Democrats went fishing for viral moments while grilling Zuckerberg yesterday, but in the process they only humiliated themselves. We'll take a look at some of the most embarrassing/hilarious clips. Also, the CEO of Disney defends himself against charges that his movies are crap. In the process he only proves the charges true. Plus your emails. Date: 10-24-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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| So we've been discussing the case of James Younger over the week, and after raising awareness of the case this week and getting this hashtag campaign, hashtag protect James Younger going, it looks like some crucial people are taking notice. | |
| The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has said that his attorney general is going to look into it. | |
| He's also going to have the Social services look into the case as well. | |
| Some state legislators have said they're going to propose a bill that would ban giving puberty blockers to gender-confused children. | |
| Ted Cruz issued a statement last night. | |
| Dan Crenshaw has spoken out. | |
| The mainstream media is actually taking notice, finally. | |
| They're reporting on it. | |
| The Washington Post did a report. | |
| Their report, obviously, was unfair and biased in favor of the mom, but still, they are at least taking notice, which they would prefer not to do, but I think we forced them to. | |
| So, I think that it would be fair to say that our efforts, our speaking out about this situation, really has a lot to do with these developments. | |
| Turns out that hashtag campaigns actually can accomplish something. | |
| What do you know? | |
| Who would have thought? | |
| And maybe this will leave an impression on Republican politicians, not just in Texas, but On the federal level as well. | |
| I've been saying this for years, that this issue is a winner for Republicans. | |
| The Senate should get together. | |
| They should pass legislation immediately that bans the chemical castration of children. | |
| Let the House Democrats, if they want to, if they feel comfortable with it, let them come out explicitly in favor of chemically castrating gender-confused children. | |
| But force them to take a stand on it one way or another. | |
| You pass the bill. | |
| And then let the Democrats, let them make their case for why it's actually okay to chemically castrate eight-year-olds. | |
| Let them do that. | |
| Either way, no matter how they do, if they come out in defense of it, then everyone sees what a bunch of barbaric lunatics these people are. | |
| Or they pass the bill, in which case children are protected. | |
| Whichever way they go, it will benefit society and it will benefit children. | |
| So there's no reason not to do this. | |
| This is a winning issue for Republicans. | |
| And more important than that, than the fact that it's a winner politically, which it definitely is, is just that it's the right thing to do. | |
| But what I really want to start with today, I want to talk about this hearing on the Hill yesterday with Mark Zuckerberg, where the Democrats transparently went fishing for viral moments by taking turns interrogating him with random and irrelevant questions, basically treating him like a murder suspect. | |
| It was easily the most embarrassing moment that Democrats have had in at least the last 16 hours. | |
| And we'll get to that in a minute. | |
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| So, the Zuckman, as I call him, As of just now. | |
| And I'm going to stop calling him that. | |
| I'm going to retire that already. | |
| He was on Capitol Hill yesterday testifying before the House Financial Services Committee about Libra, which is Facebook's new cryptocurrency concept. | |
| Actually, it's not just Facebook that would be involved in this. | |
| It would be a network of other corporations as well. | |
| So he was summoned to Washington to talk about it. | |
| People on the committee figured that, hey, we've got the head dude over at Facebook in front of us, we might as well take advantage and go fishing for some sweet, sweet, sweet viral moments. | |
| And that's what they did. | |
| So each Democrat on the committee took turns grilling Zuckerberg as if it was an episode of Law & Order. | |
| And most of their questions were, at best, only tangentially connected to the subject But, in fact, the majority of the questions really had nothing to do with the subject at all, which, again, the subject is supposed to be this cryptocurrency thing that Facebook is getting going. | |
| But let's see what direction the Democrats decide to go with this questioning. | |
| First, here is Representative Al Green. | |
| Of the 21, how many are headed by Congressman, I do not know the answer to that off the top of my head, but I can get it for you. | |
| Well, I believe you can get it, Mr. Zuckerberg, but one would assume that you would know who heads these corporations that are going to be running this global company. | |
| How many of them are minorities, Mr. Zuckerberg? | |
| Congressman, I do not know off the top of my head. | |
| Are there any members of the LGBTQ plus community associated with this association, Mr. Zuckerberg? | |
| Congressman, I don't know the answer. | |
| Who acknowledge? | |
| There are many people who acknowledge that they are a part of the community. | |
| Sorry? | |
| You do not know? | |
| Mr. Zuckerberg? | |
| Is it true that the overwhelming majority of persons associated with this endeavor are white men? | |
| Congressman, I don't know off the top of my head the list of the people who are running the organizations in the association. | |
| Mr. Zuckerberg, how many women are working on the project? | |
| I don't know. | |
| Mr. Zuckerberg, How many members of the LGBTQI community work for it? | |
| I'm not sure. | |
| Mr. Zuckerberg, are there any disabled Koreans working for Facebook? | |
| I don't know. | |
| Mr. Zuckerberg, please tell me the precise number of dyslexic Indigenous Australians. | |
| Employed by the company? | |
| Mr. Zuckerberg, can you tell me how many bisexual, polytheistic, one-armed Nigerian drag queens work for Facebook? | |
| Here's the thing, by the way, it's illegal for companies to ask employees about their sexuality, and it would be extremely creepy if Zuckerberg could provide a precise tally. | |
| I mean, what if he was actually able to say, well, let's see here, we've got 52 gay people, we've got 30 bisexuals, we've got 7 furries, what if he had a list, he pulled out a clipboard, said let me take a look, pulls the pen out of the ear, you know, that would be weird, we don't want him to do that. | |
| Now, Zuckerberg could probably actually provide a precise tally of every demographic group and sexual orientation in the country because Facebook knows everything, but we don't actually want that, do we? | |
| And of course, this has nothing to do with the subject that he was ostensibly there to talk about. | |
| Now, let's see what Representative Joyce Beattie has in store for all of us. | |
| The other was around setting up a civil rights task force. | |
| And who's on the civil rights task force? | |
| Cheryl Sandberg is the person who's... What's civil rights? | |
| Okay, we know Cheryl's not really civil rights, so I'm trying to help you here. | |
| She's your COO, and I don't think there's anything, and I know Cheryl well, about civil rights in her background. | |
| So come better than that for me. | |
| If we're going to talk civil rights, It's an internal task force. | |
| Do you know who the firm that you employ for civil rights is? | |
| Congressman, I don't know. | |
| How could you not know when you have employed the most historical, the largest civil rights firm? | |
| To deal with issues that are major. | |
| And this is what's so frustrating to me. | |
| It's almost like you think this is a joke. | |
| When you have ruined the lives of many people, discriminated against them. | |
| Do you know what percentage of African Americans are on Facebook? | |
| In comparison to majority folks? | |
| Do you know what the percentages are? | |
| People using the Facebook? | |
| Yes. | |
| Do you know what the percentages are for African Americans? | |
| I don't because we don't collect the racism. Well, it came out in a report and in the Pew | |
| Research Center that was sent to you. | |
| So maybe you just don't read a lot of things that deal with civil rights or African Americans. | |
| I have a lot of questions I'm going to send to you that I'm not going to be able to get through, | |
| and I would like an answer because this is appalling and disgusting to me, and I yield back. | |
| What? I... What the hell is this woman babbling about? | |
| He's destroyed the lives of African-Americans. | |
| How? | |
| I'm no Zuckerberg fan, personally, but how has he destroyed the lives of African-Americans? | |
| What did he do? | |
| And the thing is, he's got to keep a straight face. | |
| And no matter how you feel about Zuckerberg, his IQ is certainly probably three times higher than everyone that's questioning him. | |
| But he's got to keep a straight face and try, and I'm impressed with that at least, keeping a straight face, trying his best to calmly answer these idiotic questions from morons. | |
| Um, it destroyed the lives of African Americans. | |
| There was a Pew poll done about how many African Americans use Facebook. | |
| Did you read the Pew poll? | |
| Oh, you didn't? | |
| So you don't like reading about African Americans, huh? | |
| So in other words, what you're saying, Mr. Zuckerberg, is that the KKK is good? | |
| Guards, arrest this man! | |
| What an absolute clown show. | |
| I mean, she really implied that he was racist because he hadn't read a poll about the internet habits of African Americans. | |
| She really, that really happened. | |
| She, she actually did that. | |
| Beyond parody. | |
| It is, how would you, if you wanted to make a parody of the two lines of, of the two clips I just played for you, how would you do it? | |
| You couldn't because you couldn't make it any more ridiculous than it already is. | |
| Okay, let's see what Ayanna Pressley, otherwise known as Ringo, has to say about all of this. | |
| The same World Bank report cited in your Libra white paper finds that almost two-thirds of 1.7 billion people who don't have bank accounts say it's because they lack enough money to open one. | |
| So this is not about authentication. | |
| This is not about banking costs. | |
| This is about a tsunami of hurt that millions are experiencing because of a $1.6 trillion student debt crisis, because of rising health care costs and people having to use GoFundMe pages to pay medical bills. | |
| This is because of the racial and gender wealth gap. | |
| So again, you represent the power, but I don't think you understand the pain. | |
| There's underbanking because people are broke. | |
| And so, let me just ask you this question. | |
| Yes or no, is it free to use the Calibra Wallet? | |
| Congresswoman, the Calibra Wallet isn't a service that is available today. | |
| Assuming we were able to launch it, it will be free. | |
| So there's no fee? | |
| Congresswoman, that's the goal, is to make it so that... So there is no fee? | |
| Congresswoman, the goal is to make- Okay, moving on. | |
| So if it costs money to buy Libra- She was so proud of that line, wasn't she? | |
| You saw the pride, where she said, you represent the power, but you don't understand the pain. | |
| Did you guys hear that? | |
| Pretty good, huh? | |
| Power, pain? | |
| We workshopped that one for a couple days. | |
| Pretty good stuff. | |
| The rest of that line of questioning was, well, I don't know what it was. | |
| Apparently it's wrong for Zuckerberg to be involved in cryptocurrency because people are poor? | |
| Okay. | |
| What does that have to do with... It's like if he said he was going to open a lemonade stand and they brought him in for a questioning and they said, Mr. Zuckerberg, do you know how many people are dying of thirst in Ethiopia right now? | |
| And yet you want to make lemonade? | |
| It just makes no sense. | |
| But of course, to call this questioning would be doing them a favor. | |
| This is not questioning. | |
| This was a speech that Ringo wanted to give for the benefit of cable news. | |
| And she forged ahead with it, even though he rendered it moot by saying the service is free. | |
| So she said, she goes, Zuckerberg is a service free. | |
| Yeah, yeah, it's going to be. | |
| Well, since it costs money, then what about poor people? | |
| Honestly, I thought the Joker movie was going to be the most disturbing clown show this year, but the Democrats really are giving it a run for its money. | |
| They really are. | |
| And we haven't even gotten to the star of the circus just yet. | |
| AOC. | |
| First, let's take a minute and watch her pretend to be Jack McCoy. | |
| Mr. Zuckerberg, what year and month did you personally first become aware of Cambridge Analytica? | |
| I'm not sure of the exact time, but it was probably around the time when it became public. | |
| I think it was around March of 2018. | |
| I could be wrong, though. | |
| When did Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg become aware of Cambridge Analytica? | |
| I don't know off the top of my head. | |
| You don't know. | |
| Did anyone on your leadership team know about Cambridge Analytica prior to the initial report by The Guardian on December 11, 2015? | |
| Congresswoman, I believe so, in that some folks were tracking it internally. | |
| I'm actually, as you're asking this, I do think I was aware of Cambridge Analytica as an entity earlier. | |
| I don't know if I was tracking how they were using Facebook specifically. | |
| When was the issue discussed with your board member, Peter Thiel? | |
| Congresswoman, I don't know that often. | |
| You don't know? | |
| This was the largest data scandal with respect to your company that had catastrophic impacts on the 2016 election. | |
| You don't know? | |
| Well, Congresswoman, I'm sure we discussed it after we were aware of what happened. | |
| Okay. | |
| It's almost cute in a way, isn't it? | |
| You see that, you think, oh, she's pretending that this is law and order. | |
| Let her go. | |
| She's pretending she's a lawyer. | |
| Don't interrupt. | |
| Yeah, but this isn't a trial. | |
| Let her have her fun. | |
| Let her have her fun. | |
| Asking for the precise day and time when he found out about it? | |
| What? | |
| Once again, who cares? | |
| What does that have to do with cryptocurrency? | |
| And how could he possibly know the answer to that question? | |
| Now let's fast forward a bit and get to AOC's irrelevant speech about the dangers of conservative websites. | |
| One question, one more question. | |
| In your ongoing dinner parties with far-right figures, some of who advance the conspiracy | |
| theory that white supremacy is a hoax, did you discuss so-called social media bias against | |
| conservatives and do you believe there is a bias? | |
| Congresswoman, um, I don't remember everything that was in the sentence. | |
| That's all right, I'll move on. | |
| Can you explain why you've named The Daily Caller a publication well-documented with ties to white supremacists as an official fact-checker for Facebook? | |
| Congresswoman, sure. | |
| We actually don't appoint the independent fact-checkers. | |
| They go through an independent organization called the Independent Fact-Checking Network that has a rigorous standard for who they allow to serve as a fact-checker. | |
| You would say that white supremacist-tied publications meet a rigorous standard for fact-checking? | |
| Thank you. | |
| Congresswoman, I would say that we're not the one assessing that standard. | |
| The International Fact-Checking Network is the one who is setting that standard. | |
| Once again, nothing at all to do with the subject. | |
| These are not questions, they are speeches. | |
| And her smear of Daily Caller is absurd, dishonest, despicable. | |
| Yeah, a white supremacist tied website. | |
| What is she talking about? | |
| And they don't... You gotta remember, these people are such liars, and this woman in particular, is such a ridiculous, incompetent liar, that there's no attempt made to justify any of the lies being told. | |
| None of them are worried about the fact that they're telling obvious lies. | |
| They'll just... At this point... Now, even ten years ago, It would have been kind of unthinkable to have Democrats just directly calling all of their political opponents white supremacists and racists and everything. | |
| Don't get me wrong, they would have implied it very strongly. | |
| But this is kind of a new thing where you've got these prominent Democrats that have no problem going out calling everyone, straight up calling them white supremacists. | |
| No evidence, no reason at all to be saying that, but you're a white supremacist. | |
| And if the Daily Caller was a white supremacist website, what bearing would that have on the cryptocurrency thing we're talking about? | |
| It wouldn't. | |
| All right. | |
| Let's move on. | |
| What else? | |
| Well, I wanted to mention this real quick. | |
| It's not a huge deal, but yesterday you may have caught wind of some outrage at LeBron James because he allegedly disrespected the anthem. | |
| Some people on social media were passing around this video of LeBron screaming during the anthem, and apparently this is offensive and unpatriotic, and it's a sign that he's a communist and so on, according to the outraged masses that I saw online. | |
| And, well, let's play the video first, and you tell me if this is offensive and unpatriotic. | |
| Let's go! | |
| Now look, I think LeBron's antics with respect to China were shameful and wrong and cowardly, | |
| and I said so. | |
| I disagree with a lot of the political and social stands that he takes, but this line of attack against him about the anthem is pretty silly. | |
| I have to assume that all these people And there were. | |
| This was not an invented outrage. | |
| Now, it may be invented in the sense that the people who are acting outraged aren't really and are just pretending. | |
| I think that's probably the case because... | |
| That's 90% of the outrages that happen online. | |
| People are just pretending because they've got nothing better to do. | |
| But there were at least a lot of people acting as if LeBron had done something wrong here. | |
| And I have to assume that all those people have never been to a ballgame before. | |
| Any ballgame. | |
| Baseball, basketball, football, hockey. | |
| Hockey isn't a ballgame. | |
| Puck game, whatever. | |
| Because this is really, really normal. | |
| At the end of the anthem, as it's finishing, which was the case here, the anthem was finishing, people start cheering and the athletes will often do exactly what LeBron did there. | |
| They start pumping up the crowd, let's go, doing all that. | |
| Very normal. | |
| It happens everywhere, I assure you. | |
| It is a normal thing. | |
| Nothing, it's not an unpatriotic statement, nothing like that. | |
| This is just what people do at stadiums. | |
| Where the last few lines of the anthem are kind of drowned out by applause, and that's fine. | |
| You'd have to really be kind of a stick in the mud to go to a ballgame and people are cheering and you're going, hey, pipe down, folks, pipe down. | |
| What do you think this is, a stadium? | |
| No it's just people it's not it's not it's not a statement against the anthem people are feeding off of the patriotic vibe and they're saying yeah let's go come on you know they're it's it's they're getting into it they're using the anthem as part of that now if um If you're not allowed to respond to the anthem that way, if the anthem is such a sacred, solemn thing that it's a communist to cheer during it, then well, you know what, maybe we should just be singing the anthem at stadiums before ballgames in the first place, because people are there to watch. | |
| A sport, they're all wearing jerseys, they're getting into it, and so I think that's perfectly fine. | |
| It's like if you ever go to a game in Baltimore, whether baseball or a football game, this is also a common tradition where at the very end of the anthem, where it says, O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, people will shout O on the O line, and then because of O's, Baltimore Orioles, and then everyone cheers through the last few lines of the anthem. | |
| Pretty normal stuff. | |
| I don't think this is worth getting upset about. | |
| Okay, one other thing here before we get to emails. | |
| I thought this was pretty revealing. | |
| Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, was asked about the criticisms by Scorsese and Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, of Marvel movies. | |
| Scorsese correctly said that Marvel movies are not real cinema. | |
| They're just theme park rides, essentially. | |
| And Francis Ford Coppola correctly pointed out that Marvel movies are also despicable. | |
| And Bob Egers, the guy who runs Disney and thus Marvel, he was not a fan of these comments, not surprisingly, and he was asked about it during some kind of panel that he was on yesterday. | |
| And I thought that his answer was, as I said, pretty revealing. | |
| Listen to this. | |
| I just don't... I'm puzzled by it. | |
| If they wanna bitch about movies, it's certainly their right. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I just don't... I don't understand... | |
| It seems so disrespectful to all the people that work on those films who are working just as hard as the people who work on their films and are putting their creative souls on the line just like they are. | |
| You tell me Ryan Coogler making Black Panther is doing something that is somehow or another less than what Marty Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola have ever done on any one of their movies? | |
| Like, come on. | |
| Yeah, I said it. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So he says, to answer his question, his question is, can Black Panther be considered anything less than what Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola have ever done? | |
| The answer is yes, it is definitely less than that. | |
| I think anyone with the slightest knowledge of movies would agree. | |
| It doesn't mean that Black Panther was bad. | |
| I haven't seen Black Panther. | |
| I can't imagine that Black Panther was actually anywhere near as good as people pretend that it was. | |
| But regardless, having not seen it, I feel that I can still very confidently say that it is less than, say, The Godfather or Goodfellas, which are cinematic masterpieces. | |
| The Godfather is the best movie ever made. | |
| In my opinion, I think anyone would put it at least in the top five. | |
| So is Black Panther less than that? | |
| Yes, it definitely is. | |
| But the fact that the guy who runs this movie studio, the guy who's in charge of everything, the fact that he thinks these two are the same, that he can't see a difference between them in terms of cinematic quality, should really tell you something. | |
| And I think that this only further vindicates what Scorsese and Coppola are saying. | |
| That these people, they literally don't know what good cinema is. | |
| They can't tell the difference between a movie about people in spandex running around fighting bad guys, a movie that's made for 12-year-old boys. | |
| They can't tell the difference between that and a cinematic masterpiece. | |
| To them, it's all the same. | |
| Kind of tells you everything you need to know. | |
| All right, mattwalshow at gmail.com. | |
| mattwalshow at gmail.com is the email address. | |
| This is from Matt. | |
| It says, is it me or does anyone else find it weird that the left endorses a stigma-free society? | |
| However, it seems that they only endorse it for socially acceptable mental health issues. | |
| Meaning, the right says transgenderism is a mental health condition, or Michael Knoll says it is immorality to use a mentally ill child as a spokesperson for climate change policy. | |
| Then the left gets irate with these statements because they feel we aren't accepting. | |
| Wouldn't they then be stigmatizing if they are the ones, when we say mental illness, they think of it as a slander? | |
| I feel that by them being accepting of transgenderism, that makes them stigmatize mental illness when someone calls them out on it. | |
| That is a really good point. | |
| So I can see why your name is Matt. | |
| Maybe I will take, I think maybe I'll just plagiarize your point. | |
| I'll pretend that I wrote this email. | |
| No, that really is a good point. | |
| There's a hashtag thing going on Twitter right now. | |
| I think it's hashtag end the stigma and it's all about ending the stigma of mental illness as you point out. | |
| This is something that the left talks about a lot. | |
| They're always trying to tear down stigmas, whether real or imagined, and this is one of the stigmas that they focus on. | |
| And I agree that mental health conditions, mental illnesses, should not be stigmatized in the sense that we shouldn't alienate or discriminate against people who suffer from a condition that they can't help. | |
| On the other end of the spectrum though, that doesn't mean that we should glamorize mental illness, or make it seem like something desirable, or turn it into social capital that you can trade in for social benefits. | |
| We shouldn't do that either. | |
| We shouldn't glorify mental illness. | |
| And the problem is, and I know this wasn't your point, but the problem is that very often When someone talks about ending the stigma of such and such thing, what they're really trying to do is glorify that thing. | |
| So they're going beyond ending the stigma. | |
| They're not trying to just make it neutral, where we all have a neutral, objective view of this thing, whatever it is. | |
| They're trying to glorify it. | |
| And that has happened with respect to mental illness in this country, which is why everybody in the country claims to have some kind of mental illness. | |
| And if you argue, you know, if someone says, I have this, whatever, and it's a mental illness, and if you say, well, you know, I don't know if that really is a mental illness. | |
| Maybe it's not. | |
| They get very offended that you're trying to take their mental illness from them. | |
| So, I've gotten into trouble before when we talked about, for example, anxiety. | |
| Anxiety is treated like a mental disorder now. | |
| And I've made the argument that anxiety... I have a lot of anxiety, okay? | |
| Maybe that doesn't surprise you. | |
| So if it is a mental illness, then I guess I have it. | |
| But I don't think it's a mental illness. | |
| I think it's a normal thing that human beings deal with. | |
| And some people have more anxiety than others, and sometimes your anxiety can be rather crippling. | |
| That doesn't mean it's a mental illness, though. | |
| It's a normal part of the human condition. | |
| And there are all kinds of things that are part of the human condition that people are going to have to varying degrees. | |
| And I think it's a problem. | |
| Now I'm going way off of what you talked about, but I'll circle back around. | |
| Just bear with me. | |
| It's a problem, I think, when you take something that is a normal part of the human condition and you say that, yeah, this is normal. | |
| But if you have it too much, then all of a sudden it becomes a disorder. | |
| Well, what counts as too much? | |
| Now you're drawing some arbitrary line based on nothing. | |
| It's just based on a totally subjective arbitrary line where beyond that line is a disorder and below that line is normal. | |
| And so we do this with ADHD, we do this with depression, we do all these things. | |
| Now, I have an issue with that. | |
| I think that that is a That's a problem. | |
| I think there are problems with that. | |
| Now, but the interesting thing is, anytime I have this discussion, whether it's anxiety, depression, ADD, people get offended when you suggest that maybe it's not a mental disorder. | |
| Why is that offensive? | |
| Do you want it to be? | |
| Why would you want it to be? | |
| Now, I could be wrong. | |
| Maybe I'm right. | |
| Maybe I'm wrong. | |
| Maybe you're right. | |
| Maybe it really is a mental disorder. | |
| But why are you clinging to it as if it's this thing that you really want? | |
| That's what gives me the hint that mental disorders now have become a glamorized thing that people, for some reason, actually want. | |
| Because otherwise, I can't make sense of that. | |
| And by the way, to say that, again, using the example of anxiety, to say that that's not a mental disorder, that's not trivializing it. | |
| I would argue it trivializes it to call it a mental disorder. | |
| Because now you're just slapping a label on it, you're medicalizing it, you're treating it like some simple thing that can be medicated. | |
| And my point is, I think it's deeper than that. | |
| So I'm doing the opposite of trivializing it. | |
| Anyway. | |
| In terms of your point, I agree that if we are destigmatizing mental disorders, then why is it an insult to suggest, as you said, if someone says transgenderism is a mental health issue? | |
| Michael Knoll pointed out accurately that Greta Thunberg suffers from various mental illnesses, which is what the media has been telling us about her. | |
| So how's that an insult? | |
| If you treat that as an insult, then as you say, aren't you the one that is now stigmatizing mental illness? | |
| Great point. | |
| From Kayla says, my husband and I are huge fans of the show. | |
| The past few days, we've been fuming alongside you and whatever sane people are still left in this country over this whole James Younger case in Texas. | |
| I wanted to share an analogy with you that I think applies well and you should use with regards to the whole transgender child abuse going on around in our country. | |
| I wonder how many people would agree that parents should not take their young children to get tattoos. | |
| If a five-year-old wants a dragon tattooed onto their face, should the parents oblige? | |
| I think most people would agree that they shouldn't Why? | |
| Because children will make dumb decisions that they'll regret later in life, and it's the parents' job in some sense to protect them from this, and yet tattoos are much less of a catastrophic and irreversible long-term bodily alteration than puberty blockers slash hormones slash chemical castration. | |
| Thoughts? | |
| Yeah, I completely agree. | |
| I think I made this similar point yesterday. | |
| Where they're all, look, tattoos, all kinds of things. | |
| We don't let, if we're talking about 5 year old kids, 6 year old kids, 7 year old kids, 8 year old kids, we don't let them make really any decisions for themselves. | |
| There's really no aspect of a young child's life that we allow them to exercise complete control over. | |
| They are not autonomous in any sense. | |
| And they can't be because they don't have the psychological maturity for it. | |
| Our goal as parents, when our kids are young, is to get them to a point where when they're 18, 19, 20, | |
| now they can actually be basically self-sufficient adults who make choices for themselves. | |
| We are, as children though, we are equipping them for that moment to send them out into the wild, wild world and say, okay, now it's up to you to run your own life for the most part. | |
| But as kids, they don't do that. | |
| So, yeah, you could bring up tattoos, anything. | |
| There are literally a million examples of things we don't let our 8-year-old kids do, 5-year-old kids do, anyone that age. | |
| decisions we don't let them make. | |
| We don't let them vote, we don't let them get tattoos, we don't let them drive, we don't let them sign, | |
| put their names on mortgages, we don't let them vote, we don't let them buy, I think I said vote already, | |
| we don't let them buy guns, we don't let them drink alcohol, we don't let them do anything. | |
| It is a, it is a crime, obviously, | |
| If someone sexually abuses, They are too young. | |
| Children at that age are far too young for sexual activity. | |
| We all agree. | |
| Why is that? | |
| And that's another thing that really concerns me. | |
| I'm not the only one to bring this up. | |
| That's the other thing that really concerns me about saying that a child, a prepubescent child, is old enough to make these kinds of decisions about their so-called gender identity. | |
| I think that this is ultimately all wrapped up in an effort to sexualize children, which will contribute to the normalization of pedophilia, Our whole point about why children, prepubescent children, are too young for sexual activity, the whole reason we say that is because they don't have the mental capacity to actually consent to something like that. | |
| That's our whole point. | |
| So it makes no sense at all To agree that they don't have the mental capacity to do any of those things, or to consent to any of that stuff, or to make any of those choices, yet they do have the mental capacity to choose their own gender. | |
| That makes no sense. | |
| So what really concerns me is that the people who are saying, oh, they do have the mental capacity to choose their own gender, but yeah, all these other things they don't, I think what we're gonna find is that Over time, gradually, those people start saying that, oh, well, no, maybe kids can do that, and that, and that, and that. | |
| And we see where that leads. | |
| Okay, this is from Mark, says, Matt, you're very critical of superhero films. | |
| I don't necessarily disagree, but do you like any of them? | |
| Have you ever seen one that was worthwhile in your judgment? | |
| I've seen a few superhero movies that I think would qualify as good films. | |
| Everyone points to the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy. | |
| Yeah, I think those were pretty high quality. | |
| I do think that Dark Knight is an overrated movie. | |
| Because it's all really on the strength of Heath Ledger's performance, which obviously was phenomenal. | |
| But I think if you take that performance out of the movie, it's a pretty standard by-the-numbers superhero film other than that. | |
| Maybe even kind of subpar in a way. | |
| Because some of the other performances, the Two-Face, Aaron Eckhart as Two-Face, was actually, that was a pretty terrible performance. | |
| And a horrible iteration of that villain, I think. | |
| Not to mention he was two-faced for about five seconds and then they killed him. | |
| So there are a lot of other things going on with that movie that were kind of clunky and clumsy and dumb. | |
| But we don't remember any of that and we're not bothered by it just because that performance was so breathtaking and memorable and iconic. | |
| So you take that out. | |
| But still, I would say that trilogy is an example. | |
| Maybe there have been a few others. | |
| Logan. | |
| Marvel has made at least one superhero film that was an actual real movie. | |
| And I think the movie Logan, which I actually did watch last year, I thought that was a pretty good one. | |
| And I'll tell you another one. | |
| The cartoon Spider-Man film that came out last year. | |
| Maybe it was this year. | |
| And did really well at the box— Into the Spider-Verse. | |
| I took my son to go see that. | |
| And it was about 30 minutes too long, as these movies always are. | |
| But I thought it was an enjoyable, entertaining movie. | |
| And the thing I liked about it, it was— I think it was rated PG. | |
| You know, it was a kid's movie. | |
| And that's what I liked about it. | |
| Because I think there should be— You know, okay, you've got the superhero films that— Like the movie Logan that's rated R, that's supposed to be more mature and for adults. | |
| Okay, that's fine. | |
| And then you've got superhero movies that are really made for 13-year-olds, but a bunch of adults watch them anyway. | |
| Okay, there should be superhero movies that are made for 6- and 7-year-old boys. | |
| I should be able to take my son to a superhero movie, and I think that's an underserved audience. | |
| So that's what I liked about Into the Spider-Verse. | |
| I thought that was a solid film appropriate for kids. | |
| But that won't make an adult want to rip his hair out, so that's an achievement, I would say. | |
| Finally, this is from... I didn't put the name down, so I'm not sure who this is from. | |
| It says, Hello future supreme malevolent dictator. | |
| What are your thoughts about women posting pictures of themselves breastfeeding online? | |
| Some women seem to think it will help de-sexualize and normalize the practice, but I think it's inappropriate and actually sexualizes it even more. | |
| I recently wrote a blog post about it and received a lot of pushback by people who seemed to think a lot of my points were horrifyingly offensive. | |
| What are your thoughts on the subject? | |
| This is a subject that if I knew it was good for me, if I had any prudence and wisdom, I would avoid this subject because no matter where I go with it, especially as a man, it'll get me into trouble. | |
| There's really no advantage to me chiming in on a subject like this. | |
| But that's if I had prudence and wisdom. | |
| I have neither of those things, so I will just forge ahead. | |
| And I'll say that I basically agree with you. | |
| I think that, yes, I think that breastfeeding should not be stigmatized. | |
| Some women say that it is I I haven't really noticed that I don't and it's not just because I'm a man either This is something I've talked to my wife about my wife. | |
| We have four kids. | |
| She's breastfed all the kids and she has often kind of wondered this because some of the Women that she hangs out with will talk about the stigma of breastfeeding and my wife will say what stigma? | |
| No one's saying you can't breastfeed. | |
| I don't think there's a stigma. | |
| So I I'm kind of I'm With my wife on that one, it's probably a good subject for me to defer to my wife too, I suppose. | |
| So, if there is a stigma on breastfeeding, if it exists anywhere, it shouldn't be stigmatized. | |
| It is a natural, healthy, good thing for a mother to do. | |
| However, does that mean that We shouldn't practice any kind of modesty when breastfeeding? | |
| I don't see that. | |
| And to make a point of it, to make breastfeeding into... Now, you say that when they post the pictures it sexualizes it. | |
| I don't know if I would go that far, but it does just strike me as bizarre. | |
| You're feeding your kid, you're saying it's a normal, natural thing, so just do it. | |
| Why do you need to make a point of it? | |
| Why do you need to make it into a political statement? | |
| Because either breastfeeding is no big deal and a natural thing, or it's a big deal. | |
| But if it's a no big deal and a natural thing, then do what you gotta do. | |
| You're at home. | |
| You don't need to put it all on social media. | |
| I just find that to be totally weird and, yeah, inappropriate. | |
| If it's not a big deal, don't make a big deal out of it. | |
| And, yeah, if you're out in public, I don't see what's wrong with maybe Use a nursing cover or something. | |
| I don't see why that is a problem. | |
| And, you know, one argument you hear is, well, it's a natural human function. | |
| Okay, it is, but there are a lot of natural human functions that we don't necessarily do out in the open calling attention to it. | |
| There are a lot of things in that category. | |
| And then the other argument as well, the breasts are not a sexual organ and breastfeeding is not a sexual thing. | |
| Yeah, breastfeeding is not a sexual thing. | |
| I agree with you. | |
| But again, that doesn't necessarily mean, you know, if you go to a restaurant, most restaurants in the country, they're going to tell you you can't come into the restaurant without shoes on. | |
| Now, is that because bare feet are a sexual thing? | |
| Are they telling you to cover your feet in shame because there might be some weird foot fetishist in the restaurant who just can't handle seeing your feet? | |
| No, it's just... You don't go into a restaurant with bare feet. | |
| You're supposed to cover your feet. | |
| It's what we do in a civilized society. | |
| Doesn't mean we're ashamed of feet. | |
| Doesn't mean we're stigmatizing them. | |
| Nothing wrong with having feet. | |
| We all have them. | |
| But usually when you're out in public, you cover them. | |
| At least a little bit. | |
| So I would put it in that camp. | |
| And I think I'll just stop talking about that now. | |
| Thank you though. | |
| Thanks everybody for watching. | |
| Thanks for listening and 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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