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Sept. 10, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show
50:16
Ep. 328 - Hey Guys, Stop Oppressing Women

Beto says everyone has a "right" to live near their jobs. This is yet more evidence that the concept of human rights has lost all meaning in our society. Also, a feminist informs us that the term "hey guys" is oppressive to women. And a former James Bond actor gives the only answer he's allowed to give when asked whether there should be a female James Bond. Date: 09-10-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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All right, so this is pretty exciting news.
We just got a new right.
We have a new right, a new human right.
So take out your notepad or your scorecard, however you keep track of this, and write this down.
Because this is a pretty cool one, I have to say.
This new right that has just, I guess, been beamed down from the clouds and been somehow injected into our souls.
I don't know how it works exactly, metaphysically, but this new right is the right to live near your job. That's a human right now to live near your
job is a human right. Pretty great I know. Beto O'Rourke was recently at a campaign stop
and he explained how we all have this right or will have it I guess in Beto's
administration which will never exist.
So let's check this out. Watch this.
Here's a tough thing to talk about though we must. Rich people are going to have to
allow or be forced to allow lower income people to live near them.
Okay.
So, uh, all right, wait, wait one second.
Rich people have to allow or be forced to allow lower income people to live near them.
What is...
What does that mean?
First of all, are they disallowing it now?
Is that how it works?
Or a rich neighborhood, they put a sign up saying no poor people allowed here?
I mean, it seems to me the thing that prevents a lower income person from living in, for instance, Beverly Hills, Is that the houses are very expensive, but if a poor person came up with $35 million and wanted to buy a house there, which if they did, they wouldn't be poor anymore, but if they did come up with that money, they could buy the house.
It's really that simple.
So it's not that rich people are preventing, prohibiting poor people from living there.
It's just that the houses are expensive because everybody's rich.
And so that's the way that works.
So what are we going to do to solve this problem?
Are we going to convert mansions into low-income apartment complexes?
And how are we going to do that?
Are we going to force people to move out?
Force a rich person to sell his house so it can be converted into a... I mean, how does that work?
Well, maybe Beto will explain it.
Let's keep watching.
Which is what we fail to do in this country right now.
We force lower-income working Americans to drive one, two, three hours In either direction to get to their jobs, very often minimum wage jobs.
So they're working two or three of them right now.
All right, we gotta stop there for just one more second because who is driving three hours to a minimum wage job?
Okay, tell me who's doing that.
Who's driving six hour round trip for a minimum wage job?
So that would be like, I guess, if somebody lived in Pittsburgh, And they drove to Toledo, Ohio for a minimum wage.
It's like if you lived in Pittsburgh and you drove to an Arby's to work at an Arby's in Toledo.
That's what that would be.
But that would make a lot of sense considering on the way from Pittsburgh to Toledo, you're going to pass a lot of Arby's.
Trust me, I've made that drive before.
A lot of Arby's and many other fast food, minimum wage jobs.
There's thousands of them, literally thousands of them in Pittsburgh
and then all along the way to Toledo.
So it just wouldn't make any sense to do that.
So unless you live in the wilderness and you're commuting to your job via covered wagon,
I don't see how this could even be possible.
But this is what you get on the left.
A lot of times you get, you get laws and policies proposed based on these sorts of utterly absurd scenarios, which they're only undercutting their own case.
Now, if you want to make the case that there are people who go to lower paying jobs and have to drive an inordinate amount to get there, Yeah, I mean, that's true.
There are people who drive... There are probably some people out there who commute three hours to a job.
I'm sure there are examples of that, but that's not a minimum wage job.
There are people who commute an hour to a job that pays them not quite enough to really justify it.
So that sort of stuff happens.
But the problem is, number one, when you exaggerate like that, you completely destroy your point.
And number two, this isn't really, if you're going to transition from pointing out this problem to proposing some sort of compelled policy or law by the government, see, that's
where the problem comes into play.
Because there isn't any law really that can fix that problem. But Beto's going to propose it
anyway. So let's go back to the clip. What if, as we propose to do, we invested in housing that
was closer to... All right, we got to stop there again, because what was that hand gesture exactly?
Play that clip again.
So what if, as we proposed to do, it's like a thing, and what is this, a dance move?
Is he getting ready to do the Macarena?
Or is he sending hand signals, like secret hand signals to somebody in the audience?
Listen, I'm doing it right now.
My hands are very active when I speak, but I feel like my hand gestures sort of make sense, but his are just disconnected from what he's saying, and it doesn't make any sense.
Anyway, let's finish this clip from Beto.
Go ahead.
We invested in housing that was closer to where you work, very often mixed income housing, meaning the very wealthiest are living next to those who are not the very wealthiest in this country, to make sure that they can both afford to go to the same public schools, that we really have that as a place where, in this divided country right now, you can come together without regard to your income, or your race, or your ethnicity, or any other difference that should not matter right now.
What if we invested, as we propose to do, in high-speed rail and in transit in all of our cities to make sure that if you do not have a car or do not want to use a car, you will not need to have one, or you will not be penalized for not having one right now.
So having cities that are smarter, that are denser, that have people living closer to where they work and where their families are, to reduce our impact on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, but also just to improve the quality of life in these built environments, That's an extraordinary opportunity in our plan to confront climate change.
We make those investments.
So that's Beto O'Rourke's point of view.
That's what he's trying to say.
But what if, as we propose to do, we don't elect him in the first place?
And he can go back to attending furry conventions.
I think he's waving in.
That's what he's doing.
He's waving in an airplane.
He's working on the tarmac at an airport.
Alright, that's what I expect.
Every time I see a Beto rally, I expect a commercial airliner to just land on top of the audience because that's what it looks like he's trying to do.
All right, anyway, so on Twitter, when he shared that clip, he introduced it with the caption saying, living close to work shouldn't be a luxury for the rich.
It's a right for everyone.
And that's really what I want to discuss here.
So I guess I didn't need to play the clip at all, because I really was just the caption that I wanted to talk about.
But the clip was funny, so that's why I played it.
So Beto says it's a right to live near your job.
It's not a luxury.
It's a right.
And this yet again is more evidence that the word right has essentially no meaning anymore in our country.
It doesn't mean anything.
So we may as well not talk about it, not use the word.
It just doesn't mean anything.
The word right traditionally has meant, has referred to something intrinsic to our nature as human beings.
Something that very, very crucially here, something that does not need to be provided to us But which we already have by the nature of the fact that we are human beings and which the government simply is not supposed to take away or infringe upon or interfere with.
That's how you know it's a right.
So if we're talking about something that needs to be given to you by somebody else, then
that's not a right, at least not by the classical conception of this idea of human rights.
It certainly is not.
That's not the kind of rights that our founding fathers were talking about.
So you but it you could have.
So there could be things that are even necessities yet are not exactly rights.
And there can certainly be a lot of things out there that are that are very nice to have
and would make you very comfortable and that we would all like to have, but yet are still
not rights.
So rights really have very little to do.
They have nothing to do with luxury.
They have very little to do even with necessity.
It's just about our nature as human beings.
But we've moved way beyond that now, and now a right is just anything that you might happen to want is a right.
Anything that might make your life a little bit easier is a right.
And so now we've extended that to living closer to your job is a right.
Which, I mean, and the problem is when you start going down this road where you're calling things rights that are not actually rights and are, in fact, luxuries, because that is the definition of a luxury.
Something that makes your life, something that you don't need, but that would make your life easier.
That is, by definition, a luxury, right?
But once we go down this road of making luxuries into rights, now we have Because we've erased that line, which made a lot of sense.
Things that are intrinsic to our human nature.
We're saying, well, that's not what a right is anymore.
It's now this.
It's sort of this vague, ambiguous thing.
And then where do you stop?
And how do you even define?
So, living close to your job.
Well, okay, how close?
30 minutes?
15 minutes?
I live across the hall from my job because I work at home.
Is that sort of infringing on my- because I still have to walk across the hallway.
I have to walk- I have to get up out of my bed and I have to walk- I have to move my feet literally probably 15 to 20 times.
There are 15 to 20 movements of each foot to get me into my- My job area, which you're looking at right now.
Is that infringing on my rights?
Because I still have to move to get there.
Should there be someone, should the government have someone come into my house, pick me up, like do a fireman carry, and bring me into my office, and then provide me free waffles and pancakes and sausage, bacon and coffee?
I mean, so how does this work?
Um, but if we're going to say that, no, my, my rights are being infringed upon because I'm close enough to my job, 15 feet away from it.
But what, okay.
So what if you're 45 minutes away?
Is that still, is that, is that infringing on your rights?
Where, where is the right cutoff?
Is it anything within, you have a right to be within 30 minutes of your job, or you have a right to be within 15 minutes and who decided this and why, where is this coming from?
It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Which is why, as I said, the whole idea, and this is very unfortunate, considering our country was founded on this conception of rights, and it's obviously very important to the whole idea of America, but unfortunately the word just doesn't mean anything anymore.
So I think we need to, as much as possible, find other ways of Of talking about this, of, you know, if we are, if we are advocating for something, I think we have to find other ways of advocating for it without falling back on this idea of being a right.
It is possible to make the argument that you could even say, you know, it would be, it would be best for society if everybody had X, Y, Z. You could, you could say something like that.
You could even make an argument for coming up with a law that would provide everyone with X, Y, Z, even if it's not exactly a right.
Now, I'm not saying I would agree.
I'm not saying that, you know, we could, but at least then we're having the argument on a basis that makes sense.
So if you want to, for example, make the argument that everybody should have access to high-speed internet, which is a thing also now, Fine, then make that argument.
But don't say it's a right.
No, we don't all have a right to.
It's not a God-given right.
If it was a God-given right, then God would have just created the Internet from the beginning of human civilization.
I mean, if access to the Internet is a God-given right, Which, if you're saying it's a human right, you're saying it's a God-given right.
That's the exact same thing.
It means the same thing.
God-given right equals human right.
Human right equals God-given right.
So, if that's a God-given right, then I guess what?
God infringed on everybody's rights up until the invention of the Internet?
Because he put them into a world that didn't have it?
Doesn't make any sense.
The Internet is not intrinsic to our human nature.
But!
You could still argue that living in modern society, everybody should have high-speed internet so they can participate in society or whatever.
I'm not saying I agree with that argument.
I don't.
But you could argue it, and then you could say from there, therefore the government should provide it.
Fine.
Make that argument.
You don't have to say it's a right.
Not everything has to be a right.
And just because it's not a right doesn't mean it's not important, doesn't mean that, you know, there's no point in talking about it.
It just means it's not a right is all.
That's it.
We need to find more specific language to talk about these things.
More specific and appropriate language.
Okay.
Hey guys, by the way, I don't know if you realize this, but when you use the phrase, hey guys, like I just did, you are oppressing women.
So, um, get out, get out your other scorecard.
You had your, your rights scorecard.
Keep track of all the rights that you have.
Now get out your, um, oppression scorecard because this is yet another thing that oppresses women.
There's a video making the rounds online.
Explaining how the phrase, hey guys, or really just the word guys in general, the way it's used now is oppressive to women.
So, uh, let's, let's take a look at this.
Watch this.
Hey guys, welcome back to NowThis.
Guys is a simple term.
It could mean boys, or if you're modern, hip, it means people.
At first glance, guys seems inviting, friendly, maybe warm, even comedic at times.
But it, like many male default terms, should not be normalized as an all-encompassing phrase.
Innocent as it may seem.
Okay, stop there for a second.
Do leftists know what the word normalized means?
Do they know what any word means?
Normalized.
They use it all the time.
They're always talking about things being normalized, but like Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, I'm starting to suspect that it doesn't mean what they think it means because they use it so often.
To normalize something is to make something seem, well, normal.
That's what normalized means.
But you can't normalize the phrase, hey guys, because it's already normal.
There's no normalizing something that's already normal.
That's like accusing somebody of, I don't know, normalizing napkins because they used a napkin to wipe their hands off after eating a rack of ribs.
No, you can't normalize that.
It's already a totally normal thing to do.
So you can't normalize what's already normal.
Normalization is like what the left does with child drag queens.
Or drag queen story hour.
That is a perfect example of actual normalization.
That is actually also problematic, as leftists like to say.
Because there you have something that is very much not normal, that is bizarre and weird and unhealthy and disturbing, that the left is trying to make normal.
And part of making it normal is to take this weird, disturbing, crazy thing, And to try to get people in society to a point where they're so desensitized to it that they don't see it as weird, normal, and crazy anymore, even though it is.
That's what normalization is.
The phrase, hey, guys, is just a totally normal thing.
There's nothing weird about it.
And so you can't normalize it.
All right.
Another question, though, that I had before we get deeper into this video is, who is this person?
You know, you see these videos all the time of, and it's always the same thing, it's always someone in their twenties, you know, a very well sort of put together person in their twenties, standing there with an all white background, very sort of cheerfully instructing us.
Telling us what we can and can't do from now on.
You see these videos all the time online.
But they never give any explanation about who they are or why we should listen to them.
The thing is, if you're going to make instructions and tell people what they can and can't do, I think you have to begin by saying, okay, here's why my instructions matter.
Here's who I am.
So, for example, if you're trying to give instructions on what is healthy to eat and what isn't healthy, that would really help to begin by saying, okay, I'm Bob Smith.
I'm a nutritionist.
I'm a dietician.
I'm a cardiovascular surgeon.
Give us who you are, what your station is in life, and then maybe you will have established that you are an authority.
But with these videos, it's always just some random person who's just telling us.
And we're supposed to do what?
Just, well, hey, that random person in the video said we can't do this anymore, guys, so don't do it.
Alright, let's go back to the video.
According to the Washington Post, etymologists believe it began in the 17th century with a guy named Guy Fawkes, a participant in the failed 1605 gunpowder plot.
He only barely escaped a brutal execution by jumping off a scaffold and breaking his neck.
For the next few centuries, those who likened him in fashion, appearance, or intellect were referred to as guys.
Eventually, according to the Boston Globe, the term broadened to describe creepy people, then to a generic term for men, and now, some would say, a gender-neutral phrase.
For decades, we have set a standard of only addressing the men in the room.
Of course we claim it's colloquial, but with our elevated knowledge and inclusive perspective, it just seems lazy, inconsiderate, and a small part of what reinforces the gender hierarchy today.
How is one to feel empowered to speak or assert themselves when, upon greeting, they're misgendered or even ignored in language?
Can we be surprised that, for decades, women often felt uncomfortable asserting their voice when we didn't even take the time to properly acknowledge them?
Okay, alright, I can't take it anymore.
I mean, bro, just chill, okay?
Take it easy, dude.
Back off, chief.
I did notice one part, though.
As she was giving us that etymology of the word guys.
Very interesting.
I don't know if it's true or not.
Probably isn't.
But she said that it used to mean creepy people, according to her, and then it came to refer to men.
So isn't the word guys then offensive to men?
Shouldn't we be the ones offended by it?
You're telling us that it used to mean creepy, and then that became synonymous with men in general?
Put that aside, though.
I want you to take note of something else.
Before she starts giving all these reasons why the term, hey guys, is terribly offensive, she said something important.
I want you to listen to this part again.
Listen to this.
While we may understand the word means no real harm.
All right.
Did you hear that?
Play it again.
While we may understand the word means no real harm.
Again.
While we may understand the word means no real harm.
Again.
While we may understand the word means no real harm.
Okay, while we understand the word means no real harm.
I just want to make sure we all got that.
So you understand that the word means no real harm.
Well, then why are we talking about it in that case?
What's the point of the conversation?
If you understand that someone doesn't mean any harm in what they're saying, you have no right to be offended by it.
If you know that someone does not intend offense in what they're saying, if you know it and you're acknowledging that you know they don't mean it offensively, yet you take offense anyway, it's because you want to be offended.
And you want to be offended because you are a petty, emotionally manipulative narcissist trying to make everything about yourself.
It's because you're the kind of person who injects yourself into a normal conversation between normal people Who are being perfectly polite to one another and you just have to control things because you're a control freak.
Okay?
That's what that means.
And your feelings in that case mean nothing.
Just mean absolutely- We should not care.
Your feelings mean nothing to anyone and they shouldn't mean anything to anyone.
Mainly because they're not even really your feelings.
You admit that, yeah, well I know you didn't mean anything by it.
You're just trying to emotionally blackmail and bully us because you want to control us.
That's all that is.
I've hammered this point a million times because you hear this all the time now in society, where people acknowledge, like, yeah, I know you didn't mean anything by that, but I'm offended anyway.
How is that even possible?
How is it even possible to make yourself offended by something when you know that it wasn't even meant offensively?
Um, the only time it can be reasonable to take offense at someone's words is if you reasonably suspect that they meant to offend you.
And even then, taking offense is really sort of a pretty pointless exercise to take offense, but at least then it's a natural response.
So, if somebody goes up to you and says, hey, you're fat, you're ugly, you're disgusting, Clearly, they mean that.
There's no non-offensive meaning there.
That is an insult.
They're trying to insult you.
So, if you are therefore insulted, that is a reasonable reaction.
It may not be a very fruitful reaction.
It probably is better just to ignore it, but it is a reasonable response.
Someone insults you, and so you feel insulted.
Okay, fine.
And in that scenario, the person who insulted you owes you an apology.
As civilized human beings, if you insult somebody, once you calm down and realize that that was rude, you should apologize.
But if you didn't mean anything... And also... Okay, so this is the way human communication works, right?
Where I say something, and in saying whatever I'm saying, I mean to convey a message, okay?
Only I can really decide what the message is.
I get to decide the intent behind what I'm saying and the message it's meant to convey.
Only myself, as the speaker, can determine the intent.
Because I'm the one saying it.
You cannot retroactively infuse an intent into what I said that wasn't actually present when I originally said it.
It's a very basic concept.
So you get to decide.
Which means, now, sometimes in human communication, somebody can say something and it's sort of
ambiguous.
It could go one way or another.
It could be read offensively or it could be read inoffensively.
So that in that case, you as the listener, as the hearer, as the receiver of the words,
if you're not sure if it was meant offensively, rather than just assuming that offense was
intended, the reasonable thing to do is to say, what did you mean by that?
To give the person a chance to clarify.
And if they say, oh, no, no, no, I didn't mean that in an offensive way.
Here's how I meant it.
Then all you can do as an adult is just say, okay, understood.
Now, if I say something that is clearly meant to be offensive, and then I claim later that I didn't mean it that way, Well, then that's on me.
And that's called being passive-aggressive.
Passive-aggressiveness exists.
There are passive-aggressive people out there.
Passive-aggressiveness, to me, is one of the most unappealing and repulsive characteristics in a person.
I absolutely hate it.
But there are passive-aggressive people, and this is what they do.
They say things that they know are going to be taken a certain way, and they want it to be taken that way, but they also say it in a certain way that it always allows them an out to claim that they didn't really mean it that way.
And that's just passive-aggressiveness.
So, if that's the case, then that's different.
But as long as I'm not being passive-aggressive, Uh, then you just have to leave it to me to decide what I meant and to tell you what I meant.
And again, if, if, if, if it's clear or if I tell you, no, I didn't mean that in an offensive way, here's how I meant it.
It just all, the only thing you can do is just accept that and move on with your life.
All right.
One other thing before we get to emails.
Pierce Brosnan, obviously a Hollywood actor, and he's one of the men that's played James Bond.
He was asked by a Hollywood reporter whether there should be a female James Bond.
And this is what he said.
He said, yes!
Yes, exclamation point.
I think we've watched the guys do it for the last 40 years.
Get out of the way, guys, and put a woman up there.
I think it would be exhilarating.
It would be exciting.
Now, and this is getting a lot of attention, and the feminists are saying, oh, look, one of the James Bond guys.
This is, no, I didn't watch the interview, so I can't see his body language, but this to me reads like a hostage with a gun to his head.
It's like, oh yes, I would love for there to be.
Yeah, it's about time, guys.
Get out of there.
The point is, and this is what makes all this so pointless.
That Pierce Brosnan is giving the only answer he's allowed to give.
So when a media person guffs him and says, what do you think?
As a Hollywood actor himself, a guy that played James Bond, and he's asked, should there be a female James Bond?
The only answer he's allowed to give.
Because he knows, now I would love it if he had said, no, I don't really think of, yeah, you know what?
This is a guy character.
Women can find their own character.
I would love it if he responded that way, but he's not going to do that.
Because it's not worth the trouble for him.
And can you imagine if he was asked that question and he had said something like, if a former James Bond had come out and said, no, no women are allowed to do this, the mob would descend upon him and he knows that, so he has to say, oh yeah, it's great.
And speaking of being sort of disingenuous and passive-aggressive, this is another thing that you get from the left and from the media, where they ask questions to people knowing that there's only one answer they can give.
And then when they give it, they report it as if it was a freely offered opinion, when it wasn't.
There was a metaphorical gun to their head.
Now the reality is with this James Bond thing, In general, I don't care that much because it's a fictional character.
But to the extent that I do care, which is very little, no, I absolutely don't think that a woman should play James Bond.
That obviously is silly and stupid.
Now, if you want to switch the race up and have a black guy playing James Bond, who cares?
Fine.
In fact, I think Idris Elba — and this is the — Idris Elba would be a great James Bond, I think.
But it's got nothing to do with his race.
Nothing at all to do with his race.
I think he would make a great James Bond.
So the race doesn't matter.
Here's what matters with James Bond.
When it comes to demographics, here's what matters.
James Bond is British.
Gotta be British.
It wouldn't make any sense to have a James Bond from Kentucky.
If you want to have a spy from Kentucky, that's a different character.
And go ahead and do that.
But James Bond is British, and he's a man.
His maleness, his masculinity, for better and worse, with all of James Bond's positive and negative characteristics as a character, it is all very much tied to the fact that he is a man.
It is part of the character.
In a similar way that Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, not nearly as iconic of a character, but it wouldn't make any sense to have a Larry Croft.
Okay.
Although Lara Croft is already, I guess, sort of the female version of Indiana Jones, I guess.
So maybe that's not the best example.
But whatever.
The point is, this is a man.
His masculinity is central to the character.
If you make him into a woman, it's a different character.
And if you want to have a female spy, then here's my thing.
Feminists.
Go out there and make a female spy character.
There are already some in existence.
Go make another one if you want.
But stand on your own two feet.
Okay, don't try to leech off of, don't attach yourself like a barnacle to a pre-existing character to try to borrow the mystique and the charm of this already existing character and the brand and everything so that you can then parlay it into your feminist thing.
Go out there and stand on your own two feet and make your own character, completely separate, your own interesting separate female character.
Go do that.
You don't have to... That was the whole thing with the Ghostbusters, you know.
And the outrage and the backlash against Ghostbusters was completely exaggerated.
For the most part, people didn't watch it because it wasn't very good.
But the point is, don't... These Ghostbuster characters, they are... Those characters exist.
If you want to make something similar, Or you've got a ragtag group of women out there fighting ghosts and goblins, then go ahead and do that.
But don't attach yourself, don't try to borrow from the charm and the wit and the brand recognition of these male characters.
Go out and do your own thing.
Stop appropriating.
For all this talk about appropriating, this is appropriation.
This is the very definition of appropriation.
To make a Jane Bond would be appropriating James Bond, by definition.
All right, we'll go to emails.
mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Meg, says, Matt, I've respected you so much for years, and I've greatly enjoyed listening to your podcast every day.
I was also on your side with the socks and sandals issue, as using precious time and energy using hands to push regular shoes on is such a tragic waste.
However, I just now saw that the sandals you wore were not sandals, they were flip flops.
Every self-respecting human knows that flip-flops are for the fair sex only.
Flip-flops on a man are metrosexual at best and downright fruity at worst.
I'm so relieved that you didn't have a full-body shot because flip-flops on a man usually are paired with mid-thigh pastel shorts, a collared polo tank tops, and a coral pink...
Baseball cap.
Well, I've got news for you, Meg.
I guess it's a good thing you didn't do the whole outfit.
Because you nailed it.
Well, aside from the pink baseball cap, I do have some self-respect.
I would never wear a pink baseball cap.
The socks were the only redeeming part of the outfit because, God forbid, you may have had toenail polish on under those.
And so what if I did, you bigot?
What if I did have toenail polish on?
If I did this show one day with lipstick on, you would have to just watch it and make no comment at all.
If you laughed or smirked or said, that's weird, you are a bigot.
Every grown man can understand that manly sandals must at least have either a heel strap or a piece that goes horizontally across the top.
Crocs even are acceptable.
Sheesh, man, who wants to see that much of a man's hairy foot?
As a woman, I can assure you that it is unbecoming of a man to don them.
I suggest you donate your flippy floppies to a large-footed woman in need and find yourself a shoe that doesn't question your manhood.
The truth is hard to hear, but must be said.
First of all, my big hairy man feet are beautiful.
Okay, and I'm not going to hide my light under a bushel or my feet in shoes just to make you feel comfortable in your bigotry and your prejudice.
And you say that I got so many emails trying to draw this distinction between sandals and flip-flops.
A flip-flop is just a form of sandal.
It is a species of sandal.
And you say that men don't— Well, Meg, I hope that you're— I hope you're not a Christian.
Because what kind of footwear do you think Jesus wore?
You think Jesus was walking around in work boots?
You think he had Nikes on?
No, he had flip-flops.
Yes, flip-flops.
And I— Have you seen the movies?
Go watch the movie.
Every single movie you see, Jesus has the flip-flops on.
Would you say all this to Jesus Christ?
I don't think you would.
I think I can just rest my case right there, as a matter of fact.
I mean, go watch any biblical.
Moses has flip-flops on.
So, what else do I need to say?
I am not going to be intimidated.
And I hope that I think that men have been shamed for too long.
I think that every man deep inside yearns to wear flip-flops and socks.
And the only reason he doesn't is because he has been bullied and beaten down by our society.
And so I hope this becomes a movement where men can be loud and proud and say, this is how I dress, this is who I am, and I'm not afraid anymore.
This is from, uh, well, I didn't get the name.
Okay.
Matt, I completely agree with you on paying college athletes when there's a market for their labor.
It absolutely is a free market position that you've taken in that matter.
I wanted to point out that there are other academic programs that are competitive that do pay the student, the students chosen for those roles.
PhD programs oftentimes pay students a stipend because the university will profit off of the research the student will be carrying out.
These programs are highly competitive with a limited number of spots for qualified students.
It sounds very similar to the limited number of highly competitive openings on a football team.
The main difference is that PhD applicants often have other opportunities in their discipline that would pay them as well.
Regardless of that point, I see no reason why college athletes shouldn't be compensated for their labor and the risk they take out on the field.
I do understand that people might not want to see 20-year-olds making millions on a college football team, flaunting their money and getting into trouble.
That kind of money could definitely have negative impacts on the lives of a young person.
Perhaps the middle ground would be that they receive the payment in a lump sum after graduation, in addition to the free tuition they've received.
Yeah, I think that would be a good middle ground.
I think there are a lot of different ways of doing it.
And I also keep in mind that many people that have emailed me on this subject have said something like, well, these guys are going to go pro and they're going to get their millions then, so they don't need to get their millions now.
First of all, the vast majority of people who play in college, even at the D1 level, are not going to go pro.
There are many star college athletes In football, and I'm talking specifically about football here because that's what I know better than the other sports, there are many examples of these star players who don't even get drafted or do get drafted and flunk out pretty quickly.
Look at Tim Tebow.
And he's done well for himself in other areas, so he's not hurting for cash by any means.
But Tim Tebow, one of the greatest college football athletes of all time, and he couldn't really hack it in the NFL.
So, the fact is, most of these guys are not going to end up on football teams.
And even the ones who do, most of them are going to be gone in three or four years.
The average career of an NFL player is like three years.
And most of them don't survive past that because they wash out, they can't compete anymore, they get injured.
A lot of different reasons.
So the fact is, these guys are sacrificing their body, they're putting their lives, well in a way their lives, they're putting their health at risk at a very minimum.
And most of them will never financially profit off of it, or if they do, only in a very limited and temporary way,
and which is yet another reason to pay them.
Okay, from Amanda says, greeting Supreme Lord of the,
Overlord of the universe, your show is always the highlight of my day.
A while ago, you mentioned that you weren't 100% sure about your stance on recreational marijuana use.
It's a topic that has personal meaning for me as my husband is a frequent user to self-medicate
his multiple issues from ADHD to PTSD.
For some reason, weed makes me less nervous than hardcore pharmaceuticals.
Plus, I like him a lot better when he smokes.
Interestingly, he's rather, he's rarely high, but more just mellowed out and happier when he's using.
Anyway, your opinions are always amusing and usually correct, even if you're going to rip him, him or me apart over it.
I'd be honored to hear it.
Um, no, I'm not going to rip either one of you apart.
I think, look, certainly if, if, Anyone who believes that it's okay to give pharmaceutical drugs for emotional and psychological reasons such as PTSD or ADHD or whatever, anyone who's in favor of that, for them to recoil at the idea of marijuana being used in a similar way is absurd.
Because those, as you pointed, those pharmaceutical drugs are more serious, more dangerous, more addictive, abused more
often, way more likely to kill you than marijuana is. So, certainly, but what you're talking
about here is not really recreational use.
You're talking here about something that is, well you said self-medicate, so this is something like essentially medicinal marijuana.
And I've said that I have no problem with medicinal marijuana at all.
How could you?
I've never heard, and I really mean this, I have never heard an even coherent argument against medicinal marijuana use.
Unless it's an argument that is also an argument against pretty much every other drug that you find if you go to Rite Aid or CVS.
And I guess there are some extreme positions that say, well, you shouldn't take any medicine at all of any kind.
That's not my position.
I think that's crazy too.
But at least that's consistent.
But to say, to peruse all of these drugs at your average drug store and say, oh, that's fine, sure.
But if you smoke marijuana, now that's a problem, and wag your fingers, that doesn't make any sense.
Recreational use, I certainly think, I am in favor of decriminalizing it because I think it's simply a waste of law enforcement resources to be hunting this stuff down.
I can remember living in Kentucky, in eastern Kentucky.
It's a very poor area.
Very poor.
One of the poorest in the country.
But it's also an area where a lot of people grow marijuana plants.
And every year they would do these massive raids where they would confiscate.
I remember one year they confiscated millions of dollars worth of marijuana in these impoverished areas.
And it's just, why?
What have we accomplished for society?
By doing that.
What exactly is the problem?
What exactly is the downside, really, to letting these people just grow the plant, make their money?
Who cares?
So, and when it comes to recreational use, you know, it's not something that I want to do, but I do find it difficult.
I think people who advocate for or use marijuana
Will often draw the comparison between marijuana and alcohol and they'll say well if you're okay with with
recreational alcohol use How could you possibly have a problem with marijuana use
considering alcohol kills more people? It has more of an intoxicating effect
It's more tied to violence, etc and so forth and I think that's a powerful argument. And so I just I feel like I can't
Because considering I do enjoy Alcohol I'm a fan of bourbon. I like to sit down. I have a
glass of bourbon. I like to drink beer, you know all the other
Within moderation, not to the point of intoxication, but I do enjoy that.
So I feel like I can't figure out a coherent, non-hypocritical argument that would allow me to continue drinking when I want to drink, yet would disallow someone from smoking marijuana.
That's my position.
All right.
This is from Roxy.
Says, Dear Matt, first of all, how is your ankle?
How is your wife's pregnancy going?
And how are your bees?
Also, can you please give me some book recommendations?
What are your top five favorite nonfiction books and your top five favorite fiction books?
I love your show and listen to your podcast every day.
The bees are doing very well.
My wife is getting ready to give birth any week now. My ankle is recovering okay as I
so bravely overcame that traumatic injury. As far as book, I always love giving book
recommendations. You asked for my favorite non-fiction and fiction books. I'm not going to give you my
favorite because that kind of changes by the week and it's also a lot of pressure to give you my
favorites. I won't give you it.
What I'll do is I'll tell you the five most recent books that I've read, which I have right here prepared for this question.
So I'll just tell you that, and you can take those as recommendations.
So those books, first of all...
High Percentage Fishing, which is a statistical approach to improving catch rates.
I'm working on this right now.
I don't know if you're, that one, this is a little bit niche, so you might not be interested in that, but that is, I haven't enjoyed this book.
I think I mentioned this one, Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything.
This is one of my favorite non-fiction books.
I 1000% recommend it.
If you're looking to read non-fiction, pick up this book.
He calls it a short history of nearly everything, which it basically is.
He starts at the beginning of the universe, and this book is only, what is it, it's 400 some pages, but he goes through from the beginning of the universe all the way to present day, covering all these different scientific topics.
It's very accessible.
He's a great writer, so definitely read that.
I'm working on this, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.
I am on a thing now where I'm reading about ancient civilizations.
This one, it's a good book, but it's kind of a slog.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace.
I read this a few weeks ago, and this is more fiction.
This is a collection of short stories.
Wallace is someone that you either love or hate, I think, as a writer.
I tend to love him.
I think he's a great writer.
Very insightful.
I don't agree with all of his insights.
If you're looking for shorter fiction, I would read that.
And then I read this because someone recommended it to me.
We had been talking on this show about, a few weeks ago, we were talking about the nature of consciousness for some reason.
I think we were talking about that, weren't we?
Someone emailed and recommended that I read Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
And so I did.
I did read it.
This is a weird book because I don't agree with almost any of it.
I disagree with 98% of this book, but I kind of loved it because it was really fascinating and I read it almost more as a sort of science fiction than anything else.
But, and this is a well-known book, I'd heard of it before, first time I tried to read it.
What Julian Jaynes is arguing, what he essentially argues is that
consciousness arose in the human population very recently.
He thinks it arose 3,000 years ago.
So before about 1,000 BC, human beings were not conscious.
That's what he says.
And he says that before that point, what he calls the bicameral mind, everyone was basically a schizophrenic.
Where they had their unconscious mind that went through the day-to-day, it was kind of instinctive, and it got them through the operations of day-to-day living, and then what we consider to be consciousness, reasoning, moral reasoning, all of that, it was like another voice in their head, the other part of their brain talking to them audibly, much like a schizophrenic today.
And what he theorizes is that all of that, those people at back were schizophrenic.
Schizophrenia today is a mental illness.
Back then it was, it was everybody, everybody was, was that so it wasn't a mental illness, but they took those voices, which was really the voices in their head of their consciousness speaking to them.
They took those voices to be the voices of the gods.
And so that's where he finds the origins of religion.
And so he thinks that all of us as religious people, we have our origins in schizophrenia.
So again, I don't agree with it, but it's... I found it interesting anyway.
Even though it's completely insulting to me as a religious person, I still found that to be a fascinating theory.
I have a lot of respect for people who, as I've said before, if you think wildly outside the box, And approach a topic from a completely different direction, even if you're way off base and totally wrong.
I respect the attempt and I at least find it interesting.
And I am just so bored with the same old stuff all the time from everybody.
Most of our conversations in this country about the issues, it's just you have one side saying one thing, the other side says the other thing.
Nobody's attempting to say anything unique or interesting or creative.
I get so bored with it that when someone recommends to me some book that extrapolates on a crazy weird theory, I'm gonna read it because I'm starving for something different, even if I disagree with it.
All right, so we will...
Those are my pseudo book recommendations.
Thank you for giving me the chance to babble about that for a few minutes.
Thanks everybody for watching and listening.
I'll talk to you tomorrow.
Godspeed.
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The Matt Wall Show is produced by Robert Sterling, associate producer Alexia Garcia del Rio, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
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