Ep. 270 - Facebook Doxxes Its Own User At The Behest Of The Media
Today on the show, the Daily Beast decided to take vengeance on a random guy who made a Nancy Pelosi meme. They doxxed and shamed him, but that’s not even the most disturbing thing about this story. The most disturbing thing is Facebook's participation in all of this. Also, Budweiser is celebrating asexual pride. What in God's name does that mean? We'll try to figure it out today. Date: 06-03-19
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, the Daily Beast decided to take vengeance on a random guy who made a Nancy Pelosi meme.
They doxed him, they shamed him publicly, but that's not even the most disturbing thing about this story.
We'll talk about it today.
Also, Budweiser is celebrating Pride Month, but specifically they decided to celebrate asexual pride.
What in God's name does that mean?
mean? We'll try to figure that out today as well on the Matt Wall Show.
Okay, before we get into the show today, I got to tell you about a big token.
Okay, BigToken is a new app that lets you share data about yourself, your interests, your habits, and then you get paid for it.
Okay, that's the important part.
Right now, you know, you share an enormous amount of information with tech companies.
And the thing is, they're the ones who make money off of it instead of you.
So I think you should get in on that action.
And that's where BigToken comes in.
Here's how it works.
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You could choose what data you share with BigToken, and so it's up to you, and then you get paid for it.
That's the point.
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Based on the data you choose to share, you will be placed into specific ad groups and brands will buy access to those ad groups for use in personalized advertising.
The best part?
You get paid.
And this is all up to you.
It's your choice.
If you want to participate in it, then if the information is going to be shared, then you might as well get a piece of the Okay, let's begin now with the most important news item of the day.
It's the thing that everyone's talking about, breaking news.
I don't know if you saw this over the weekend, but President Trump's new hairdo.
Look at this thing right here.
He debuted this over the weekend, and I'm hearing reports that it's actually not an intentional hairstyle, it's just his hat hair.
He took his hat off and that's what his hair looks like under his hat.
But I think he needs to go with this.
This is a game changer for 2020.
This is, in my opinion, now I am not a stylist, I'm not an expert in these things.
My wife tells me that I am stylistically challenged sometimes.
But to me, gut reaction, this is 10 million times better than his normal haircut.
And it changes everything.
I think we need to get President Trump with that hairstyle and then put Ted Cruz with his new beard on a ticket together.
And from a purely, from just a basis, from a follicle basis, from a follicular, if that's a word, basis, I think that would make an unstoppable combination.
I like the hairstyle.
You know why?
Because it's, yeah, it's a little bit startling because it's not, his weird usual thing is iconic at this point, it's part of who he is.
But I like the hairstyle because it's normal.
It's just what a normal hairstyle should be.
When I was a kid, my mom would take me to the barber and she would tell the barber, uh, normal boy's cut.
That was my haircut when I was a kid.
Normal boy's cut.
And so this looks to me just to be like a normal man's cut.
And that's good.
A lot of people on social media have been making fun of the president for this haircut, saying he looks like Gordon Gekko or whatever.
Well, what's wrong with that?
You know, I mean, and they'll make fun of him no matter what.
So my plea to the president is do not listen to those people who are making fun of you.
It is, I think, go with this.
This changes everything.
All right.
Maybe on slightly more important news.
Only slightly.
You know, it's often said that these sort of anti-media sentiments in our country, the hostility to the media, Has been created by Donald Trump.
That he's the one who's making everyone hate the media.
This obviously is false.
People hated the media way before Donald Trump came along.
I myself come from a long line of media haters.
We have a long tradition in my family.
It runs in our blood of hating the media.
I can remember being a kid and my dad really hated the media.
He still does.
I can distinctly remember The sounds that would come from the living room when my dad was downstairs watching TV, watching the news, because he would watch the news every night even though he hated
The point is people have hated the media for a long time.
the news during especially during the Clinton administration, he would just be
shouting at the TV, screaming at the news anchor and and then I would
eventually grow up one day to also watch TV and scream at news anchors although I
don't watch the news that much partially because I want to save my vocal cords.
Point is people have hated the media for a long time not because of Trump and we
have good reason.
I could cite any number of reasons.
There's a million reasons I could choose from, but let's just go with the latest.
Here's the latest reason to hate the media, and it's a pretty significant one.
You may recall, maybe you recall, that meme from a few weeks ago showing Nancy Pelosi giving a speech and slurring her words.
To make it look like she was drunk?
Now, this is not the same video.
There was one, there's this video, and then there was a different video of Nancy Pelosi stammering that President Trump shared.
It's not that video.
Okay, this is a different one.
And this is a video that I actually had not heard of until this whole thing happened over the weekend.
Up until this, I hadn't heard of it or seen it, but it shows her as if she's slurring her words, and apparently the video has been messed with.
Someone slowed it down to make it seem like she was drunk or something.
And it went viral on Facebook and on Twitter, but then very quickly, After that video went viral, the real footage got out there and everyone understood that the original thing was doctored and it's not a real video.
So, I don't know if there was any real damage done to Nancy Pelosi because of this.
I think probably none.
Probably none at all.
I doubt that any of her potential voters were turned off by a fake video that went viral on right-wing conservative pages for a few days before the national media spent several more days debunking it.
Well, we thought we had all moved on with our lives, right, after this video apparently came out.
But evidently not, because the Daily Beast was on the case.
They were hunting down whoever created the original video, and finally they found him.
And yesterday, on Sunday, they doxed him.
They published a news article with his name, where he lives, personal details, criminal record, work history, everything.
He's just some random private citizen who made a fake Pelosi video on Facebook.
And for that crime, for that sin, the Daily Beast dragged him out onto the public stage and they shamed him in front of the entire world.
The Daily Beast article that's up on their site right now is by Kevin Poulsen.
And Poulsen has been applauded in the liberal press for this.
In fact, the way that I found out about this article originally is that some other journalist shared it
and said, you know, with a caption like incredible work by the Daily Beast, great job or something
like that. And so I clicked on it, said, oh, well, what's what incredible job did they do?
I'm interested.
The Daily Beast doesn't usually do incredible jobs with things, but I was interested.
So I clicked on it and I was immediately horrified.
So let me read a few.
I'll read a little bit of this article.
I'm going to omit the guy's name, even though his name is out there everywhere.
I don't want to be part.
I don't want to be part of the effort to spread his name out there, so I'll omit his name.
But this is, let me read a little bit from the Daily Beast article.
It says, on May 22nd, a Donald Trump superfan and occasional sports blogger from the Bronx named Blank posted a video clip of Nancy Pelosi on his personal Facebook page.
The clip showed Pelosi at her most excitable, stammering during a press conference as she voiced frustration over an abortive infrastructure meeting with the president.
Blank's commentary on the video was succinct.
Is Pelosi drunk?
Thirteen minutes later, a Facebook official... Pay attention to this part.
Thirteen minutes later, a Facebook official told the Daily Beast that Blank posted a very different Pelosi video to a Facebook page called Politics Watchdog, one of a series of hyper-partisan news operations that he runs, with help, he claims.
This clip has been altered to slow Pelosi down while lowering the pitch of her voice.
The effect was to make it look like she was drunk, blah blah blah.
Fifteen minutes after that, the same doctored video appeared on the second Facebook page that he manages, and then it spreads from there.
They talk about how it spreads.
The video was an instant social media smash, surging through the Internet's well-worn lines of credulity and venom.
It was shared by James Wood and Rudy Giuliani.
So on and so forth and then it gets into talking about this guy's
personal lives as blank a 34 year old day laborer currently on probation after pleading
guilty to domestic battery Claims that his drunk commentary on an unaltered Pelosi
video had no connection to the now infamous fake clip that premiered less than 15 minutes later
He says I wasn't the individual who created the Pelosi video
He insisted in a telephone interview.
It's conceivable that someone else actually edited the clip, but a Facebook official confirming a Daily Beast investigation said the video was first posted on Politics Watchdog directly from Blank's personal Facebook account.
And then it goes into more about the Facebook pages that he manages.
Okay, and it goes on from there.
It's a lengthy expose.
It's very long.
Remember, this is a lengthy expose about some random blue-collar guy who allegedly posted a Nancy Pelosi video.
He says he wasn't even the one who posted it.
It goes into more detail about his private life, his work history.
And Polson, the guy who wrote this article, admits that the guy the article's about didn't want to be outed like this.
It says, at first, blank, didn't respond to emails, phone calls, text messages, Facebook messages, and a direct message over Instagram, and he blocked this reporter on Twitter.
Okay, so this reporter is harassing this guy until finally he relents.
On Friday, he called back, explaining that he was worried over the prospect of being publicly linked to the video fakery.
I'm in New York City.
New York City, he said.
Very liberal.
People make judgments.
I just don't want to be linked to a conservative right-winger and be potentially denied services and stuff.
People are nasty.
You should see some of the messages that are coming in.
But they published all of his personal details anyway.
He said he doesn't want to be published.
He's worried about the effect it would have on him.
Yet they did it anyway.
So, What is the point of this?
Can it be justified on any level?
Can it be seen as anything other than cruel, partisan vengeance?
Well, as for partisan, it's clearly partisan.
There's no question about that.
Does anyone think that in a million years, the Daily Beast would hunt down someone who made a negative meme about a Republican?
I mean, about Donald Trump?
There are a lot of negative memes about Donald Trump.
There are a lot of doctored videos of Donald Trump out there.
Do you think the Daily Beast is going to go hunt down any of those people?
No, of course not.
In fact, let's use a real world example.
Someone initially took the full video of the Covington Catholic students.
The now infamous video of the Covington Catholic students.
Someone took that whole video.
It's like an hour and a half long.
And they cropped out the context and they put the out-of-context video online.
A video which proceeded to put the lives of those kids in danger.
I mean, there were death threats and bomb threats to the school.
And a video that could have possibly destroyed their lives if not for a counter campaign, you know, among conservatives to get the truth out there and to defend these boys.
But do you think the Daily Beast would dox whoever put that video out there?
Did they dox that person?
No.
So, yeah, it's partisan, of course.
As for cruel and vengeful, well, look, I'll be the first to say that I don't think you have some kind of carte blanche general expectation of or right to privacy when you're online.
Um, what I mean is if you say or do something anonymously online, I don't think that your anonymity has to always be respected.
I think it depends.
Now you may recall a few weeks ago.
When I was on here giving the names and Twitter handles of people who had threatened or wished rape and death on my wife and my children and myself for my pro-life stance.
And I didn't dox those people.
Doxing is when you go digging for personal information that's not readily available and then you put it out there for everyone to see.
I didn't do that.
If they had their names attached to their Twitter handles, then I said what their names were.
But that's it.
So there was no doxing.
But I did remove, to some extent, their anonymity.
Because these were messages that they sent me privately, and I took those private messages and I made them public.
Now, in that case, I felt completely justified, and I would absolutely do it again without hesitation, because if you come to me, if you message me, Threatening my family and my kids and my wife and myself.
I'm going to let everyone know what you said.
You should have to stand by your words publicly.
I'm not going to respect your privacy when you're privately sending me messages threatening my family.
It doesn't work that way.
If you're going to do that, if you're going to take the time to send me a private message threatening my family, I'm going to put it out there.
It's just fair is fair.
If you don't want that, then don't send me those messages.
Don't come to me like that.
I wasn't hunting anybody down, they came to me, and I simply said, hey everybody, look at what this person said.
You made that choice, so now you have to live with the consequences.
But that, in my mind, is very different from what the Daily Beast has done.
For one thing, this guy isn't threatening anybody.
He's not threatening anyone's spouse or children.
He isn't personally harassing anyone.
He just put a video out on Facebook.
And the people going after him were not affected by it.
So listen, if Nancy Pelosi herself was, uh, was offended by this video and she wanted to get up there and say, Oh, so, you know, so-and-so put this video of me out there and she wanted to name the guy, then I would probably say, okay, fair is fair.
She's defending herself.
You did make the fake video of her.
Um, she named you, you started it in essence.
So she defended herself.
That's fine.
But That's not what happened.
And the point is here that this isn't newsworthy.
Just like the people who came after me, that wasn't newsworthy either.
But I took it personally because they were threatening my family.
And so I defended myself.
It wasn't about trying to pretend it was news.
I was just personally responding to those people to punish them for what they had said to me.
So if Pelosi had taken it personally and decided to respond, then fine.
But that's not what happened.
The problem is that the media takes it personally when Democrats are attacked.
They act like Nancy Pelosi's good personal friends or something.
They're getting defensive and lashing out against people who attack her or other Democrats.
So they're acting like her personal PR team.
That's the issue here.
Um, the identity of this guy is not news.
It doesn't matter.
He does not matter on a national level.
I'm sure he'd be the first person to say that.
Yet the media came after him vengefully to send a message.
And the message is, don't mess with our people.
That's, that's really the, that's, that's the problem.
So, you know, I, I've, I've heard some people defending the Daily Beast, uh, behavior here by saying, well, this guy chose to put a video out there, so he had it coming.
But again, that's that's not what the media, that's not what the news media is supposed to do.
It's not their job to give people what's what's coming to them.
You know, it's not their job to to be defensive of Democrats who are attacked.
The question is, their job is to report the news.
Their job is to tell us what is newsworthy.
And this guy's personal identity and his work history and his criminal record?
None of that is newsworthy.
You and I is just average consumers of the news.
We can't do anything with that.
That information does nothing for us.
It doesn't matter to us at all.
But I think there's something about this story that's even more disturbing.
Than the fact that the media is doxing this guy.
And that is that, if you caught this part, Facebook gave user information to a Daily Beast reporter.
Let's go back and read this part again.
It says, 13 minutes later, a Facebook official told the Daily Beast, blank, posted a very different Pelosi video to a Facebook page called Politics Watchdog.
Um, and then at one other point in the article, it talks about how Facebook confirmed that this guy posted the video.
Okay, so, so Facebook will tell the media about your activities on Facebook if they call and ask?
It's really that simple?
I mean, it's not even like police, you know, coming with a warrant.
It's just, it's someone with the Daily Beast who calls up Facebook and says, hey, did this person post that at this time?
Can you check and let me know?
And they went and looked and said, yep, anything else you need?
Any more information you need?
Access to his private messages or anything?
Just let us know and we'll help you out.
That is, that's terrifying.
And that has got to be a violation of their terms of service.
Now, I'll admit that, you know, as probably with most people, when I get those lengthy terms of services online, I don't really read the entire thing.
I'll admit it's stupid.
We probably should.
Most of us don't.
But I'm guessing that there's nothing in the Terms of Service that says that Facebook has the right to share your personal information with the news media if they just ask.
I'm guessing that probably isn't in there.
So this guy's got, I think, a lawsuit.
He's got grounds for a lawsuit, at least based on that.
And that, you know, to me, that actually is the headline.
It's not that the Daily Beast doxxed This Trump supporter, because we expect that of them, unfortunately.
It's that Facebook doxxed its own users for apparently political reasons.
That is just horrifying and terrifying.
Okay, a couple other items related to the media.
First, the cast of Handmaid's Tale was on CNN yesterday, and there's an article on CNN.com about it and about what they had to say.
And the cast of Handmaid's Tale, they were talking about how the United States is turning into the Handmaid's Tale.
We're almost there.
You know, we're on a slippery slope into Living in that patriarchal dystopia.
And you hear this a lot, of course, about how America is the Handmaid's Tale.
But, you know what?
America is not the Handmaid's Tale, and you know how I know that?
Well, because it's just a stupid claim, for one.
But also, the number one clue that America is not the Handmaid's Tale is that the Handmaid's Tale exists.
So that's how you know.
That's how you know we're not in the Handmaid's Tale and that we're not anywhere close to the Handmaid's Tale because we live in a country where women can make millions of dollars portraying America as a patriarchal dystopia.
If we actually were a patriarchal dystopia or close to a patriarchal dystopia, you wouldn't be able to do that.
So that's just one little, just to allay your fears.
As long as Handmaid's Tale is on TV, I think we're good.
Also, one other note about the media.
The Hill has an article on their website with a curious headline.
And the headline is, headline says, poll, nearly half of Americans say Supreme Court should uphold Roe v. Wade.
Now, of course, Intuitive people hear that headline and they think, wait, hold on a second.
Nearly half of Americans say the Supreme Court should uphold Roe v. Wade.
That's the headline you're giving us.
Nearly half want Roe v. Wade upheld.
Well, doesn't that mean that more than half don't want that?
Well, yes, it does.
Let's read the second paragraph of this article about a Harvard poll.
Now, remember, they made the headline about the almost half who want to uphold Roe v. Wade.
But here's the second paragraph under the headline.
It says, 46% of respondents said the high court should uphold the ruling in Roe if the issue comes before the justices.
While 36% said the Supreme Court should modify the 46-year-old ruling, 18% wanted the ruling to be overturned altogether.
So what's the real headline?
More than half of Americans want Roe overturned or modified.
That's the real headline.
And in fact, it's better than that because let's go to the end of the article.
It says a plurality, 41%, said the procedure should be allowed only in cases of rape or incest.
So 41% only want abortion in cases of rape or incest.
I'm actually surprised by how high that number is.
29% said it should be permitted up until the first trimester of pregnancy, while 17% said that it should be allowed until the second trimester.
Only 8% said abortion should be permitted up until the third trimester, and 6% said the procedure should be allowed up until the birth of the child.
So, 92% of Americans do not support late-term abortion.
Even though support for late-term abortion is mainstream among Democrat politicians.
Almost every Democrat on the federal level, among the political class, support late-term abortion.
They support abortion from the very moment of conception all the way to the moment of birth.
And actually, abortion up to the moment of birth, 94% of Americans are against that, according to this poll.
Which is a staggering number.
And it shows you just how out of touch, how fringe, how radical the Democrat Party has become on this issue.
94% of Americans disagree with them on the abortion issue.
But of course, the Hill, they don't make that the headline.
The headline for them is that nearly half of Americans say that the Supreme Court should uphold Roe v. Wade.
This is just, it's one of the most disingenuous and misleading headlines that we've seen probably this year, which is saying quite a lot.
But it also shows you just how the media is able to mislead the public.
Because remember that, you know, probably 90% or more of the people who see a headline will not click on it.
And even among the people who click on it, most will just read the first sentence or the first two sentences and then skim the rest, if they even skim the rest at all.
So the idea is, just put that headline out there, and most people are gonna see it, and they're not gonna think about it, and they're gonna say, oh, okay, well, so, you know, most Americans are, what they see is that a lot of Americans want to uphold Roe v. Wade.
That's what most people are going to take from that headline because they're not going to click and read.
And so that's the idea behind it.
All right.
One last thing.
Before we get to emails, it's June, you know, and June is Pride Month, if you haven't heard.
Pride Month is a time for people with certain sexual attractions to talk about how proud they are of those sexual attractions.
Of course, keep in mind that people's sex lives are none of our business.
It's none of our business, but there's a whole month set aside to talk about it, which is a little bit confusing.
It's hard to square those two things.
Is it our business or not our business?
If it's not our business, then why are you spending a month talking about it?
It's a little bit strange, but never mind.
Don't try to make sense of that.
One thing that's kind of funny about this month Is to see all of the major companies in the world, um, tripping over themselves to virtue signal and, and celebrate pride, uh, in, in these increasingly weird and embarrassing ways.
And that's kind of interesting because it, it isn't what you would expect based on the fact that we're told that LGBT folks are oppressed in this country.
We're told that they're, they're oppressed.
Yet all of the most wealthy and powerful forces in the country will spend the month trying to flatter LGBT people.
That's not usually how oppression works.
In fact, that's usually a hint that you're not in an oppressed group.
If people are doing everything they can to flatter you and celebrate you and applaud you, That probably means you're not being systematically oppressed.
Black people were truly oppressed, systematically oppressed in this country prior to civil rights.
And based on my reading of history back in those days, the rich and powerful forces in America, they were not in a mad rush to celebrate black power.
It was kind of the opposite.
Jews were oppressed in Nazi Germany.
And again, you did not see the powerful forces in that culture trying to flatter Jews.
Again, it was precisely the opposite.
So, you know, if this is oppression, it's a very subtle form of oppression.
I mean, it is so subtle that you would almost think it doesn't exist.
Just a thought.
But in any case, Budweiser has gotten in on the action.
Budweiser, a company that makes rusty tap water, which it somehow gets away with calling beer.
Budweiser has, you know, taken a hit in recent years, financially, because people have discovered that real beer exists, and so we don't really need Budweiser.
So I guess they're desperate for attention, and in an effort to get attention, they've unveiled a new series of cups, which celebrate pride.
But it's not just the normal celebration of gay pride or whatever.
These are worth taking a look at.
So let's look at some of these.
Okay, so the first one, just kind of normal, what you would expect.
It says, fly the flag for inclusive pride.
So take a look at this.
It says, in 2017, the city of Philadelphia added a black and brown stripe to the classic rainbow design to better represent people of color within the community.
It has since been flown at prides around the world.
Now, okay, but I don't really understand why you need to add brown and black to represent brown and black people.
Because the normal pride flag has, like, pink and green and purple, right?
It's not like the pink and green and purple are there to celebrate pink, green, and purple people.
I thought the colors had nothing to do with race.
So, I don't know why you have to add the racial colors in there, it doesn't really make any sense, but anyway.
And the next one is, so this one is, fly the flag for bi pride.
It says, magenta is for same gender attraction, blue is for attraction to genders other than your own, and lavender, a mix of the two, represents attraction to your own and other genders, though some interpret it differently.
Okay.
And then Fly the Flag for Lesbian Pride says, while this flag is commonly used, it isn't the only one.
If you look around, you might see a version with a kiss in the corner representing lipstick lesbians.
Whatever that is, I have no idea.
Or a purple flag with a double-headed axe for Labrys Lesbian Feminist Pride.
I don't know what that means.
Okay, but now things start getting weird.
It's already weird, but now it's gonna start getting weird, weirder.
So this one is, Fly the Flag for Non-Binary Pride.
It says, yellow is for those whose gender exists outside of the gender binary, white is for people with many genders, purple is for those who feel a mix of male and female, and black is for those who feel they're without any gender entirely.
Now, wait a second, but I thought black was for black people.
Now it's for black people or those who have no gender?
So, in other words, it's for black people or people who don't exist, because there's no such thing as a person with no gender.
That doesn't exist on Earth, never has, never will.
But, so, okay, so we've expanded black and now it includes those two things.
Then it says, fly the flag for pan pride.
Pan pride.
Not like a frying pan.
Blue symbolizes male attraction, pink symbolizes female attraction, and yellow attraction to other genders.
So how's that different from... Didn't we already cover all of that?
I don't know.
Fly the flag for intersex pride.
The circle symbolizes wholeness and completeness, while purple and yellow were chosen as they don't have female or male association.
Okay, but purple and yellow have like 19 other associations, don't they?
We've already used purple and yellow on every other flag.
So you're saying it has no other associations?
I mean, you're cramming too many things in each of these colors.
It doesn't make any sense.
But now, this really is what I wanted to... This is the only one we need to focus on.
So get ready for this one.
Last one, fly the flag for asexual pride.
It says black is for asexuals who don't feel sexual attraction to anyone.
Gray is for graysexuals, who sometimes feel sexual attraction, and demisexuals, who only feel it if they know someone well.
White nods to non-asexual allies, and purple represents the whole community.
So we're using purple again, so it represents like 52 different things.
And then we're using black again.
So black represents black people, or people with no gender, who don't exist, or people who feel no sexual attraction to anyone.
That's what black means, on the flag.
Now, of course, there are probably like four actual asexual people on Earth, if there are any at all, which I'm skeptical of, actually.
Because to be a real asexual, you would have to never experience any sexual attraction to anyone, ever.
That would be a really asexual person, is someone who never feels sexually attracted to anyone, any shape, size, at all.
If that group exists, it is numerically very close to non-existence.
But however many of them are out there, What does it mean to take pride in being asexual?
What does that mean?
You're proud of not being attracted to people?
Now, if you're not attracted to people, you're not attracted to them.
I'm not saying that you should be ashamed of that.
I mean, if that's just... If that's how you are, then, I mean, you can't help it.
But... But what does it mean to be proud of it?
Like, how does that work?
How can you be proud of an attraction you don't have?
You're proud of your absence of attraction?
I mean, isn't that like marching to express your pride in the fact that you don't like ham sandwiches?
If you don't like ham sandwiches, that's fine, but you don't need to throw a parade about it.
That's what I'm saying.
So what are you proud of exactly?
And then demisexuals are those who need to get to know someone before feeling attracted.
All right, so those are just women, in other words.
That's a woman.
Women are less visual in their sexual appetites, and they tend to be attracted more based on personality, and that's the kind of thing.
So those are just normal women.
Um, so we've got asexuals, which include four people on Earth, then demisexuals, which include three and a half billion people, so things are a little bit lopsided here, and then we get to graysexual, and those are people who sometimes feel sexual attraction.
Alright, so now that's just literally everybody in the world.
That's just seven billion people.
Because everyone sometimes feels sexual attraction, I guess except for the four asexuals out there.
The only other option is to walk around always sexually attracted to every human, animal, and object you come across.
That's the other option.
It's either never sexually attracted, or sometimes sexually attracted, or always sexually attracted to everything.
Which, by the way, why aren't those people represented?
What would that be?
If you're sexually attracted to literally everything in existence?
Like a man, a woman, a desk, a tree, a dog, a rock, the sky.
I mean, I guess that's because that's the other option here.
And I don't know what that would be.
Would that be like... We need a name for that.
I'm not clever enough to come up with a name right now, but they need to be in the acronym.
Universal attraction?
Something like that.
Unisexual?
No, that sounds like you're only... I don't know.
I would think that that would be pansexual.
Anyway, we can work on that.
But regardless, if you're not that, and you're not asexual, then that means you're going to be sometimes sexual, and that you're sometimes sexually attracted, but then sometimes you're not, depending on Depending on what's around you, I suppose.
So that's approximately 7 billion people.
Which means that we all get to be in the acronym.
The acronym has been expanded to include now 7 billion people.
And this is what I'm talking about, that people are so desperate to be included, to be included in the supposedly oppressed LGBT category, that they're making up labels that make no sense just so they can be included.
It's become a very sought-after club to be in.
And that is not how oppression works.
If you live in a country where there is a really systematically oppressed group of people, you are not going to be clamoring to be included in that group.
Unless you're some kind of masochist, which I think they might be in the acronym too, I'm not sure.
No, they are.
I'm pretty sure they are.
But unless you're a masochist, you wouldn't want to be in the group.
The fact that everybody wants to be in the group, and that we're making up labels just so we can get in that group, Just goes to show you that this is not an oppressed group.
In fact, it shows you that the opposite is the case.
It shows you that this is a privileged group.
This is a group that, if you're in that group, it affords you social and legal privileges.
That's why people want to be in it.
That's what attracts people to a group, is the privileges that they will gain if they're a part of it.
All right, so there you go.
So I've become a very long acronym.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
MattWalshow at gmail.com is the email address.
We'll read a few of your emails here.
This is from Lou.
Says, hi Matt, I know you've been joking about your Achilles injury this week.
I respect that you have a good sense of humor about it, but in all seriousness, how are you doing with it?
Is it a full tear?
I've never injured my Achilles, but I have broken multiple bones in my leg and foot at various points in my life.
I'd always heard that an Achilles tear is the worst injury you can sustain on your leg, extremely painful and very hard to recover from.
I don't mean to be discouraging, I'm sure you already knew this, but I'm concerned about you and I'm wondering how you're actually feeling and doing aside from the jokes.
Lou, I really appreciate that email and this is I've got several emails like this of people who are just genuinely concerned and I do appreciate that because that's to take the time to write an email you know of expressing concern and sympathy for someone that you don't even know personally it's just a very it's a very it's a kindness so I appreciate that it is a full and I now I haven't been I'm going to the doctor after the show to You know, get all the details and talk about treatment and stuff, but I did call the, um, I talked to the doctor with the MRI results over the weekend and they, they read the MRI results.
There was a lot of stuff in the results I didn't understand, but I did understand the phrase full and extensive tear of the Achilles, which I think is probably not good.
Probably not what you want to hear.
Not a doctor, but you know, so it is a full, full and extensive too.
So that's good.
Um, Yeah, it does hurt.
I mean, when it first happened, it felt like a gunshot to the back of the leg.
It's extremely, extremely painful.
I've never been shot, but I feel like it's... I mean, I don't know.
I think it's probably in that realm as far as pain goes.
It's just a... You know, when you go to the doctor, they ask you to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10.
And so, there is kind of like... You get to a limit where a thing can't be any more painful than it is.
Like, 10 is kind of the limit.
And so, I think it was pretty close to a 10, maybe a 9, I don't know.
But ever since then, you know, mostly it feels okay.
There are moments of searing intense pain, but for the most part, it's fine.
As for how I'm doing, and you know, I was talking about this yesterday that I've been actually strangely encouraged by the fact that I've had this torn Achilles now for a week.
And I've been to the doctor, I don't know, three or four times over the week.
And I still have not been prescribed painkillers with a torn Achilles.
They haven't given me pain.
They just say take Tylenol and put ice on it.
Which is fine because I don't really want pain.
If they gave me Oxycontin or something, I wouldn't take it because I'd be too afraid of... I'd rather just deal with the pain and take Tylenol personally.
But it was not what I expected.
Because I kind of thought that doctors hand out painkillers like candy, and that's how half the country got hooked on the stuff.
But, as I said, I've been to the doctor three or four times with a torn Achilles, unable to walk, and they don't give you painkillers.
So, I'm just wondering, who do they give painkillers to?
If this doesn't rate getting a painkiller, then what does?
As I said, I don't want one.
I'm just wondering.
It's curious.
Although, as I was talking about this online on Twitter yesterday, People were saying that, yeah, I mean, they used to give out painkillers like candy, but now they've gotten a lot stingier about it.
And so that's good.
I actually, I appreciate that.
I was actually encouraged by that.
Because it's, you know, I don't think they should be just handing out synthetic heroin to everybody who comes in with a little minor pain or whatever.
So as for how I'm doing generally, it's, you know, it's, it's, I'm fine.
It's just, I just can't walk is the problem, and a lot of people have worse problems than this, but I appreciate, as I said, the concern.
All right.
This is from Nathan.
It says, My name is Nathan Dethloff.
I'm 18 years old, a huge fan of the show.
I'm responding to your May 31st episode entitled Donald Trump Caused Chernobyl, in which you give analysis in depth about the pop-slash-rap-slash-country song Old Town Road.
I disagree with your assertion that Old Town Road is the worst song ever recorded and that one must have an IQ of 25 to enjoy it.
I think that to understand why OTR is popular, one must first understand the origins of the song.
OTR got its start on the social media site TikTok, in which creators can share short videos usually dubbed with music.
The majority of the videos on this site are comical and meant for mindless entertainment.
OTR then became the subject of memes far and wide across the internet.
The song had nearly run its course until the mastermind behind such incredible compositions as Achy Breaky Heart and I Want My Mullet Back, Billy Ray Cyrus, remixed the song and was featured on it.
This gave Lil Nas X's almost comically bad song the staying power and legitimacy required to be heard in every stereo in the U.S.
People don't listen to Old Town Road because they enjoy the song and definitely don't listen to it because they're impressed with the lyrical content.
Instead, they listen to it because people love satire.
OTR is an indirect criticism of rap country and the materialistic culture that consumes society today.
And then it goes on.
So I got a few emails like this claiming That Old Town Road is actually not a really stupid, awful, terrible song.
It's actually a brilliant satire of stupid, awful, terrible songs.
I don't know if I'd buy that.
I mean, if it is, then I'm a fan of satire.
Musical satire.
Musical satire that's so subtle that you might not even pick up on it.
Now, I really respect that, if that's what this is.
But if this is satire, then I mean, can't we now claim that every bad pop song and every bad pop country song is now satire?
I just don't.
I hope that's true, but I don't know if I buy it.
This is from Vicky says, Walsh, I laugh at the suggestion that the victim hole you're starting from is a mere 75 victim points.
Tell me, how could you be any whiter?
You're wearing plaid for God's sake.
Well, not right now, but I guess I was.
How could you be any more straight?
Not only are you married, but you've sired several children and impregnated your wife yet again.
How could you be any more male?
The strength and vigor of your beard cries out against you.
I love that sentence.
The strength and vigor of your beard cries out against you.
That is a great sentence, Vicki.
As such, it is blazingly obvious that you are the epitome of the dominant patriarchal male oppressor.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt and blame naivety for you to put in yourself at only negative 75 points.
Consider this.
What would it take for you to reach negative 100 points, or negative 1,000, or negative 10,000?
Nothing, because you're already as low as is possible to go.
The depth of your hole is incalculable.
Its bottom is without limit.
You are in the black hole of victim points, and much like an actual black hole, there is simply no escape.
Your failure to recognize this is only further evidence of its inherent truth.
So now that we have established your true starting point, any more talk of credit points for your temporary infirmity is just silly.
In fact, I could make an argument that your injury and its subsequent treatment is stealing valuable medical care from those woke victims who truly need it.
I am tempted to say that your temporary disability might actually drive you even further down the hole, but we've already demonstrated that this is impossible.
You can't get any whiter, straighter, or more male, so on the scale of victimhood, you're digging in the Marianas Trench.
I hope to help you sort this out, and you're welcome.
Yeah, Vicky, I guess... I mean, as I was reading that, I began to realize just how oppressive I am.
In fact, even in claiming that I'm a victim for my temporary disability, That makes me even more oppressive.
And what I really realized is that I guess I am appropriating from disabled people by walking around on crutches and having this boot on and hobbling around on one foot.
I guess now I'm actually guilty of appropriation.
Because as a straight, white, cisgendered Christian male, I can't really be a victim, which means I can't really be disabled.
So that this is all appropriations.
I guess you're right.
I am deeply ashamed.
What right do I have to have a torn Achilles?
Who gave me permission for that?
I didn't ask anyone's permission.
Yeah, I am... Thank you for that.
Thank you for setting me straight.
This is from Keith, says, Dear Matt, I must take exception to your discussion of Jefferson's attitudes.
You said Jefferson didn't mean for the Declaration of Independence to apply to non-white people.
You might dig into some history that's exactly on point.
Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration contained his intent to outlaw slavery.
He was overruled in the interest in including the southern states in the new union.
Did you know that?
And even the final draft blamed slavery as something inflicted on the colonies by King George.
He hated owning slaves, but felt that in the absence of abolishing slavery completely, Which he could not pull off.
It would be cruel to turn these illiterate people loose on the public, even if he could.
Both sides, he thought, would be badly harmed.
He hated slavery and wrote against it all his life.
He wrote in the first draft, King George has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights and liberties in the person of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.
This is Piratical Warfare.
The uperborium of infidel powers is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain.
Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this commerce.
Washington set up his estate to pay his former slaves a stipend for as long as they lived.
He too felt that merely turning them loose would be cruel, but he had enough money to set up this fund for his freed slaves.
Okay.
Keith.
First of all, how dare you give me Jefferson to read publicly like that for the first time?
I guess I should have read that ahead of time.
I think you understand, I wasn't bringing that up about Jefferson In order to argue that he was some kind of villain who shouldn't be honored.
I think he should be honored.
But at the same time, we should acknowledge what his shortcomings were.
And they were significant shortcomings.
We should, as I argued all last week, we should develop a nuanced and mature perspective on our historical heroes.
One that does not ignore the evil they perpetrated, but also doesn't erase them from history either.
So there's got to be a middle ground, and that's what I'm advocating for.
As for slavery, I fully acknowledge and I believe that we have to see slavery within its historical context.
It was and it is and it always will be objectively evil, but in terms of assessing personal moral culpability, which of course we can't do with any exact precision, that's up to God, but in a general sense, assessing personal moral culpability When we do that, we have to keep in mind that slavery was an accepted institution across the entire world for thousands of years.
Every country, every race, every culture, they all participated in it at some point.
So someone who owns slaves in the year 1800 or the year 1600, the year 1300,
is less personally morally culpable for that than you would be today if you went out and bought a
slave.
Because you have much more awareness of the evil of the institution than someone had, you know, back in the old days.
With that said, I don't think a slave owner of 1800 can be entirely absolved of guilt, especially if they did understand that it was evil, as Jefferson did, as you mentioned.
And you say that he kept his slaves because he thought it would be cruel to release them, which, okay, but that's a rationalization that slave owners always used.
That's the rationalization that slave owners in the South in the Civil War times used.
And they said, hey, you can't just go abolishing slavery because then we're going to unleash all of these illiterate slaves who can't care for themselves.
It's not fair to them.
It's not fair to the white folk.
And so, you know, we have to keep them enslaved, unfortunately.
And hey, while we keep them enslaved, I might as well have a few myself working the plantation.
This, it seems to me, is obviously a rationalization.
It's an attempt to justify something that you know is wrong.
And to me, it seems on par with the rationalization that we have to, you know, it would be cruel to abolish abortion because if we did, then we consign all of these unwanted babies to living in poverty.
It's the exact same kind of thing, but obviously the idea that it's better to kill someone than to let them be poor is absurd.
And just as it's absurd to argue that it's better to keep someone in chains as chattel than to let them be free and experience the pitfalls of freedom.
Yeah, there are disadvantages and pains and miseries that come with being poor.
But you don't get to just kill someone, to decide for someone ahead of time that they don't want that, and then to kill them.
You don't get to do that.
And yes, there are struggles and misfortunes that come with freedom, but you don't get to decide for someone that, oh, well, you wouldn't want to be free.
It's not worth it, trust me.
Your life is much better now, so I'm just gonna keep you in chains.
That obviously is not okay.
So I think that Jefferson was rationalizing an evil practice, which he recognized as evil.
And in the meantime, he was benefiting from it.
It's not as though he said, OK, well, you know, slavery is not abolished, unfortunately.
So instead, I will just free my own slaves and I'll let them live on our property as equals.
You know, he didn't do that.
He still kept them as slaves, serving him.
So, yes, he was a deeply flawed man who participated in a horrendous evil that cannot be justified.
Even if his personal moral guilt can be mitigated to some extent, it cannot be justified, and his guilt cannot be erased.
So that's just a fact.
Yet he still was, in many ways, a great man.
So both of those things are true.
And as I said last week, that's the case for a lot of great men of history.
A lot of the great people of history, men and women.
Many of them were, they did great things.
They accomplished things that no one else could accomplish.
They changed the course of history for the better.
But they also had A dark side, as everyone does.
But I think for great people, just as their virtue and their accomplishments are going to be greater than the rest of us, the evil they commit is also, many times, going to be greater than the rest of us.
And I think, just as a matter of studying history honestly, we need to look at both of those and acknowledge them.
Factor, you know, all of that in to our overall assessment of those meetings.
All right.
Thanks for the emails.
We'll leave it there.
Thanks for watching.
Godspeed.
Today, on the Ben Shapiro Show, our venerable media members over at the Daily Beast track
down the nefarious huckster who posted a video of Nancy Pelosi.
