NBA legend Kobe Bryant is dead at the age of 41. Today we'll talk about why celebrity deaths tend to hit us so hard. Also, some especially disgraceful people in the media decided that Kobe's death was a good time to start talking about his rape case 15 years ago. And Joe Biden declared that "transgender equality" is the "civil rights issue of our time." Biden is nearly 80 years old and just now decided that men are women. What explains this radical change?
If you like The Matt Walsh Show, become a member TODAY with promo code: WALSH and enjoy the exclusive benefits for 10% off at dailywire.com/Walsh
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
We start today with the big news of the weekend, the terribly sad news, of course, of NBA legend Kobe Bryant dying at the age of 41 alongside eight other people, which we shouldn't forget to include, including his teenage daughter, Gianna, in a helicopter crash on Sunday.
They were, as I understand it, on their way to a travel basketball game.
He was bringing his daughter to her game, and the helicopter crashed.
According to investigators today, the latest is that they're saying it was probably weather related.
There was dense fog in the area at the time of the crash.
So I want to discuss a few things related to this story.
And the first thing I want to talk about is why a death like this, a celebrity death, affects people the way that it does.
Why does it get under our skin the way it does?
Why are we so shocked by it?
And my point is not to criticize or complain about our tendency to care so much about celebrity deaths.
I've seen some of that online, and anytime, you know, a famous person dies unexpectedly, there are always people saying, oh, you know, he was just a person like us, and why cry about this if you're not crying about the thousands of other people who died across the world, you know, on any given day?
I think those sorts of comments deny something fundamental about human nature.
It's normal that we care about it.
And at one level, it doesn't require explanation or justification.
These are people who, if they're famous people, whether they're famous actors or athletes or what have you, they are people who, even if we didn't know them personally, they were still a part of our lives in some sense.
Not a central part, of course, but they were a part.
And when they die, we do feel like we've lost something, and we have.
So I'm not looking to justify or explain.
But I do think it's good to understand.
I want to try to understand why the death of somebody like Kobe Bryant tends to hit people hard.
Aside from the obvious, which is, you know, the obvious things like he was a young man, he had a family, his daughter was killed too.
Those things obviously make it all the more tragic.
But I want to go deeper than that.
I think there's a deeper level of why we react the way we do to these sorts of things.
And I want to talk about that.
And then also related to this story, unfortunately, we have to discuss the media's embarrassing
performance in reporting it.
But as we discuss that, I am going to do something I've probably never done before and may never
do again, and that is defend an MSNBC anchor who's come under fire for something that happened
while she was reporting about Kobe Bryant.
But I'm going to defend her, and there are others who I'm not going to defend because they're indefensible.
So we're going to get to all of that, but first, before we do, a word from ExpressVPN.
Listen, there are tons of VPN providers out there.
You've probably heard of a couple of them, and some of you maybe have used a VPN before, but I only recommend brands to my listeners that I believe in.
If I don't like the product, If I don't believe what the company's marketing team is saying to sell the product, then I'm not going to endorse it.
And by the way, I've turned potential sponsors away before because, well, I didn't believe in their product.
But I can say with full confidence that ExpressVPN is my favorite VPN on the market.
Here's why.
Doesn't log your data.
Lots of really cheap or free VPNs make money by selling your data to ad companies.
You don't want that.
That's the last thing you want.
ExpressVPN developed a technology called Trusted Server that makes it impossible for their servers to log any of your info.
Second, and this for me is probably the most important thing, especially for what I do for a living, is speed.
Many slow your connection down or they make your device sluggish.
With ExpressVPN, my internet speeds are blazing fast.
And unlike other VPNs, you don't have to input or program anything to use ExpressVPN.
You just fire up the app, click one button to connect.
And it's as simple as that.
So it's quick, it's fast, your data is secure.
And it's not just me saying this.
TechRadar, The Verge, CNET, many other tech experts, right?
ExpressVPN, the number one VPN in the world.
So to protect yourself with the VPN that I use and trust, use my link expressvpn.com slash Walsh today.
That's expressvpn.com slash Walsh and you get an extra three months free on a one-year package.
Visit expressvpn.com slash Walsh to learn more.
Okay, so here's my thought as we get back to Kobe Bryant.
Because I've been thinking about this, why do we tend to react so strongly to celebrity deaths?
Especially when the celebrity in question is young and healthy and, you know, not known for reckless behavior.
Not a celebrity who, in the back of your mind, you're kind of expecting might die of an overdose or something like that.
And not a celebrity who's been around for 60 years and is getting older and, you know, the ones in those categories where You're sort of expecting this news about them, so when you go online and you see their name trending, you immediately think, oh, well, yeah, I guess it finally happened.
With, I think, Kobe Bryant, a lot of people had the same experience I did.
I learned about it on social media.
I saw his name trending on Twitter, and I thought, oh, I don't know, did he say something controversial or whatever?
Then you click on it, and it's the last thing you expect to see is that he's dead.
And that's what makes the reaction all the stronger.
And a big part of the sadness is simply, as I said, that he was a young man, a father, his child died with him, which makes it just ghastly, or even ghastlier than it already would have been anyway.
So that's part of it, but I think there's something deeper, which is this.
We spend so much of our lives, you know, hiding from the fact that we are mortal beings, and then something like this happens, unexpectedly, And forces us to acknowledge this reality, a reality, a terrible reality, that death is always with us, always walking alongside us, and at any moment it can point its finger at you and say, now's your time.
And it will happen.
It absolutely will happen to you, to me, to all of us, no matter what.
It's as simple as that.
Now, we know this, of course.
You know, we all know it.
Nobody is surprised to learn that human beings are mortal.
I'm not saying that we're surprised in that sense.
But in a way, we are surprised to learn it, I guess, because we spend so much time repressing that knowledge and keeping those thoughts at bay.
And then when the reality of death hits us in the face from an unexpected direction, it's almost as if we have to relearn the fact that human beings are mortal.
I remember talking to my wife about this yesterday, when I got home, and she said, oh, did you hear about Kobe Bryant?
And I said, yeah.
And then I said, oh, it's crazy.
Crazy.
That was the first word I said.
But really, it's not crazy at all, is it?
Someone dying, well, that's about the least crazy thing they can do.
It's the most normal thing in the world, actually.
It's the one thing that everybody does, and all of us will do.
So what's crazy about it?
Sad, sure.
Unwelcome, yeah.
Crazy?
No.
It only seems crazy because, again, we keep death thoughts at bay by lying to ourselves and telling ourselves that death is something that can be controlled, if not avoided altogether.
We can at least control it.
We can hold it off at a distance because it's not our time, whatever that means.
If we're young and we have plans and we have stuff to do, we think, no, I can't die now, I got all these plans, I got stuff on the calendar, see?
But death doesn't care about that, doesn't care about our plans, or our age, or anything, really.
Again, none of this is a revelation.
None of this is news to anyone, but it is a stark reality that we don't dwell on, most of us.
We try not to think about it.
And then somebody dies.
Somebody who, in our minds, very much belong in the category of living.
Someone like a still young sports legend.
They die and we're forced to peer over at the Reaper in the room.
The dude with the cloak and the scythe and go, oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
And it can also be disturbing, I think, to watch somebody kind of go from present to past.
To watch someone who is Turn abruptly into was.
Especially again, when in our minds, it's too early for that.
Whatever that means.
Especially when there's no gradual transition from is to was.
Somebody dies from a disease over time, and there's sort of this transition where you're getting ready for it.
But, in a case like this, it's just the person is, and then they become a was.
Ten seconds later, out of nowhere.
And it's disturbing because we know that the same thing will happen to us.
One day we will be a past event, you know, a memory, and then not even that.
There was a book written decades ago by a guy named Ernest Becker, which I just read recently, as a matter of fact.
Somebody recommended it to me.
And the book is called Denial of Death.
He was a psychoanalyst.
And there's a lot in his theory that I don't agree with, and there's a lot in psychoanalysis that I find to be pseudo-scientific silliness, really.
But the central thesis of his book, in my opinion, is compelling and persuasive, and it relates to what I'm saying now.
He argued that our repressed anxiety about death is a driving factor in our lives and in our culture.
And so much of human culture, in fact, according to him, is set up specifically to distract us from And to evade thoughts of death.
So much of human culture really at the end of the day is about managing terror.
It's about managing our terror of death.
Even if it is a repressed or suppressed terror.
I think there's a lot of truth to that.
And by the way, interesting fact about Ernest Becker, he won the Pulitzer Prize for that book.
A few months after it was released, but he wasn't around to receive the award because he died shortly after finishing the book.
So, a morbid illustration of his point, I suppose.
Okay, well, all of that is thoroughly depressing, but I was thinking about it and And I wanted to share it, so there's that.
More to discuss on this in just a moment, but first, a word from LifeLock.
You know, we all spend a lot of time online and we put our information out there, all kinds of information about us.
The scary thing is that this leaves us vulnerable, right, to identity theft, which is why in this day and age, if you don't have some kind of protection against identity theft, it's recklessness.
It's crazy not to have protection.
And that's why you need LifeLock.
Every two seconds, there's a victim of identity theft.
Which means a criminal could be spending your money, applying for loans in your name, even damaging the credit that you've worked hard to build up over time.
And checking bank statements and monitoring your credit yourself isn't going to be enough because you could still miss threats to your identity.
Good thing there's LifeLock identity theft protection.
LifeLock uses proprietary technology to detect and alert you to a wide range of potential identity threats like your social security number for sale on the dark web.
Stuff that you would never be able to find on your own, unless you peruse the dark web, if you even know how to do that, which I don't.
And if you do have an issue involving identity theft, one of LifeLock's identity restoration specialists will work to fix it.
Of course, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses, but with LifeLock, you get identity theft protection to help protect your devices against cyber threats, For up to 25% off your first year, just go to lifelock.com slash Walsh.
That's lifelock.com slash Walsh for 25% off.
Again, that's lifelock.com slash Walsh.
Okay, well, the other inevitable thing about celebrity deaths is that people, especially people in the media, will try to capitalize on the tragedy by posting hot takes as soon as the death occurs because they're trying to get attention.
And there was a lot of that happening yesterday, and I don't want to highlight most of it because they're doing it for attention, and if I give them attention, I'm doing exactly what they want.
So I don't want to do that.
But there is one especially notable example, I think.
A Washington Post reporter, Felicia Sanmez, posted an article about Kobe Bryant's rape case.
She posted this article.
Now, it's not an article she wrote.
The Daily Beast wrote it years ago.
But what made this so callous and, you know, calling it tacky would be way underselling it.
She posted this article literally hours after he had died in a fiery wreck alongside his teenage daughter.
I mean, just really didn't wait very long at all.
Didn't even wait for the bodies to be pulled from the wreckage.
And she's posting this article, and there was no tweet before this one expressing condolences or even reporting on the story.
Instead, the very first thing she says about it, the very first reaction that she offers, is calling attention to his rape case 15 years ago.
And there was a lot of that actually, and like I said, I'm not going to specifically
call attention to most of it.
But a lot of prominent people, especially prominent women on Twitter, immediately tweeting
about Kobe's rape case.
Some actually calling him a rapist, despite the fact that he was never convicted of anything,
by the way.
Now Felicia has been suspended by the Washington Post, not for the rape tweet, but for a follow-up
tweets where she posted screenshots of angry emails she had gotten with the full names
of the people.
And so that was a violation of company policy, and she was suspended for that.
But she offered no apology in her follow-up tweets, and she made herself the victim.
She said, oh geez, look at all these mean things people are saying about me.
As if she wasn't expecting that, right?
As if that wasn't the entire point.
Was to garner this negative attention for herself, using the death of a person, of nine people, as a way to do it.
So that's all, you know, I don't even want to get into it because it's, this is the point, it's like not what we should be talking about right now, but all these people posting about Kobe Bryant's rape case, I do think it's relevant to note, as I said, That not only is this not the time, but by the way, he was never convicted of anything.
So you're putting this out there right after he dies.
He's not around to defend himself.
And, uh, but you know, who cares?
We're going to, it's, there's, there's no slander, a dead man.
This is just what we do now.
But as I said, I do want to also defend at least one person in the media.
Lots of people on social media have been whipping up outrage against an MSNBC anchor who, according to them, said the N-word on air while discussing Kobe Bryant.
Maybe you've heard this, but here's that moment where she supposedly used the N-word on MSNBC.
Listen to this.
Yeah, it seems like he was just the kind of athlete, the kind of star that was perfectly cast on the Los Angeles Lakers.
Kavita, if I could ask you to stay with us.
So a lot of people shared that, saying, oh my gosh, she said the N-word, she's racist, so on and so forth.
The anchor, though, came out and clarified that she didn't say the N-word, she was actually about to say Knicks, but then stumbles and changes it to Lakers midstream.
So she almost said Los Angeles Knicks and changed it, and then it came out as Knickers.
So you can hear the K sound, the Knick.
You can hear that K sound in the clip.
There was no G sound.
And that explanation makes sense, okay?
It's a stumble.
Sometimes people mess up sports teams and names and things, and so it's a verbal stumble.
It happens.
It happens to all of us.
We all do it.
And if you spend a lot of time on TV, you're gonna do it on TV sometimes.
Now, to say Los Angeles N-words wouldn't even make sense.
I mean, even if she's a secret racist, and she says the N-word all the time in her private life, which I doubt is the case, but my point is, even if it were, It wouldn't make any sense for her to say Los Angeles N-words.
Certainly, to do it on purpose, I mean, is that the theory here?
That she's some kind of racist and she thought that now would be a time to throw the N-word out there and ruin her career, her life in the process?
Really?
Or maybe, maybe she, it was a slip of the tongue, like a Freudian slip, revealing her racism.
Well, but again, even as a slip of the tongue, it doesn't, it makes sense as a stumble, a stutter.
It's just, you're jumbling up words.
But as a slip of the tongue where she accidentally said a racial slur that she had in her head but didn't want to say out loud, it doesn't even make any sense.
That theory makes no sense.
That's not how the mind works.
Yet, this is what people do.
It doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense.
What we do now is we look for the most negative possible interpretation of everything.
We are constantly searching for reasons to destroy anyone and everyone for anything.
And so we extend no grace, no understanding at all, none.
Okay?
We dig for the absolute worst possible interpretation.
Doesn't matter if it's plausible.
Doesn't matter if it's likely.
But if it's a possible interpretation, because yeah, it's possible that she really said the N-word because she's a racist and it just slipped out.
It's not plausible.
It's not very plausible.
It's not likely.
It doesn't make a lot of sense, but yeah, it's possible.
So what people do is they say, well, it's possible, so let's just go with that.
It's possible and it's negative and it would destroy her.
I don't know her.
I've got nothing against her personally, but let's just go with it because, hey, Um, just going for the worst interpreter, the worst spin, trying to paint people in the worst light all the time.
And it's, it's, I mean, it's evil, honestly.
It's an evil thing.
We act like evil people when we do that.
Now, maybe you could say what I'm saying here is a little bit self-serving because people do this kind of thing to me and I get frustrated and maybe there is an element of that.
I admit.
This is something people do to me, where I'll say something, and maybe I didn't word it exactly right, and it was a little bit clumsy.
Maybe if you take this part out of context, you can kind of make it seem like something else.
And people do that to me, and yeah, it's frustrating.
Because my point is always, do you really think that's what I meant to say?
Do you really think that I meant to say that?
No, you don't.
It's just you can make it seem like I maybe meant to say that, and so even if you don't believe it, you're going with it.
But anybody who speaks in public to any kind of audience in any forum will have to deal with this now, where people are casually sort of ripped to shreds, casually smeared and slandered on the flimsiest pretense, and why?
For fun, I guess, mostly.
Now, I've heard some conservatives who've said, well, she works for MSNBC, and they do this kind of thing to people all the time, so she deserves it.
Really?
She deserves to be dishonestly smeared and potentially have her career ruined because you don't like the media company she works for?
I mean, how would you react to that if somebody used the same logic with Fox News?
What if somebody who hates Fox News smeared somebody on Fox News, dishonestly, And said, well, it doesn't matter if it's true or not.
They work for Fox.
They deserve it.
I mean, do you hear yourself?
And don't you hate MSNBC precisely because of their propensity to be dishonest?
Yet now you're advocating for dishonesty yourself?
So you apparently have no problem with dishonesty.
So why?
So then what's your problem with MSNBC?
Is this really a- Well, they started it.
They started it.
Yeah, I mean, I don't like being dishonest and smearing people, but they did it first, so what am I gonna do?
Have principles?
What am I gonna do?
Have integrity?
What am I gonna be?
A good person?
Well, nah, I can't be that.
Nah, I'm a piece of garbage, just like them.
But, uh, I'm a different kind of piece of garbage.
So, you know.
I- I- Honestly, I- I- I hate this so much.
And especially when people try to justify it on ideological grounds.
They try to justify it as, I'm just fighting.
You don't have the guts.
You don't have the stomach to fight like I'm fighting.
We gotta fight them.
You're not fighting.
You retweet, you know, you accusing someone of something that you know isn't true online.
That's not you fight.
What are you, you're a warrior now?
No, you're just a small, pathetic little liar.
I don't know, you think you achieve some kind of victory by becoming that?
I don't think so.
It's all a bunch of nihilistic, Machiavellian, ends justify the means nonsense, and I wish we would stop.
Especially when, look, if you're looking to criticize MSNBC, There are so many valid avenues of criticism.
You could turn on MSNBC anytime and find completely legitimate, honest, righteous reasons to criticize.
You don't need to latch on to something like this.
All right, let's move on and over, unfortunately, to politics.
Backing up, well, let's back up a moment.
There's been a controversy.
More controversy, this time because Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders and, well, didn't really endorse, I mean, it wasn't like an official endorsement.
He said, Rogan said on his podcast a few days ago that he's probably going to vote for Bernie Sanders.
And I think he was talking about in the primary, first of all.
But you want to call that an endorsement, and then Sanders' campaign ran with it and acted like it was a full-throated endorsement.
Why is this controversial?
Well, is it that Rogan's conservative listeners are up in arms?
Are they upset about it?
No, not from what I've seen.
I'm a conservative, and I'm a Rogan fan, and I don't care that he's going to vote for Bernie Sanders.
Makes no difference to me.
He's got his own opinion.
We don't line up exactly politically.
I already knew that.
I don't care.
Makes no difference.
The controversy is from the left, from progressives, who say that Rogan, excuse me, is a bigot and a bad guy and thus now Bernie is tainted by the bigotry.
Bernie is now a bigot due to his proximity to this other alleged bigot.
Now why is Rogan a bigot?
Well, apparently he's told a bunch of mean jokes, he is a comedian, and if you go through his whole catalog of jokes, Look, speaking of taking things out of context and being dishonest and trying to smear people, well, now we're doing it with Joe Rogan.
He's a comedian.
He's got hours and hundreds of hours of material out there through his podcast and his stand-up career.
And so now they're digging through all of that, trying to find isolated incidents out of context, him saying a bad word or saying a bad thing.
That's part of it, but I think the bigger part, and the reason why they're doing this in the first place, where they're digging through and looking for out-of-context bits to use against him, the reason they're doing that is because he raised their ire a few years ago, Rogan did, when he came out against men competing in women's sports.
especially in the MMA.
So Rogan took the radical position that men are men and thus should
compete against other men and not against women.
Thank you.
And this is inexcusable according to the left.
This is transphobia, it's bigotry, it's wicked, it's evil, so on and so forth.
While other candidates are looking to capitalize, and that's why Biden came out over the weekend with a brief statement And he said, quote, transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time.
There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.
The civil rights issue of our time.
Really.
Now, first of all, obviously from my perspective, and if you're not a radical left-winger, From your perspective, this is already crazy, the idea that trans equality is a civil rights issue of our time.
I would say the civil rights issue of our time is abortion.
But even from a leftist perspective, if you didn't know any better, wouldn't you expect them to say that, you know, I don't know, something like police brutality or You know, mass incarceration or something like that is the civil rights issue of our time.
You'd expect, if you didn't know any better, you would expect them to go with something racial as being the civil rights issue of our time.
And at least in that case, now I don't think that police brutality is the civil rights issue of our time, but at least in that case there's some meat on the bones there and you can, there's something really, there's some kind of argument you could make, reasonably, that it's at least an issue.
But, no, they go with trans equality.
They say that allowing men to change in the women's locker room, that is the civil rights issue of our time.
The number one most important thing.
Now, this only surprises you if you don't understand how leftism actually works.
And the victim pyramid, as I have explained many times, trans people are the uber victims.
The ultimate victims.
And their victimhood claims trounce all other claims.
It doesn't matter that most of their victimhood claims are utterly superfluous and ridiculous.
And in fact, what they are asking is that they should be allowed to victimize other people by, for example, cheating women out of gold medals in their sports and championships and by taking away their privacy in the locker room.
What they really want is to be the victimizers of women.
When they advocate for those sorts of things.
But that doesn't matter, because this is how it works.
They are at the very top, and so all of their victimhood claims are not only correct and right and unquestionable, but also are the most important victimhood claims that anybody makes.
So Biden understands all this, and he is dutifully playing along with it.
But I would like to ask Biden a question if I had a chance, or really, if we had a real news media, this is a question they would ask, especially at a debate.
And it's a very relevant, pertinent question.
And that is simply this.
Joe Biden, when did you decide all of this?
So you've decided that trans equality is a civil rights issue of our time.
And so thus, you must have also decided That men can be women.
If you haven't decided that, then it doesn't make any sense at all to say that this is a civil rights issue of our time.
So you've decided that a dude with a penis and XY chromosomes can be a woman, and that he has a God-given right to go into a women's locker room, and if you don't allow him to, it becomes a civil rights issue of our time.
When?
When did you decide that?
Because you're, what, almost 80 years old, So nearly 80 years on this earth.
And you never mentioned this before.
Before, like, just five seconds ago.
You spent well over the first 70 years of your life never mentioning any of this.
Not once.
I mean, go back to any other time.
Go back to the early 2000s.
Or even the mid-2010s.
Certainly go back to the 90s, the 80s, the 70s.
This guy's been in public life this whole time.
You think you're going to find him saying anything about transgender equality?
What if you asked him, back in the early 2000s, when he was at the very young age of, you know, 50 or something, or 60, if you'd asked him, a person with a penis, can that be a woman?
Or if you asked him, can men get pregnant?
What do you think he would have said?
Did he believe this whole time that actually men can get pregnant?
And never said anything?
Or... Probably not.
So he had some sort of... Not just him, but Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, all these people.
At some point, very late in life, he had this transformation, this conversion experience.
Where he realized, somehow, that, oh, you know, actually... So what?
Can you explain it?
I think it's a very valid question, isn't it?
I just want to know what happened Was there some sort of scientific breakthrough that I'd never heard about?
Did you have a vision?
Did you have a dream?
Was this a road to Damascus type of moment?
What was it?
Now, of course, I know the answer to that question.
What was it is just the political winds shifting and his base in the Democrat Party going so far left, especially in recent years.
That's what happened, but he's not gonna say that.
So what would he say?
Um, it was somewhat easy for guys like Obama.
Obama, who we forget, we often forget, was elected in 2008 as an opponent of same-sex marriage.
And then in 2012, for the re-election, magically, he was a proponent of it.
And he was asked to explain that, and it was pretty easy for him to say, oh, I've evolved on the issue, and I've realized the blah blah blah.
It would be a little bit more difficult and awkward to say that you evolved on the issue of whether or not women can have penises, because what could possibly justify that evolution?
And the thing is, the media knows that it would be very embarrassing for Democrats to have to try to justify and explain this nonsense, and so they're never asked to.
And as I often say, this goes to show that media bias and fake news and all that, it's usually about what isn't said.
The questions that aren't asked.
The stories that aren't covered.
The angles that are not exploited.
It's usually not about what is being covered and what is being said.
Sometimes it's that.
And it's not usually that they're making up stories that didn't happen, although sometimes they do that too.
Mostly, it's just about what they ignore.
And this is a great example of that.
Where they have, I think, silently conspired.
It's a sort of silent understanding they all have in left-wing media.
We are not going to ask these people this question.
Yeah, we'll ask them very, very broad, give them an opportunity for platitudes where we just say, oh, how do you feel about this?
We give them a chance to talk about the need to be accepting of transgender people, but we're not going to dig down into that even one inch deeper and ask them something like, when and why did you decide?
When and how did you change your mind?
Yeah, we asked them that about same-sex marriage, and we would still ask them that now, because we know that they have a relatively non-embarrassing answer ready for it.
But they couldn't possibly have a non-embarrassing answer for this, because it's crazy, and so we're just not going to ask.
All right, let's see.
Before we get to emails, I did want to mention the Grammys last night.
I don't know who was nominated, I don't know who won most of the awards, doesn't matter, but there was one little thing that I want to highlight, just because it shows you the state of the music industry.
The great John Prine won a Lifetime Achievement Award.
If you don't know who John Prine is, what are you doing with your life?
But do yourself a favor and look him up on iTunes.
And I only say, I meet people, when I get to talk about music with people, I often meet people who have never heard of this guy, somehow.
He's a musical legend.
So look him up on YouTube or something and do yourself a favor.
Anyway, he won Lifetime Achievement Award, well-deserved, and he is one of our great living artists.
And then Bonnie Raitt, speaking of great living artists, got up to perform a rendition of one of Prime's songs, one of his best songs, Angel from Montgomery.
Angel from Montgomery, by the way, is one of the best American songs of the last 100 years.
It's a beautiful, sad, Simple yet poetic song.
And here's Wright singing that song at the Grammys last night.
I'm an old woman, named after my mother.
My old man is another child that's grown old.
Dreams were lightning, thunder was desire.
This old house would have burnt down a long time ago.
I think she's, I looked it up, she's like in her 70s now, believe it or not.
But here's the problem.
They gave her 75 seconds.
Less.
They gave her less than 75 seconds to sing that song.
It's like a four-minute song.
Everybody would benefit from hearing the whole song.
Beautiful song.
They give her 75 seconds.
And then they usher her off the stage.
And probably, partly because they had to free up six minutes for Ariana Grande, she of donut-licking fame, to perform in her underwear.
And here's what that looked like.
I think we tell therapy my new addiction Whoever said money can't solve your problems
Must not have had enough money to solve them They say, which one I said?
I don't know, I don't know Happiness is the same price as rib bottoms, yeah
The sun is beaming, my skin is gleaming The way you shine, I know you've seen it
I bought a crib just for the closet Both his and hers, I'm running, I'm kicking
So there you go.
I just want to highlight that because what a startling contrast you see.
On one hand you have soulful, meaningful, real, authentic music.
And then on the other hand you have an idiot rolling around in her underwear.
But, you know, of course the idiot gets all the time.
She gets six whole minutes to go on with her pretty average... I'm not going to claim that she's a bad singer, okay?
She's better than me, Ariana Grande, but she's not great.
There's nothing spectacular about her voice.
The lyrics that she's singing, of course, are lyrics that anyone with a sub-75 IQ could come up with, even though, you know, she didn't even write her own songs.
There's nothing impressive happening here.
Not great.
The arrangements are just typical cookie-cutter pop arrangements.
So, rather bland singing, terrible lyrics, standard cookie-cutter melody and arrangement.
The dancing, even the dancing, not even that impressive of dancing.
At least with Beyoncé.
I mean, Beyoncé, not that great of a singer.
Her songs are pretty stupid.
She is a really good dancer, at least.
Then you've got someone like Ariana Grande, so many of these pop stars, they're not even really great at anything.
Yet, of course, we give her all the attention.
I get it.
I mean, she's the big-name star, and people these days, a lot of them have never even heard of John Prine or Bonnie Raitt, but that's, you know, just a sad statement.
Alright, let's go to emails, but first, if you're a regular listener of this show, you've heard me talk many times about the pro-life issue.
I was just saying it's a civil rights issue of our time and I do believe that and it's very easy to come to that conclusion when you consider the 60 million human beings that have died from abortion But we know that as we do everything we can, the pro-life movement, to call attention to this issue and to fight back, the left is going further and further off the cliff.
There was the New York state law allowing abortion up to birth, the Illinois state law allowing partial birth abortions.
So they are going further and further, deeper and deeper into just this extreme advocacy for not only abortion but infanticide.
Think about what Ralph Northam said about Delivering the children and then making a decision about what to do with them, i.e.
maybe we kill them.
So as that's happening, of course the left is also viciously attacking anyone who stands for the pro-left cause, and we've experienced that here at The Daily Wire with them coming after our advertisers and our sponsors, especially after Ben Shapiro spoke at the March for Life last year.
But it's not just us that are being targeted.
Live action is one of the best Pro-life groups out there, they have been for a long time.
They're one of the leaders of the pro-life movement and they're being targeted for censorship in many different platforms.
There are platforms on social media where they're not allowed to advertise anymore.
They were kicked off Pinterest entirely simply for speaking the truth about abortion.
And this is why, you know, our dailywire.com members are so important.
Your membership help keeps our cameras on and our microphones turned up, even when the left is pressuring our sponsors.
But you can also be a big help, not just to us, but to live action as well.
And that's why from now until January 31st, a portion of any dailywire.com membership will be donated to live action with the promo code LIVEACTION to support awareness and education around the world on this issue.
So join dailywire.com And make your pro-life voice heard.
All right.
We'll do a few emails here.
mattwalshow at gmail.com mattwalshow at gmail.com This is from Corey.
Says, Mr. Walsh, I'm an admirer of personality assessments as a tool to better know oneself, one's own motivations, and for interpreting the actions of other people significant to you.
I'm a proponent of the Enogram personality test.
Over Myers-Briggs, but both can be useful for people.
If you end up curious, I'm fairly positive you are an Enneagram One.
Parentheses, the reformer.
And you're an ISTJ.
I'm grateful for the show.
Okay, this is something that... I talked briefly about personality tests last week on the show and I said I don't believe in them.
And ever since then, I've been getting tons of emails from people, not only defending personality tests, but telling me what my personality is according to personality tests, because I guess they've taken it for me.
But I want to just show, because this is just a great example.
So Corey says that, you know, he believes in the personality tests, and he says that I'm an Enneagram 1, and he gave me a link which describes my personality.
And I want to show you.
I want to show you.
This is why it's so bogus, okay?
And so here I am at the Enneagram Institute, describing what apparently is my personality.
Ones are conscientious and ethical, with a strong sense of right and wrong.
They are teachers, crusaders, advocates for change, always striving to improve things, but afraid of making a mistake.
Well-organized, orderly, fastidious.
They try to maintain high standards, but can slip into being critical and perfectionist.
They typically have problems with resentment and impatience.
At their best, they are wise, discerning, realistic, and noble.
They can be morally heroic.
Okay.
Now, Idealistic and rational.
You got the best of both worlds.
Now, does this describe me?
Well, of course.
I am a hero.
I mean, obviously this describes me.
I totally see myself in this.
Maybe the stuff about being organized, I can't quite claim that for myself.
Even right now in this very room.
Well, you can see my bookshelf.
Look at my bookshelf.
Does that look like the bookshelf of an organized person?
But this is my point.
Obviously, I would love to see myself in this.
It's nothing but a glowingly positive review of my personality.
And the only negatives it throws in there are the kinds of negatives you would say in a job interview if you're asked, what are your weaknesses?
And so, you know, the negative is I'm a little too critical and perfectionist, and I can be impatient.
It's like, okay, I mean, I'm fine with admitting that about myself.
And it's true, actually.
But here's the problem.
This applies to almost everybody, okay?
Almost everyone is impatient.
Almost everyone can tend to be critical.
Almost everybody is a perfectionist in some areas of life.
And then the rest of it is just a bunch of compliments that, yes, I would love to believe that.
Yes, I would love for... So, see, this isn't so much describing me.
It's more like, this is what I wish I was.
But I don't know if I actually am.
And, uh, and I'm sure if I looked at every, you know, type twos and type threes and fours and fives, it would be very similar.
Like mostly a bunch of really good stuff, stuff that I would love if it, if it described me, um, with a few token negatives thrown in there.
But that's why people believe in personality tests because they see it, they're flattered by it and they see themselves quote unquote, because it's exactly what they want to believe about themselves.
Now, if a personality test had any hope of being really valid,
there would have to be personality types that are pretty much 100% negative.
There would have to be some personality tests that are the reverse of this, where there
are a few minor positives, but most of it is really negative.
There would have to be personality tests where the result comes back and says, you're
a boring, uninteresting person.
You have no original ideas.
You're a follower.
You're weak.
You're a coward.
Um, and you know, nobody likes you.
It, because there are people like that in the world.
Who knows?
Maybe you're looking at one of them.
I mean, but I would never think that about myself.
I couldn't possibly think that you could never see yourself that way.
But we've all met people who seem to have almost no redeeming personality traits at all.
We've all met just miserable... There should be a personality type that says, you are a miserable a-hole.
End of discussion, that's what you are.
Because those people exist, yet they don't exist on personality tests, because nobody wants to be that.
If a miserable a-hole took a personality test and it came back as a miserable a-hole, Because they are miserable a-holes, they would conclude that, oh, this thing is broken.
That thing doesn't work.
That's not me.
No, show me a personality type.
This is what I want.
Are there any personality tests?
Where it could come back with a bunch of positive glowing things like this, but it's also possible that there are personality types that you could be diagnosed with that are really negative.
Show me that personality test.
Maybe there's a possibility that it's sort of valid.
Because you just cannot convince me.
I'm sorry.
I've met people.
We all have.
It's just not true that everybody has a basically positive personality.
That's not... I wish it were true, but it's not.
Finally from Justin says, I'm a big fan of the podcast, appreciate everything you do.
I'm a 22 year old Christian, have been all my life.
You've been a 22 year old Christian all your life, huh?
Defying, you're defying the, I guess I just got through with saying, you know, everybody, we're all mortal and time catches up with all of us, but you've been 22 years old your whole life.
Anyway, sorry.
I'm an a-hole, remember?
That's my personality type.
Hopefully you can give some insight into this question, which is, which is older?
Christianity, parentheses Judaism, or Hinduism?
Throughout school, all my history classes seem to teach that Hinduism is the oldest religion.
This seems to be the consensus online as well.
The age of the religion is typically based on the earliest known evidence of its existence.
Both religions claim to be the oldest, since both have creation stories.
As a Christian, I believe that Christianity is older, but I was wondering how you would answer this question, and what evidence you would point to for your answer.
Well, Justin, Christianity...
is definitely not even in the running for the oldest religion in the world.
I get that you're incorporating Judaism, and you're saying that's what makes Christianity the oldest, but I don't think you can do that.
I mean, there's no question the religion of Christianity began with the resurrection and ascension of Jesus in the age 33 or thereabouts.
That's Christianity's beginning date, and Christianity is unique, or nearly unique, Among world religions in that it has an almost precise beginning date.
Most religions don't.
Some do, but most don't.
Which is what makes it hard to say exactly how old Judaism is or Hinduism.
But if you go with archaeological and textual evidence, the most generous estimate you could probably come up with for Judaism At least with the Jewish text, the Jewish Bible, the oldest texts in the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament.
I think the most generous estimate, and what most evangelical biblical scholars will say probably, is that they were written in around 1500 BC.
That's probably as far as you could push it.
Most sort of secular scholars will say it was more like maybe 600 BC that it was written.
But okay, even let's put it at 1500.
The problem is that Hinduism does have evidence of its existence, both in its texts and in, you know, if you look at monuments and sculptures and so on, there is evidence of its existence going back a thousand years before that.
So, that's just, that's where the evidence points.
But, if your history textbooks are saying that Hinduism is the oldest religion, period, then your textbooks are still wrong.
So your suspicions that there might be some incorrect information here, I think, are well-founded, because that is definitely not the case.
Hinduism is definitely not the oldest religion.
Now, if the question is, oldest currently still-practiced religion, then maybe you can make a case for Hinduism, though Zoroastrianism, which is an ancient Persian religion, is probably even older.
But if it's oldest religion, period, then you gotta go back to, like, the fertility cults before the Neolithic era, 30-40,000 years ago, or even later, or earlier than that.
They've got evidence of religious practices.
So, those would probably be the oldest religions.
The oldest religion still around today, maybe make an argument for Hinduism or Astronism, still is practiced by some people, I think, which is probably older, but no, I don't think it's Judaism.
Which, you know, I don't see that as a problem.
The oldest doesn't mean the truest, because if the oldest is the truest, then we should all be fertility cultists, right?
We should all still be practicing the primitive religions that they practiced before the agricultural, before the advent of Agricultural societies.
I don't think anyone thinks that.
So, oldest just doesn't, you know, mean.
I don't think oldest translates to most credible or closest to the truth or whatever.
This is just a question of archaeology and what the evidence tells us.
Yeah, I don't think the evidence points to Judaism being the oldest religion.
Not even close to it, honestly.
Alright, good question though.
Thanks for the question.
And I wrap that up with, of course, the disclaimer that I'm not a historian or an archaeologist myself, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.
This is just based on my own reading.
But thanks for that.
We will leave it there.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Godspeed.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, and if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe as well.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro Show, Michael Knoll Show, and the Andrew Klavan Show.
Thanks for listening.
The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, Executive Producer Jeremy Boring, Senior Producer Jonathan Hay, Supervising Producer Mathis Glover, Supervising Producer Robert Sterling, Technical Producer Austin Stevens, Editor Donovan Fowler, Audio Mixer Robin Fenderson.
The Matt Wall Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.
Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
We're going to be talking about matters of life and death today.
President Trump standing up for life and basketball great Kobe Bryant has died.
