decide right then and there that she was going to make up this lie?
	Was that all an act?
	Are her friends lying?
	Well, I think no, not necessarily.
	There is a way to explain all of that without necessarily painting this woman as just an abject liar, and I'll talk about that in a minute.
	It's just we have to emphasize that given the physical evidence, the eyewitnesses, the fact that she sought out Oakman and chose to go back to his apartment, indicating it would seem, at least at first, that she had the intention of having sexual relationships with him.
	It just it's it's it's seems just as likely if not more likely that the encounter was entirely consensual.
	Because a woman doesn't generally go back to a man's apartment after having a few drinks late at night.
	If she does not have that intention.
	Now a friend of hers did testify that she only went back to his apartment because she wanted to see his new puppy.
	But that actually, you know, a claim like that really just casts even more suspicion on the accuser because there's just no way.
	I mean, it seems it's highly unlikely that a woman, you know, a college-aged woman in modern society would think that after you have some drinks with a guy that you've already been sexually active with and you go back to his apartment after the bar at night, It just seems highly unlikely that either person did not have in mind that we're probably going to have sex tonight.
	It just seems highly unlikely.
	What lesson can we learn from this?
	Well, I think the same thing we've learned countless times already, which is we can't believe all women, as the hashtag urges us to do.
	We have to draw our conclusions based on evidence, not based on gender.
	Now, the proponents of the believe-all-women method, they would have us give the benefit of the doubt to the accuser.
	And if the fact, what they basically say is, If the facts could vindicate her claims, if there is some way to theoretically make it all gel with her version of events, then that's what we should do.
	Believe All Women wants us, at a minimum, to interpret the facts in whatever light is most favorable to the woman.
	But that is precisely the wrong approach.
	We should interpret the facts in the most reasonable, plausible way.
	And if the facts could go one way or another, and there's no way to draw a, a, any, uh, conclusion with any degree of rational certainty, then we have to be so satisfied with drawing no conclusion and saying, you know, we don't know what happened, but we can't, we can't assume that the guys are rapists.
	So we just, we don't know.
	And we, it's, we gotta just leave it there.
	Um, that's the problem is that this believe all women, that slogan, is really designed for cases like Oakman's, because after all, you don't need to get into Believe All Women if the accused, if the accused rapist is clearly guilty.
	If there's a lot of evidence, if he's clearly guilty, then we don't need to get into Believe All Women.
	It's just clearly, there's no need for slogans.
	The slogan only comes into play, it would seem, in precisely a situation like this.
	Where, yeah, maybe the guy's guilty.
	There's a very good chance he's not.
	And that's where the Me Too proponents swoop in and they insist that in the absence of certainty, we assume guilt, which is a horrible and completely unethical and dangerous way of going about things.
	One other point here, the insistence by feminists in expanding, um, On expanding the definition of rape, expanding it to the point of absurdity.
	I think that makes it more difficult to get to the truth in any situation, especially a situation like this.
	The way that we talk about consent and the way that we've made rape into this very broad category, it only makes everything convoluted and more confused.
	So let's imagine a hypothetical here.
	Nobody but Oakman and his accuser know what really happened that night.
	No one else is ever going to know.
	But let's imagine a perfectly plausible hypothetical.
	Let's imagine something that falls sort of in between Oakman being a rapist on one hand and his accuser being a liar on the other hand.
	Now, feminists don't allow for gray areas in these situations.
	But I think that's where the truth often often falls with this sort of thing.
	So imagine that Oakman and the woman go back to his apartment.
	Both intending on sexual relations.
	Then let's say the woman at some point realizes that she isn't into it.
	Doesn't really want to do it.
	Let's say that Oakman then tries to convince her.
	Pressures her a little bit.
	Not physically, but just not with threats or anything like that, but just tries to convince her to do what he wants to do.
	And then let's say that she agrees of her own free will.
	She's not prevented from leaving.
	She could leave, but she agrees after some convincing, and she goes through with the act, even though she didn't really want to.
	She wasn't that into it.
	Now, the left tells us that that would be rape.
	If there is no continuous and enthusiastic, and they put that in the definition, it has to be enthusiastic.
	Continuous, enthusiastic, affirmative consent all the way through.
	In the absence of that, it's rape, they say.
	But that's absurd, of course.
	It's not rape.
	That wouldn't be rape.
	It wouldn't be good either.
	But the left has created a dynamic.
	This is the dynamic they've created.
	They say all sex falls into two categories.
	There's only two categories of sex.
	There's good, wonderful sex, and then there's rape.
	Nothing in between.
	If it's not good and wonderful, it's rape.
	That's what they say.
	Those are the only categories.
	But in reality, there's a lot of room in between.
	It is possible to have bad, immoral sexual relations, the kind that may leave a person feeling used, dirty, guilty, whatever, but which was entirely consensual and thus not rape.
	Those kinds of sexual relations happen all the time, especially on college campuses, and I think that's why we hear about one in four women are sexually assaulted.
	Well, some of those women counted in that statistic really were sexually assaulted, but I think a lot of them, what actually happened is they consensually had sex that they didn't really want to have, but they did it anyway.
	By expanding the definition of rape to include cases where there was actually consent by both parties, the left has diminished the severity of rape and created a whole mess of false rape claims that the person making the false rape claim might not even know is false.
	So back to my hypothetical, it's perfectly possible, even plausible, that the woman went through with the act completely consensually, but she wasn't that into it, and she later realizes, based on what we're told these days, she later realizes that, oh, I was raped.
	And she comes to believe that she really was raped, and then she maybe embellishes the story a little bit when she talks to the cops and she talks and she tells people about it.
	She embellishes it a little bit just because she knows that if she tells the story exactly as it happened, it won't sound like rape.
	And maybe that's why she goes back and she deletes the text message and she does all this stuff.
	She really believes that something did that she was assaulted.
	But she knows that if the exact sequence of events wouldn't support that claim, so she changes a little a little bit.
	I look, I don't know if that's actually what happened.
	But my point is that in our culture, we have now an environment That would create and encourage those kinds of situations.
	Situations where no rape occurs, but the person making the false rape claim may not realize it's false because they've been given a false definition of rape.
	They have been told that you may be raped even if you consent to the act.
	Which is totally absurd.
	The definition of rape is to have sex with someone or to have any kind of sexual contact with a person against their will.
	That's what rape is.
	Anything that is not that is not rape.
	But it could still be bad.
	It could still be immoral.
	It could still be unadvisable.
	It could still be a lot of bad things.
	So, You know, good, moral, wonderful, affirming, loving sex is one category.
	And I would say that that's a category that belongs entirely in the bonds of marriage.
	And then so you have that.
	And then you've got rape all the way over here.
	But then you've got a lot.
	I mean, the left, they're the ones who usually are all about spectrums and gray areas.
	Well, here is a place where you've got something like that.
	Where you've got a lot of stuff in between here where it's not not rape.
	It's not good and wonderful either and if you fall into that middle ground You you you're gonna you may leave the act Whether you're a woman or a man feeling used feeling Because you were used right?
	There's there's a lot that's that's the problem with the These one-night stands and the hookup culture and everything is that people men and women?
	They use each other physically Um, they're not raping each other because they both agree to it, but, um, they use each other.
	And then, uh, and then later on, they, they, they are left feeling used and they may now interpret.
	They may say, Oh, I was used.
	So I was raped.
	Not necessarily.
	Um, if you consented to it, it's not right, but it was still not good.
	Still something we should discourage.
	All right, let's move on.
	An article on the Daily Wire right now, Girl Scouts gives highest award to a girl who organized a pro-abortion campaign.
	So if you didn't already realize this about the Girl Scouts, here's a little bit from this article.
	Though the organization's ties to abortion conglomerate Planned Parenthood have been known for years, the Girl Scouts of America have yet to be so forthright about their closeted support for abortion until now.
	According to Life News, the group mygirlscoutcouncil.com has been monitoring the organization for years over its pro-abortion stance, and it discovered last Friday that the Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona honored a girl for her volunteer work on reproductive health justice.
	Meghna Gopalan, recently profiled in a Tucson publication, received the Gold Award, the Girl Scout's highest honor for her work, reports Life News.
	Her project involved working with the pro-abortion Women's March and its affiliate in Tucson.
	She said her goal was to educate people and destigmatize access to women's health care.
	Euphemisms for abortion.
	She said, I'm planning on hosting an event to educate people about and de-stigmatize access to women's health care.
	I've been working with the El Rio Reproductive Health Access Project, and they've offered ideas on reproductive health justice, which would broaden the scope of the project a little bit.
	Blah, blah, blah.
	So Girl Scouts working now with reproductive health justice.
	This, of course, is just another example of the ideological piracy that leftists engage in, where they invade institutions, they commandeer them, and they turn them into agents of their own agenda.
	And they've done that to the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts as well.
	Here's what's happened.
	The Boy Scouts have become the Girl Scouts.
	And the Girl Scouts have become a wing of Planned Parenthood.
	That's what's happened.
	Thanks to the left.
	All right, I want to talk about one other thing before we get to emails.
	Something that has nothing to do with politics or anything like that.
	I found this article linked on Drudge this morning on a website called theladders.com.
	And it has an interesting little tidbit that I thought I'd mention.
	An author named Tom Corley, who wrote a book called Rich Habits, The Daily Success Habits of Rich Individuals.
	And he does, in this book, he does a survey of a bunch of different young millionaires.
	And there was this fact that I thought was relevant.
	The fact is, according to the survey that he did, the majority of the young and successful people that he spoke to were C students in school.
	Most of them were not very successful in school academically.
	They were C students, which means you're not far above failing right at that point.
	That's an interesting fact.
	It doesn't surprise me.
	And you hear this a lot about really successful people where they didn't do well in school.
	And a lot of them didn't even go to college.
	Not academic success stories, in other words, but then they go on and they become success stories out in the world.
	We all know the story about Albert Einstein, who was not a very good student.
	I think those stories are probably exaggerated a little bit, but still, it's all part of this.
	Now, It's worth asking.
	Well, why is that?
	How could it be that you could have people who are brilliant and very talented and hardworking and ambitious and ambitious and all that, which is what you would need to be to succeed in the world.
	But how could you have someone like that who, who, who, who can't handle, you know, grade school?
	I think it's because the education system emphasizes, demands certain skills, certain qualities that have nothing to do with intelligence, nothing to do with ingenuity, nothing to do with creativity, or any of the things that the education system should be fostering.
	Here are, these are really the two qualities that you need to have in order to do well in school.
	These are the only two.
	You have to be good at memorizing and regurgitating information, and you have to be good at sitting still for long stretches while performing rote, busy work.
	Those are the two skills you need to have.
	If you have those qualities, you will be an A-plus student.
	Pretty much guaranteed.
	You could have an IQ of 85.
	You could be a... In fact, I went to school with...
	Plenty of kids who, I don't know what their IQ was, but they were clearly not very smart.
	Some of them, frankly, appeared to be huge dummies.
	But just in talking to them, right, you just have a conversation, you realize, wow, you are kind of stupid.
	You don't say that to their face.
	Maybe sometimes you do, you shouldn't.
	But they would get straight A's.
	And then, of course, for a lot of kids, they think, well, wait, I'm definitely smarter than that person.
	Why am I getting C's over here?
	Um, because, well, it's just because if you have the, if you can sit still and not think about anything else and just think about your busy work and you can memorize and then regurgitate what you're told you'll, you'll do great.
	And those are good abilities to have, by the way, I'm not knocking them.
	But they aren't abilities that will necessarily translate to success and fulfillment outside of school.
	So there's a huge disparity where success in education depends entirely on qualities that, of themselves, won't do much for you outside of education.
	And that's a big problem.
	See, that's something we really need to focus on.
	Now, if you can sit still, memorize, and you happen to be a brilliant logical thinker, Or very gifted in math.
	Or you happen to be very scientifically minded.
	Or you're also artistic.
	Well then, that combination absolutely will lead to success outside of school.
	That will, that will give you success in school and in life.
	So best of both worlds.
	When you find people who were straight A students all the way through, and then they go out there and they become extremely successful in whatever they're doing.
	Well, that's someone, yeah, that's best of both worlds.
	That's someone who could sit still, memorize, regurgitate, um, and also happened to be brilliant and was a hard worker, ambitious, creative.
	If you've got all that going for you, well, then you're just, you're going to basically coast through life.
	Uh, and, and good for you in that case.
	But, um, See, there are a lot of people, what if you have trouble sitting still, you aren't great at memorization, but you're also extremely creative?
	Or what if you aren't great at sitting still and memorizing, but you're very gifted with building things or fixing things?
	Or what if you can't sit still, can't memorize and regurgitate, but you're a great writer?
	And yes, there are a lot of writers who have trouble sitting still.
	I'm one of them, although I wouldn't call myself a great writer.
	Or let's say you have a great interest in history, and you have a keen eye for history.
	Or what if you're a gifted artist, or you're a compelling public speaker, or you're a budding inventor, or you have a great business sense, or you're a natural salesman, and so on.
	What if you have those qualities, but you can't really sit still, and you can't regurgitate and memorize?
	Well, all of those kinds of people, those are very gifted.
	They could all be extremely successful in life.
	I mean, any of those people.
	If they wanted to, they could turn that into, you know, they could become billionaires with those qualities.
	So there's nothing wrong with any of them, but all of them will struggle mightily in school and many of them will probably end up on psychotropic drugs because it will be decided that they have ADHD and so on.
	And that's the whole problem with our system.
	is that it's only built for one kind of person and no one else.
	And it often caters to qualities that, in most cases, do not translate.
	You know, as I said, if you have the ability to sit still, memorize, regurgitate, and you also happen to have other great qualities, well then, yeah, that'll translate.
	But that ability just on its own?
	Um, well, I mean, that'll be good to put you in a cubicle.
	Uh, you know, you could take that and go sit in a cubicle or work at the DMV or something and nothing wrong with doing either of those things.
	I'm just saying, um, that's those qualities isolated.
	That's kind of where that leads.
	And it's so there's just it's an entire paradigm shift that needs to happen with our education system.
	We just our education system is so deeply flawed down to its very roots.
	It is just it's not doing what it's supposed to do.
	And in the meantime, and that wouldn't be so bad in and of itself.
	But the problem is that you've got a lot of really gifted kids, very intelligent, They've got a bright future ahead of them, but they go through 12 or 13 years of school and they're just beaten down by it.
	Because that's the other thing.
	There's an emotional and psychological toll in being forced every day, especially as a kid, to be in an environment that isn't suited for you and where you're destined to fail constantly.
	Believe me, I went through this myself.
	You go through your whole formative, uh, all your formative years, you're in this environment where it's just, it is, it is not made for you.
	And so every day you're just failing and you're doing bad and you're, you know, it's just constantly every day.
	And after a while it creates a complex where kids begin to believe that, Oh, I'm, there's something wrong with me.
	I'm stupid.
	And that can have, uh, you know, Hopefully a kid will be able to cope with that and eventually get out of school and realize that, oh no, there's nothing wrong.
	There was something wrong with the system, not something wrong with me.
	There are a lot of things I can do well, and then they'll go and do those things.
	But I think there are a lot of kids who are not able to cope and they end up on drugs, whether legal or illegal.
	You know, they end up going off on a wrong path.
	They commit suicide, you know, worst case scenario.
	This is part of where I think the suicide epidemic among our kids happens.
	It's not normal to have all these kids committing suicide.
	It's not a normal thing.
	And I think part of that is also this.
	These kids are worn down by the system and they're made to feel totally worthless and just crazy almost.
	Like there's something completely wrong with them when there isn't anything wrong with them.
	All right.
	Let me get to some emails before we wrap up here.
	MattWalshow at gmail.com.
	MattWalshow at gmail.com.
	Let's start with this from Dustin.
	Can I just say that of all the idiots in all the idiot villages and all the idiot worlds, you stand alone, my friend.
	Who do you think you are?
	What gives you the right?
	I hate so much about the way you choose to be.
	Dustin, I deeply appreciate that feedback and I will take it into consideration.
	From Nick, he says, Hey Matt, I just wanted to share an interesting observation that occurred to me recently about the left's abortion arguments.
	They seem to break down into two camps.
	One set of arguments seek to define life itself, viability, consciousness, ability to feel pain, et cetera.
	The other seeks to justify abortion, bodily autonomy, overpopulation, congenital defects, et cetera.
	But it seems like if you're going to argue for the right to abortion, that it's justified, then that presupposes that the fetus is a life.
	If you believe the fetus is just a clump of cells, then why would you need to make a case for the right to get rid of it?
	It's like arguing for the right to scrape gum off the bottom of your shoe.
	Love the show.
	Thanks for all you do.
	I think that you make a very insightful point, Nick, and I think you're exactly right.
	And in fact, so you do have those two veins of argument where the argument over life and then the argument over just abortion and bodily autonomy and everything.
	Now, What the pro-abortion advocates have done is they are increasingly abandoning that first category, which that used to be what that used to be.
	The centerpiece of the abortion debate was about definition of life and all of that personhood.
	But I think abortion advocates are getting away from that.
	For two reasons.
	Number one, that argument focuses for them, uncomfortably, so it focuses on the life on the child.
	And they don't want to they don't want to bring attention to that.
	And also they they're losing that argument.
	They know that they've already they've lost it.
	They've lost that argument.
	50 years ago it was different, but now we know too much about what is really going on inside the womb.
	You can look at the sonograms.
	We know too much about fetal development.
	It's a difficult argument for them to make now.
	So now they're going over here and they're saying, okay, well forget about that.
	Doesn't matter what the fetus is.
	All that matters is I have a right to my autonomy and hey, you know, basically their argument now is I should be able to get an abortion because I want to get an abortion and I should be able to do what I want to do.
	That's their argument.
	It's a bad argument.
	It's a stupid argument.
	It's flawed in about a million different ways, but At least it's not as easily... That's more of a philosophical argument.
	It's not a scientific one.
	So their scientific argument of, oh, this isn't a human, that isn't a person.
	Well, we can just disprove that easily.
	Just show them a sonogram.
	Boom, you're done.
	Or we get into genetics and DNA, you know, their own unique DNA.
	So, you know, it's over.
	But an argument of, I should be able to do what I want, well, that's the argument of a three-year-old, but it is more of a philosophical argument.
	There's not one thing you can present to them to prove that they're wrong about that.
	So I think you're right.
	Let's see.
	This is from Scott.
	Matt, I love your show.
	I'm a big fan of your opinions for the most part.
	For the most part.
	Good qualifier.
	The first time I'm a fan of my opinions for the most part as well.
	The first time I heard you was the episode talking about how loving animals like humans is immoral.
	And I've thought the exact same thing most of my adult life.
	From then on, I've made it a point to catch your podcast during the day.
	I'm watching the HBO documentary about Michael Jackson.
	I started doing some thinking about pedophilia.
	We all know the left's goal is to take every immoral act according to God and normalize it.
	Canada has a story recently about how a court ruled a 14-year-old can consent to gender reassignment procedures.
	By that logic, a child is equal to an adult.
	And can make very permanent decisions about their life.
	Do you think this is a step towards attempting to normalize pedophilia in our society?
	If a child can decide what gender they are, why can't they decide who they love?
	How can anyone else say what they feel is not love?
	If a parent can't stop a child from taking steps towards trying to change their gender, then how can they have the authority to tell their child they can't have a relationship with an adult?
	Maybe I'm crazy, but I definitely don't think this is something far off, and I won't be shocked to see pedophilia rallies and pride parades eventually.
	People call me crazy, but like you said, just give it a new name and suddenly you have a community.
	Scott, I think that you are exactly right.
	I made that same point myself.
	If we are saying that an eight-year-old child has the ability and the wherewithal and the maturity and the autonomy to decide their own gender, then I mean,
	It seems like we've set the stage to say that, OK, well, maybe they actually have the ability and maturity to make other decisions as well.
	So, yes, I think that there is a link between those two issues.
	And I think that that is where we're headed.
	This is from Marissa says, Hi, Matt.
	Love the show.
	Just wanted to comment on the Captain Marvel issue.
	I don't plan on watching the movie.
	In fact, call me sexist.
	I'm a woman, by the way.
	But I don't really like the whole female action hero thing.
	Personally, I do prefer men in those roles.
	I think female action heroes can often come across pretty cheesy.
	I guess I lose my woman card for that.
	Well, I lose my woman card too, Marissa, because I agree with you.
	Well, I mean, I know what you mean.
	I'll put it that way.
	I think, well, here's the problem with female action heroes.
	And I know I'm gonna get myself into trouble with this, but, uh, I think a lot of people will agree with both of us, but they just, they feel like they can't say it.
	Like most of us.
	Yeah.
	I mean, if you had a choice, if you didn't, if you were given a choice between watching a movie with a male action hero, female action hero, and you didn't know anything else about the movies, uh, you probably choose the male action hero one, right?
	Because.
	Usually, those characters tend to be more compelling, and there's a higher likelihood that the female action hero will be kind of corny, and you'll just kind of roll your eyes, and... All right.
	Especially... And I've heard people say, well, you know, it's... In fact, I think it was Bill Burr, a comedian, who... He had a line, I'm paraphrasing, but he said that his suspension of disbelief can't handle You know, a cute blonde chick beating up a bunch of Navy SEALs.
	It's just like, it's a little bit too much.
	Action movies already are fanciful, but when you add that into it, it's like, eh, come on.
	That I don't think is exactly the problem, because especially if you're talking about a superhero, well, if the woman has superpowers, then she can do whatever she wants.
	But I think, here's the issue, the iconic action heroes, the ones that we remember, The really compelling ones.
	They always have a kind of gritty and intimidating vibe to them.
	Like, there's always people that you wouldn't want to tick off, right?
	Think of John Wick or John McClane, Diehard, Liam Neeson in Taken or in anything he's done, Daniel Craig, Jason Statham, or go back to Arnold, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, any of those guys.
	They've got that kind of gritty, tough, intimidating, you know, you wouldn't want to tick them off.
	You certainly wouldn't want to kidnap one of their family members and hold them for ransom, especially Liam Neeson, most of all.
	So, but someone like Brie Larson, you know, no offense there, but she just doesn't have that intimidation factor.
	Like nobody, if you heard that Brie Larson was coming after you, you're just not going to be that worried about it the same way that you'd be worried if The Rock was coming after you, right?
	Now, so there's that intimidation factor that I think, that grittiness and intimidation factor, and you need that most of the time in an action hero.
	It's harder for females to have that, but there are exceptions.
	Uma Thurman in Kill Bill definitely had that.
	You wouldn't want to tick her off.
	Sigourney Weaver had it.
	There are other examples, and there are exceptions on the other side, too.
	I mean, Tom Cruise is maybe the greatest action star of all time.
	He's certainly not gritty or intimidating, but he makes up for that with just sheer exuberance and physicality, doing his own crazy stunts and everything and nearly killing himself on every film shoot he's ever been on.
	So, you know, there are exceptions, but it's just there's a certain vibe usually that an action hero needs to bring to the table, which a woman Isn't able to do quite as naturally which is no knock on
	women There are vibe there's a there there there are vibes that
	women bring to the table that went that men Wouldn't be able to quite as naturally and in fact
	You take a movie like Kill Bill or take alien Sigourney Weaver I think if you'd put a man in that role you would have lost
	something So in that case she had the kind of grittiness intimidation
	thing going on And, but there was also some, but her femininity brought to the role as well really elevated it and helped to make it an iconic role and movie.
	But, you know, it's like I said, it's just, I think it's harder for a female actor to bring that, especially someone like Brie Larson, But, you know, it's not an insult.
	All I'm saying is Brie Larson is not Liam Neeson, which she should be flattered that I would say that because she shouldn't want to be Liam Neeson.
	All right.
	Let's see.
	This is from M.
	Just the letter M is all I'm given.
	Matt, you keep contradicting yourself.
	One minute you're talking about due process and believing evidence, the next you're condemning Michael Jackson as a pedophilic monster.
	I always respected your opinion, but your tirades against MJ have exposed so much hypocrisy.
	I've lost a lot of respect for you.
	Okay, M, that's fine.
	Of course, you completely missed the point, though my whole point all week has been that there's overwhelming evidence, a whole truckload of evidence, against Jackson.
	That's why I condemn him as a pedophilic monster, because he was.
	Look, okay.
	This is the last thing I'm going to say about this.
	All right.
	I'm not gonna I'm done with this topic after this.
	I just want to make one other point, because you brought it up.
	I'm not going to rehash all the reasons why Michael Jackson is definitely guilty as hell.
	I'm going to mention one other thing that I hadn't yet mentioned.
	Jackson, as we've established, admitted to sleeping in bed with little boys.
	Many times.
	Multiple times.
	He admitted it.
	Now, even if I were to accept the argument that he may have done this originally in an innocent, not creepy way, which I do not accept that argument, I think there's no way that a man invites a boy into his bed for non-creepy reasons, even one time.
	But even if I were to accept that argument, when Jackson was accused in 1992 or 93, he ended up paying off his accusers.
	And back then, this issue of sleeping in bed with little boys came up.
	And he said, oh, it's completely innocent.
	It's just a childlike love that we share.
	Even if you're dumb enough to fall for that back in 1993, well, he kept doing it.
	Okay, it came up again 12 years later when he was on trial, and yet again he was sleeping in bed with little boys.
	He kept doing it.
	So at what point, M, At what point do you think, do you think that, like, how many times does he need to sleep in bed with little boys?
	How many times does he need to be accused and then keep on doing it before you will admit that, okay, maybe there's something going on here?
	Because even if he was confused enough to think that there is nothing wrong with sleeping in bed with little boys, And weird enough to even want to do that in the first place.
	Well, okay, back in 1993, he was told, this is inappropriate.
	It makes you look like a pedophile.
	Totally inappropriate.
	You shouldn't do that.
	So now he knows, if he didn't before, and he keeps doing it.
	Why would he keep doing it?
	What is he standing on?
	Principles?
	Like some kind of principle?
	No, I will sleep in bed with strange boys.
	On principle, I'm going to fight for my right to do that.
	Is that what you really think?
	Now, if he's a pedophile, which he was, then we can understand why he kept doing it, because he had a compulsion, and that's what pedophiles do.
	This is why pedophiles need to be locked in prison forever, because they have a compulsion, they can't control it, and they keep on doing it, even if they know that they're destroying their life in the process, not to mention destroying the lives of their victims.
	So that, we understand that.
	We know that that happens.
	So it's easy to explain it in that way.
	But if you're latched onto this idea of innocence, how could you possibly explain him continuing to do it even after being multiply accused of child molestation?
	And he keeps on doing it.
	Did he have a non-pedophilic compulsion to sleep with little boys?
	Is that even a thing?
	No.
	Okay.
	Just... If I need to illustrate my point.
	Imagine that you work as a loss prevention officer at a department store.
	Loss prevention, those are the guys that go around making sure you're not stealing stuff.
	So imagine you work as a loss prevention at a store and you see a guy take a candy bar and put it in his pocket and then start to walk away.
	And so now, 99 times out of 100, in your job, when you see a guy put a candy bar in his pocket, or put anything in their pocket that they didn't pay for, they're trying to steal.
	That's what thieves do.
	That is what shoplifters do.
	So let's say you stop him and he says, oh, no, no, no, I was going to pay for it.
	No, oh, you're not supposed to put stuff in your pocket before you pay for it.
	I didn't realize.
	I know it's totally innocent.
	Don't be ignorant.
	Stop being ignorant.
	No, I would never do that.
	I just put it in my pocket for safekeeping before I bring it to the counter.
	That's all.
	Totally innocent, man.
	Calm down.
	Now, even though, in your experience, every single time someone puts something in their pocket before paying for it, they are trying to steal it.
	So there's no reason at all to think that this guy's different.
	But let's just say that you're in a really good mood and you feel like being generous and nice and charitable.
	Or maybe you find out that the guy has a really good singing voice and you say, you know, he's a good singer.
	No way he could have done it.
	So then you let it slide.
	You say, all right, fine.
	But you know, look, but you tell him, listen, don't put things in your pocket before you pay for them, because that's what shoplifters do.
	And it makes it look like a shoplifter.
	At the very least, it's not appropriate.
	Don't do that.
	Well, what if he comes back the next week and does it again?
	And you stop him again and he says, oh, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	I didn't mean it.
	I was totally, no, I was innocent again.
	I was just innocent.
	And so you let him go again.
	And then he comes back a third time.
	A few weeks later, he's putting stuff in his pocket again.
	And then he comes back a fourth time.
	How many times does he need to do it, Em, before you realize that he's, oh, he's actually, he is not only a shoplifter, but he's a kleptomaniac who can't control himself.
	And that's why he keeps doing it.
	I mean, does he have to do it 20 times before you conclude that maybe he's just like every other shoplifter ever in history?
	So hopefully you see the comparison between these two things.
	If that example is not enough to illustrate to you, if that won't convince you, then there's nothing that can be said.
	All right.
	Finally from Justin.
	Hi Matt.
	Important question for you.
	Where do you think Le'Veon Bell ends up this offseason?
	Le'Veon Bell, the Steelers running back who refused to play last year for the Steelers, which as a Ravens fan, I love that.
	That was great.
	The Steelers are imploding and I'm taking so much joy in it.
	Where do I think Le'Veon Bell ends up as a free agent?
	I'm hoping the Ravens.
	There's a talk about that.
	I, as a Ravens fan, But I do think that he's obviously demanding a lot of money, and I'm in the school of thought that, or I'm in the camp that believes that running backs are, that position is vastly overvalued.
	Le'Veon Bell's a little bit different because he's also a good receiver.
	He has more value because of that.
	But generally speaking, the thing with running backs is number one, they get injured very easily and quickly, even more so than other positions.
	Number two, running back is a position where very often you find these guys who you have the plummet.
	I guess the quality production plummet happens very quickly and suddenly at that position, more so than any other position on the football field.
	Where you could have a guy that is, you know, 2,000 yards from scrimmage, all-star, all-pro, and then like two years later, he can barely crack 1,000 yards.
	I mean, this happens all the time.
	It's just the way the position works.
	So you've got to be very careful about investing any kind of money in it.
	And then also, it's really easy to find running backs who can You know, get you 1,400 yards from scrimmage and to find them in the third or fourth round of the draft, or to, you know, find a kind of diamond in the rough in free agency.
	It's just really easy to do.
	The Ravens have been doing it for a long time.
	They find these guys, they get a good two seasons out of them, they find another guy.
	It's one of those positions where it's really easy to do that.
	Unlike, say, cornerback wide receiver or quarterback, where it's a lot harder to find real talent.
	At running back, you can find Real talent, pretty easily, pretty cheaply.
	So that's the problem Le'Veon Bell's going to run into, that it just wouldn't make any sense to give him some long-term, super expensive deal just because of the way the position works.
	All right.
	We will leave it there.
	Thanks, everybody, for watching.
	Thanks for listening.
	Godspeed.
	The left has hypnotized the world as Ilhan Omar repeats anti-Jewish slurs, Nancy Pelosi tries to take a vote to condemn anti-Semitism, and that fresh faces on the left won't let her do it.
	We analyze why the left doesn't like the Jews, then the mailbag.

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