Hollywood's moral heroism was on display at the Oscars last night. The whole world was inspired, as always. Also, Joe Biden releases the most tone deaf ad of the campaign season. And is it still too early to talk about Kobe's rape case? Lots of people seem to think so.
Check out The Cold War: What We Saw, a new podcast written and presented by Bill Whittle at https://www.dailywire.com/coldwar. In Part 1 we peel back the layers of mystery cloaking the Terror state run by the Kremlin, and watch as America takes its first small steps onto the stage of world leadership.
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Well, not that beautiful, but from a hotel in Atlanta, in any case, and I was speaking at a church yesterday, and that was a lot of fun, great turnout, talking about my book, Church of Cowards, which comes out on February 25th, but you can pre-order right now.
Go do that right now.
I demand on Amazon.com.
That's Church of Cowards.
Again, February 25th is when it comes out.
So, did you guys catch the Oscars last night?
I can tell you that I, well, I was at my event for a good part of the night, but I came home.
I did turn it on for maybe 90 seconds in the hotel, and it was just in time to hear an adult person, Sigourney Weaver, Stand on stage, and this was right, I've turned it on right at this moment.
Perfect moment for me to turn it on.
Right at the moment when she said the sentence, all women are superheroes.
And then everybody applauded.
Now if you want to understand how Utterly vacuous and meaningless, a statement like that is.
Just imagine how it would sound if you said it about men.
Okay?
If you said, all men are superheroes.
Everybody would say, what?
What do you mean all men are superheroes?
What does that even mean?
What are you talking about?
Obviously, some men are great.
Other men are atrocious human beings.
A lot of them are sort of mediocre.
Case in point, there's nothing about being a man that automatically bestows virtue, much less heroism.
And the same, of course, is true of women.
This is to say nothing of the fact, and you know what I'm going to say next, you know where it's going, but I can't resist.
It's to say nothing of the fact that nobody in Hollywood can even define the word woman, so any statement they make about women is inherently without substance.
By the way, if all women are superheroes, Andrea Yates, superhero, Eva Braun?
Aileen Wuornos, the serial killer?
Bloody Mary?
Superheroes, huh?
All of them superheroes.
But of course, the thing is we know that you can mark it down.
Remember all of this girl power stuff the moment that Trump nominates Amy Coney Barrett For the Supreme Court, which probably now will happen in his second term.
When that happens, remember all this girl power stuff, because it's going out the window.
It's getting chucked out the window from the 50th floor, and it's tumbling all the way down to the sidewalk, and it's gonna shatter into a million pieces.
It's gone.
Speaking of female empowerment at the Oscars, Natalie Portman, And, you know, I'm serious about this.
Natalie Portman, I know I've been critical up until now, but Portman made one of the boldest and bravest statements I've ever seen anyone make at the Oscars or anywhere else.
Period.
In life.
I'm stunned by it.
They will build statues and monuments to this moment.
History books will tell of this moment.
Folk songs will be sung.
I was up all night thinking about it.
I'm going to tell my kids about it, my grandchildren.
Down through the generations, people will be inspired by this.
I want you to take a look.
Watch this.
How did you decide to do this?
I wanted to recognize the women who were not recognized for their incredible work this year in my subtle way.
Wow. Wow. Wow. She embroidered her Dior cape with the names of female directors who had not been nominated.
Thank you.
Here's the thing, when I'm wearing my $30,000 Dior cape, custom designed, it never occurs to me to embroider a socially conscious message on it.
And honestly, if it did occur to me, I don't know if I would have the courage to do it.
I'm stunned by it.
I am blown away.
I don't even know what to say.
But unrelated, I was thinking about this, totally unrelated, but Considering Natalie Portman does this every year at the Oscars where she complains about women directors not being recognized, so if I were to look at her IMDB page, let's say, not that I don't trust her or believe her or anything, of course believe all women, but if I were to check her films,
Will I see that she solely or at least mostly works with female directors?
As someone who's so concerned with making sure that female directors are elevated and amplified and lifted up and recognized, you would think that she would make a point of working with female directors, right?
So, let's see.
I mean, I got the page right here.
Let's just take a look.
I'm sure we're going to find That Natalie Portman is true to her word and has the courage of her convictions.
I'm sure we'll find that.
I have utter confidence.
So, looking at her IMDB page this past year, we'll see.
This past year, she made a movie called Lucy in the Sky.
Male director.
Okay.
The year before that, she made a movie.
She was starring in a movie called Vox Lux.
Male director.
Before that, she starred in a movie called Annihilation.
Male director.
Before that, she starred in Jackie.
Male director.
Before that, Jane Got a Gun.
Male director.
Before that, a movie called A Tale of Love and Darkness.
Here we go.
Female director.
You gotta go all the way back to 2015, but she did.
See?
There you go.
Female director.
And that was, uh, who was that?
That was... Natalie Portman.
Oh wait, she directed that herself.
So in five years, she starred in one female-directed movie, and it was her movie that she directed.
I mean, you can't accuse her of not supporting female directors.
It's just that the only female directors she supports are herself.
I mean, it's almost like Portman herself, when it comes down to it, likes to be in movies that she thinks will be good.
Even though almost all those movies I just named off are crap, but movies she thinks will be good, and work with directors who she thinks will do great work regardless of their sex.
It seems like for her professional life, she judges based on merit and not sexual organs.
Because it would be actually very bizarre, it turns out, and demeaning and dehumanizing to say to a woman, I don't think your work is necessarily all that great, I don't think there's anything necessarily special about you as a person, but I'm going to work with you because of your reproductive organs.
You have a vagina, and so that's why I'm on your team.
See, Portman isn't going to say that to somebody.
Nobody would, because it's crazy.
It's completely crazy.
And yet feminists expect the rest of us to operate this way.
They don't, but we should.
Even though, again, they don't even actually think that reproductive organs have anything to do with sex anyway.
So it's all confused.
Okay, now here's something that's not confusing.
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It brings a smile even to my face, and I only smile about two or three times a year.
I have it on schedule, on the calendar.
And so we had different cuts of meat that they sent us, different steaks, different cuts of pork, and it was all delicious.
I especially loved the sirloin.
And listen, I know what you're thinking.
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All right.
I'm going to move on from the Oscars, but one other quick thing.
Joaquin Phoenix won Best Actor for Joker, and I think it was well-deserved.
It was an extraordinary performance.
But I want you to imagine, first of all, how Jared Leto feels right now, because Jared Leto played Joker in Suicide Squad, which was an abysmal movie.
And so think about Jared Leto.
The guy who had his role before him wins an Oscar.
The guy who had his role after him wins an Oscar.
And really, when you think about You think about the Joker character on film.
Almost everyone who's portrayed this character has ended up with an iconic performance.
Jack Nicholson's Joker.
Iconic.
Even Mark Hamill's Joker in the animated series.
Iconic.
Heath Ledger's Joker.
Oscar winner.
Joaquin Phoenix's Joker.
Oscar winner.
Jared Leto's Joker.
Employee of the month at Hot Topic.
I think that's all he won.
So that's tough.
That's tough for his self-esteem.
But anyway, so Phoenix got up there after winning and launched into a lengthy lecture that I can't even play for you because I think it's still going on as we speak.
But here's just one snippet of that that caught my ear.
Listen.
We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow, and when she gives birth, we steal her baby.
Even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable, And then we take her milk that's intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.
I have to say, I really wasn't expecting to hear cow insemination mentioned during the show, but here we are.
And I want you to think about vegans.
Think about a left-wing pro-abortion vegan, which presumably is what would describe Joaquin Phoenix.
I don't really know.
I'm assuming he's probably not pro-life.
Doesn't strike me as that, but who knows.
Many vegans are pro-abortion.
My only point is, for pro-abortion vegans, their actual position is this, that it is a greater moral tragedy to drink milk than it is to crush a baby's skull in the womb.
That is the actual position of pro-abortion vegans.
But nice speech and nice performance anyway.
Well, I don't know if I'd say nice speech, but entertaining, from Joaquin Phoenix.
Now, moving on, I have, look, I've got no dog in this fight, really, and usually I don't care about political ads or take any time to analyze them, but I did want to take a look at this.
Joe Biden is swinging and flailing as he goes down in flames, kind of doing the same thing to, trying to do the same thing to Buttigieg that Chris Christie did to, Marco Rubio in 2016, where he knew he was going down, but he's going to take Marco Rubio with him.
And that's what seems like Biden's trying to do.
I guess because Biden is 872 years old and Buttigieg is 12, and so Biden as this ancient man is, I guess, figures there's some symmetry to it.
He's thinking, look, if the oldest guy is going down, then so is the youngest guy.
So he released this ad that people on social media seem to think is devastating to Mayor Pete.
I really disagree, but watch this.
Barack Obama called Joe Biden... Best vice president America's ever had.
But Pete Buttigieg doesn't think much of the vice president's record.
Let's compare.
When President Obama called on him, Joe Biden helped lead the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which gave health care to 20 million people.
And when park goers called on Pete Buttigieg, he installed decorative lights under bridges, giving citizens of South Bend colorfully illuminated rivers.
Both Vice President Biden and former Mayor Buttigieg have taken on tough fights.
Under threat of a nuclear Iran, Joe Biden helped to negotiate the Iran deal.
And under threat of disappearing pets, Buttigieg negotiated lighter licensing regulations on pet chip scanners.
Both Vice President Biden and former Mayor Pete have helped shape our economy.
Joe Biden helped save the auto industry, which revitalized the economy of the Midwest, and led the passage and implementation of the Recovery Act, saving our economy from a depression.
Pete Buttigieg revitalized the sidewalks of downtown South Bend by laying out decorative brick.
And both Biden and Buttigieg have made hard decisions.
Despite pressure from the NRA, Jill Biden passed the assault weapons ban through Congress.
Then, he passed the Violence Against Women Act.
And even when public pressure mounted against him, former Mayor Pete fired the first African-American police chief of South Bend.
And then he forced out the African-American fire chief, too.
We're electing a president.
What you've done matters.
After that video was released, One of Biden's campaign staffers tweeted, gloating, that the video has more views than the population of South Bend.
And see, that's exactly the problem.
This whole thing has a very, has a real sort of, I'm an important DC guy and you're just some bumpkin yokel mayor energy to it.
And that's exactly the wrong kind of energy.
That you want to bring into a campaign.
What's the point of this ad really?
Aside from the racism accusations at the very end that are sort of tacked on at the end because I guess Democrats are not capable of making an attack ad against anyone without accusing them of racism, so you have to add it at some point.
Even if it's just at the end, hey, by the way, P.S., he's also racist.
But before that, the rest of it is, essentially, Mayor Pete is an attentive mayor who took care of things that the folks in the town care about.
Like putting lights under bridges and fixing the sidewalk.
Devastating.
Ooh-hoo-hoo.
Devastating.
This ad could not be any more tone-deaf than if it was about a female candidate and it said, like, while Biden was saving the world, this woman was changing diapers.
See, attack candidates for not doing their jobs.
Don't attack them for doing their job on the basis that the job they did was petty.
That kind of attack never works.
Especially when old people vote, okay?
Joe Biden should know something about old people.
Old people vote, and old people are exactly the ones who get fired up about local issues like bad sidewalks and a lack of proper bridge lighting.
I've been to town halls, I know this.
So, what is this ad saying?
It's saying not just that Mayor Pete is a young whippersnapper and hasn't done anything important.
It's that the concerns of small-town Americans are unimportant.
That's what the ad is saying.
Now, at least it could be taken that way.
Easily.
I'm not necessarily saying that I take it that way.
I don't take offense to it.
And honestly, I get kind of sick of all the sucking up to small-town America that candidates do.
And I say that as somebody who lives in a small town.
I live in a very small town myself.
And I like living in a small town.
But I don't need the constant thing of, oh, small-town America.
I don't need it.
Just shut up.
I know it's pandering.
It's patronizing.
It is a version of Sigourney Weaver saying all women are superheroes.
If I was a woman, which I could be as far as you know, I wouldn't want to hear that.
I don't need some celebrity saying, you're a superhero, let me give you a star, here's a sticker.
I don't need that from candidates.
I don't need, you're a great small town America, we love you.
But, that being said, so I don't need the sucking up, but to be condescending and dismissive On the other end of the spectrum, is definitely not the right strategy.
Okay?
And that seems like that's what Biden's doing here.
Or again, it's very easy to spin it that way, and that's exactly what Buttigieg did, because he, like it or not, is a smart politician.
And so you give him an ad like this, this is a godsend.
This is exactly the kind of attack he wants.
So his campaign responded and said, at this moment the American people are crying out for something completely different from this classic Washington style of politics.
While Washington politics trivializes what goes on in communities like South Bend, South Bend residents who now have better jobs, rising income, a new life in their city, don't think their lives are a Washington politician's punchline.
Pete's on-the-ground experience as mayor turning around a Midwestern industrial city is exactly why he's running for president.
The vice president's decision to run this ad speaks more to where he currently stands in this race than it does about Pete's perspective as a mayor and veteran.
Right.
And that's, that's a good response.
And, and one that Biden walked right into.
That's, I think that response completely neutralizes the ad.
And, um, and so that's, but Biden is a, is at this point, one of the least talented politicians we've seen in a long time.
He just has no sense of anything.
Not just him, but his campaign team.
Whoever put this ad together.
Not to mention, Biden is taking credit for stuff that he didn't even do.
Vice presidents are about as decorative as the lights under those bridges.
In fact, more decorative.
Because the lights under the bridges?
That's there for a reason.
It's to stop boats from running into them at night.
So there's kind of a practical reason for that.
Vice presidents aren't stopping boats from running into bridges.
They're not doing anything.
They're glorified first ladies.
They'll take on the position of president if the president dies, but if he doesn't, then they don't get credit for doing the job by proxy.
They didn't do anything.
So when Biden says, I negotiated deals and passed Obamacare, what he should be saying is, I smiled on camera next to the people who negotiated deals and passed Obamacare.
Not that the deals or, you know, sending billions of dollars to Iran in cash or signing or passing Obamacare, that's nothing to be proud of, first of all, but it doesn't matter anyway because he didn't do that stuff.
And this is all to say nothing of the awkward fact that Obama hasn't even endorsed Biden.
So he goes on and on about Obama, his experience with Obama.
Well, there's a pretty conspicuous silence here from Obama on this.
So it's like if I'm trying to get a job and I'm bragging to the interviewer that I was really good friends with the company's old boss.
And then the interviewer says, I keep hitting my cough here, then the interviewer says, oh, okay, well, is he on your list of references?
What?
Oh, no, no, no.
I didn't put him on the list.
He doesn't want to be a reference or actually endorse me for the position.
But trust me, he thinks I did a great job.
He told me.
He told me I could tell you that he thinks I did a great job.
You don't have to ask him.
You can't call him up anyway.
It's early.
He's sleeping.
Oh, we could just call him in the afternoon.
No, you can't call him in the afternoon.
He'll be sleeping then, too.
He's in a coma, turns out.
Actually, I forgot to mention.
He's in a boating accident.
Ran into a jet skier.
Very, very tragic.
So, just take my word for it, though.
So, there's the awkward silence there.
Not that, of course, taking credit for things you didn't do is a pretty common political strategy.
So, I don't think that's going to hurt him very much.
But attacking the, from his perspective, small or unimportant priorities of small town America, not a great strategy.
Another thing that's probably not a great strategy, though I enjoy it as a viewer, is Biden's penchant for insulting his potential voters to their faces.
And he's been doing this a lot recently.
And really, this is the only time I ever like him anymore, when these videos pop up of him randomly insulting his voters and calling them names.
And it happened again over the weekend.
Here he is at a recent campaign stop, yet again, launching into an insult against a voter who made the mistake of asking him a question.
Watch this.
So how do you explain the performance in Iowa, and why should the voters believe that you can win the national election?
It's a good question.
Number one, I was a Democratic caucus.
You ever been to a caucus?
No, you haven't.
You're a lying dog-faced pony soldier.
You said you were, but now you got to be honest.
I'm going to be honest with you.
It was a little bit confusing in Iowa, number one.
But let's assume it was all, everything was exactly right in Iowa.
The idea that you come in with about half the delegates that the leaders come in with in Iowa does not necessarily say how you're going to win Pennsylvania, how you're going to win Michigan, where, by the way, the Black Caucus of the Michigan Legislature just endorsed me in spite of all of this, where the unions have endorsed me in spite of all this, etc.
You can't win Lying, dog-faced pony soldier.
I don't even know what that means.
I have no idea what that means.
But it's a great insult.
I want to go around calling people that now.
I'm waiting for an opportunity to call someone a lying, dog-faced pony soldier.
But probably not a great thing to say to your voters, especially a woman who you just called dog-faced.
What?
And all she did was ask a really Fair, respectful question.
But it's hysterical.
I gotta say, I love it.
I want to go to a Biden campaign event just to be roasted by him.
I think he should drop out and just become an insult comic.
He should do those roasts on Comedy Central.
That should be his thing.
Because he's good at that.
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Okay.
Wanted to talk about this.
A couple of days ago, a clip was posted of Gayle King.
CBS journalist interviewing Lisa Leslie, who's a WNBA player and a longtime friend of Kobe Bryant.
And in the clip, Gayle King asks Leslie about Kobe's rape case back in 2003.
Let me play that clip for you here.
It's been said that his legacy is complicated because of a sexual assault charge which was dismissed in 2003, 2004.
in 2003, 2004.
Is it complicated for you as a woman, as a WNBA player?
It's not complicated for me at all.
Even if there's a few times that we've been at a club at the same time, Kobe's not the kind of guy, never been like, you know, please go get that girl or tell her or send her this.
I have other NBA friends that are like that.
Kobe's, he was never like that.
I just never see, have ever seen him being the kind of person that would be Do something to violate a woman or be aggressive in that way.
That's just not the person that I know.
But Lisa, you wouldn't see it though.
As his friend, you wouldn't see it.
And that's possible.
I just, it's just, I just don't, I just don't believe that.
And I'm not saying things didn't happen.
I just don't believe that things didn't happen with force.
Is it even a fair question to talk about it, considering he's no longer with us and that it was resolved?
Or is it really part of his history?
I think that the media should be more respectful at this time.
It's like if you had questions about it, you've had many years to ask him that.
I don't think it's something that we should keep hanging over his legacy.
I mean, it went to trial.
Yeah, it was dismissed because the victim in the case refused to testify.
So it was dismissed.
And I think that that's how we should leave it.
Now that was taken from a longer interview that covered the life and legacy of Kobe Bryant, and this was just one line of questioning in an otherwise favorable segment on Kobe Bryant.
But nonetheless, people freaked out, accused King of disrespecting Kobe's memory, etc., etc., and there were people issuing death threats and everything.
As, unfortunately, we've come to expect in these situations.
But one of the people that issued a threat of violence, seemingly, was Snoop Dogg, who had this to say about the interview.
Gayle King.
Out of pocket for that s***.
Way out of pocket.
What do you gain from that?
I swear to God, we the worst.
We the f***ing worst.
We expect more from you, Gail.
Don't you hang out with Oprah?
Why are y'all attacking us?
We your people.
You ain't coming after Harvey Weinstein and asking him dumb questions.
I get sick of y'all.
I want to call you one.
Is it okay if I call him one?
Funky dog-headed bitch.
How dare you try to tarnish my motherfucking homeboy's reputation.
Punk motherfucker.
Respect the family and back off.
Before we come get you.
Okay, hopefully we can all agree that this kind of reaction is totally beyond the pale and wrong and stupid.
And hopefully we can also agree that Snoop Dogg might be the most overrated person in the history of the music industry.
My six-year-old could write more interesting lyrics than this guy.
But, in any case, that aside, it should be generally agreed that threatening violence and that sort of thing is ludicrous and morally atrocious.
But I don't want to talk about the most extreme overreactions.
I want to talk about the sort of general feeling that people seem to have that after a famous person dies, or really after anybody dies, we're immediately supposed to shove the negative aspects of their lives into the memory hole and pretend it never happened.
And that must actually be the position of King's critics, considering she's a journalist, it's two weeks since his death, she's doing an interview, she's talking about Kobe Bryant, and she mentions it for like one minute in that interview.
People are upset about it, so I guess what they're saying is, that subject should not be broached at all.
We should simply not talk about it at all, we should pretend it never happened.
When we talk about Kobe Bryant, and we talk about his life, okay, so you could talk about when he was a kid, you could talk about when he was in high school, you could go through, but once you get to that little episode, you gotta leapfrog right over it and continue on along.
That's what people seem to be saying.
Which is a problem because it's not really a little episode.
It's kind of a big episode.
And I'm not saying Kobe is guilty.
I don't know.
I said a couple weeks ago that there are good reasons to doubt the accusations.
And that's true.
But there are also compelling reasons to potentially believe them.
Such as the fact that the woman went to the police basically right away.
She didn't wait 20 years and then come out about it.
She allegedly told a friend right away about it.
She had bruising on her that Kobe admitted was from choking her.
She was bleeding.
And he eventually paid her off.
It didn't go to trial because she decided she didn't want to testify, which maybe that means she was lying, but it could also mean that he's a beloved sports figure and she's just a peon like you or me, and she knows that his high-powered defense team is going to tear her apart and eat her for breakfast and bring all her skeletons out of the closet, and she doesn't want to go through that.
So she backed out.
So that could be it too.
We don't know.
We just don't know.
Did Kobe commit the rape?
I think that question is very much in the air.
But it is unreasonable to declare his innocence as if the case against him was laughable, like it was against Kavanaugh.
And I've heard people say, oh, there's no evidence.
There was no evidence against him.
There was evidence.
First of all, somebody accusing you of a crime In and of itself is evidence.
Now, I'm not saying it's anything close to conclusive evidence, and depending on the circumstances, it might not be very good evidence, like with Kavanaugh, but a witness, in this case the victim themselves, saying this person did it, that is a piece of evidence that you have to weigh against everything else.
It's just like if you were accused of murdering somebody else.
And they didn't have any physical evidence, but they had a witness saying, I saw him do it.
That would be evidence.
Not enough to convict you, but it is evidence.
So saying there's no evidence, you can't really say that.
But also on top of that, they had the bruising, they did have physical evidence, they had his own admission about choking her.
Okay.
And what does it mean?
It means that maybe he raped a woman, maybe he didn't.
But maybe he did.
At a minimum, he was a serial adulterer by his own admission.
That fact, that he had affairs, doesn't completely overshadow his achievements and his good points, but it is a fact about his life.
It just is.
Are we not supposed to deal with that fact at all?
I'm not saying it should be brought up in the eulogy or during the memorial service.
And I myself was critical of the people who immediately, within minutes of the death being reported, were online bringing it up and calling him a rapist and so on and so forth.
That to me is obviously inappropriate, especially when you consider it wasn't just him who died.
It was his daughter.
It was eight other people besides.
So to immediately, within minutes, the first thing you're doing is saying, oh, remember his rape case.
To me, obviously inappropriate.
But does that mean we're never supposed to talk about those things ever again?
We're supposed to rewrite his life story?
We're supposed to turn it into something more palatable, more family-friendly, because we're uncomfortable with this detail?
And this is what we do with death.
We lie.
We ignore.
We make posthumous alterations to people's lives.
We canonize almost everybody who dies.
Not everyone.
And this determination can be a little arbitrary, right?
Because there are some people who die, and for them, the negatives are the only things we remember.
For example, he's not dead yet, but what do you think is going to happen when OJ dies?
You think people are going to observe a respectful silence about his murder trial?
No, it's going to be the first thing.
It's going to be in the headlines, right?
Accused murderer O.J.
Simpson dies.
That's going to be the headline.
That's going to be the main thing people talk about with him.
But O.J.
Simpson was a sports legend too.
He was an icon before the murder charge.
He was not only an icon in sports, but after that in pop culture.
He starred in movies.
He was a beloved figure.
And he was found not guilty.
I think he was guilty, but none of us can ever really know.
Yet for him, I think we all know it's going to be different.
What about when Paterno died?
The Penn State rape scandal was very much at the forefront of our discussion about him, even though he had this long, very long career and had done many great things in the community and many great things for the kids who played for him.
But the main thing we talked about was this.
So I think there's some arbitrariness to this.
The people that we decide after they die, oh, they're a saint.
And that's all we're going to say, and then there are other people who die, and we say, okay, well, here's the one bad thing they maybe did, and that's the only thing we're going to talk about.
So it's pretty arbitrary.
Generally, though, with dead people, what we do is we usually go the positive direction, and we do these rewrites, these edits, where it's not just that we ignore the bad, but we actually implicitly deny that the bad ever happened.
And with famous people, this process can happen very fast, and it can be very extreme, to the point that with someone like Kobe, the posthumous canonization and sanctification and whitewashing goes way, way, way overboard.
Way overboard.
We go from remembering a great ball player, to suddenly we're talking about the dude like he's Mother Teresa, with ball handling skills.
Like he's basically a basketball-playing Mother Teresa.
I mean, people who didn't even know him go around talking about, oh, he's a great husband, great family man, which maybe he was.
Maybe he was.
But, I mean, I don't know.
Most of us have no idea.
And if he was a great husband, it was after the adultery and the potential rape.
So maybe after that he became a great husband.
Maybe he did.
You know, I don't know.
But...
I just don't get how people feel entitled after someone dies.
They feel like, well, as long as I'm saying something positive, I can basically lie about the person.
And I can make up details that I couldn't possibly know to be true.
As long as it's positive, I can do it.
And I can throw out, I can discard the bad things that I do know about.
I can just throw it out.
I can just pretend it didn't happen.
And why?
You know?
What's the point?
Like I said, we do this with non-famous people too.
Many of us have seen this process play out closer to home.
Somebody dies, someone close.
Someone who was definitely human, you know, had serious flaws, as all of us do.
Maybe someone who was a bit of a selfish jerk, if we're being honest, or had that side to them.
Maybe it's an older person who, in truth, really wasn't the greatest mother or the greatest father, actually was kind of self-absorbed, actually kind of neglected their kids for long periods of time, was kind of emotionally absent.
And then they die, and almost immediately in our conversations, they become someone who bears no resemblance to the person who really lived.
We start rewriting them, right?
It's not merely a matter of focusing on the good in the immediate aftermath, which of course you're going to do.
And, like I said, in the eulogy, at the funeral, In the hospital, if the person dies in the hospital, the things you're talking about.
So in those immediate moments, in those emotionally charged moments, yeah, you're talking about the positive.
And that's a normal thing to do.
But the problem is that so often with death, when somebody dies, we begin that rewriting process not just in the immediate aftermath, but that's how it stays forever in our memory.
We have turned this person into someone that they weren't.
I think we shouldn't do this.
We think we're respecting the dead when we do this, but we're not.
We're lying.
Would you respect a living person today by telling lies about them?
By making up facts about them?
By trying to improve them?
By lying about them?
How is that respect?
It's the opposite.
Because part of respecting something or someone is to recognize it for what it is.
And that's why respect has multiple connotations.
We also talk about If you're going for a walk in the woods in Montana, you should respect the bears that are in Montana by bringing some bear spray with you.
Now, respect here means not admiration, but recognition of what a bear is, what its presence means.
Well, I think we should respect people, alive and dead, in the same way.
Recognizing them for what they are or what they were, who they were, who they are.
Letting them exist, whether in reality or in our memory, authentically.
We should pay them that respect of letting them be who they are or who they were.
And trying to remember them that way.
It can be difficult, of course, with people that are close to you.
But with famous people, it shouldn't be that hard, because we're not... Yes, they were a part of our lives in some way, but only in a very distant kind of way.
We had no real connection with them.
All right.
So, you know, with someone like Kobe Bryant, I guess my, to summarize, I don't see why,
why can't we say, what's wrong when talking about Kobe?
What's wrong with saying, great basketball player, legend of the game, did a lot of great things in the community, his family seems to have loved him, his community seems to have loved him, but he had a dark side, and he was credibly accused of rape.
And he was not always a loyal husband.
Why can't it be that?
Yes, that's not very neat.
It's not a neat picture of a person.
You can't wrap a nice bow on it.
And it's hard, when you acknowledge that about someone, it's hard to turn them into a historic hero that can be worshipped and that you could build monuments to.
It's true.
But he's a person.
That's how people are.
It's really difficult.
So most people are not neat like that.
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All right, let's go to emails.
Matt Walsh show at gmail.com.
Matt Walsh show at gmail.com.
A lot of interesting ones.
I'm just going to read one email to wrap up this conversation that I wasn't expecting so much feedback and participation in it, but this thing about the simulation theory, the theory that we're all living in a simulation.
None of us are real.
We're like virtual reality.
We're not even that, but we're like video game characters basically.
This is a theory that Some people have postulated, and apparently it has, at least based on my inbox right now, it has a fair number of advocates, or at least, if not advocates, at least people who take it seriously.
And so, we were talking about that.
Let me read one email from... Who is this from?
From Matt.
Says, Hi Matt, I was listening to your rebuttal of simulation theory and couldn't help but feel like you missed the point a bit.
Bostrom postulates that one of the following must necessarily be true.
One, the fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a post-human stage, that is, one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations, is very close to zero.
Or, two, the fraction of post-human civilizations that are interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history, or variations thereof, is very close to zero.
Or, three, the fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.
Again, one of these must be true.
Therefore, your criticism that the theory ignores probability misses the mark.
As the argument is entirely based on probability.
Your argument about Sims and Mario and other video game characters doesn't work because the simulated humans postulated in the theory would be designed by post-humans who possess technology far beyond our comprehension.
We aren't talking about some low-powered Nintendo or Xbox where the goal is to just play a game.
Personally, I find the first choice of the three entirely possible.
Humanity just won't get to the stage where we are able to do that because we'll be wiped out by ourselves or others before it happens.
The second choice seems highly unlikely to me.
If we get to a post-human stage where we have the technology to run advanced ancestor simulations of humans throughout history, to find out what makes them tick, We'll almost certainly do so, because that is the exploratory nature of humans, and I see no reason to assume that we will lose that over time.
Therefore, if we do reach the stage in our evolution, or have already reached that stage, and we just don't know it because we are in one of their simulations, the number of simulated minds will no doubt outnumber the number of real minds by a staggering order of magnitude because of all the different simulations people throughout the world will be running.
Therefore, it is probable that we are more likely Simulated than not, assuming we aren't going to be wiped out before creating advanced simulation technology.
When Rogan interviewed Bostrom, he was unable to get past the question, why assume any of these three statements are true?
Keep in mind that one of these three statements has to be correct.
This is not the same as assuming there's a pink unicorn circling the earth or something like that.
Thanks, love the show.
Okay.
So, basically what you're saying is, probability-wise, either we are simulated people and not real, or humanity's going to be wiped out in some sort of nuclear catastrophe or something like that.
Those are the two possibilities.
That's all we get.
Rather grim.
I like it.
I like grim.
I like grim.
So, okay, I do understand the point of the simulation theory, but maybe my rebuttal was off in the weeds.
So let me try to refocus more on the point.
So the argument is, if I can simplify here, that there's this idea of a simulation that a future society might run, simulating the past so they can observe and see what it was like.
And maybe we are currently in that simulation.
We are characters in it.
And a future civilization is watching us.
Hoping that we don't catch on.
Or maybe hoping that we do.
I don't know.
As Bostrom says, either society never develops the ability to create the simulation and thus we aren't in one, or it develops the ability and decides not to and thus we aren't in one, or society develops the ability to create one and does and thus we might be in one.
Okay.
Well yes, I agree that those are the options.
But then those are the options for any imaginary technological ability that I might conjure in my head.
I could do this with literally anything.
Do you see the problem?
For example, I could say, either society never develops the ability to put dogs in a dream state where they think they're human and then imagine a human life with human experiences and human memories, or it develops that ability and decides not to, or it develops that ability and decides to do it and thus I might actually be a dog in a laboratory dreaming of a human existence.
You have to admit, right?
That those are the options.
One of them must be true.
Which means you must admit that there's at least a chance that we're all a bunch of dogs, dreaming.
You can't prove you're not.
That is, theoretically, technology that could be developed.
Or maybe I'm just, maybe I'm the only real dog and you're all figments of my imagination.
Who knows?
Now, you could say that the ancestor simulation is more likely than the dog thing, but why would you say that?
I think that to me seems utterly arbitrary, because they're both entirely imaginary, invented hypotheticals.
There is no actual evidence for either.
There's no reason to believe it.
As in, you haven't seen anything in your life for which the best explanation of that particular thing, in isolation, is the simulation.
You've never experienced in your life a single thing where you could say, okay, the best explanation for this phenomena is that we're in a simulation.
Everything you see and experience can easily be explained by your physical and real existence.
So there just isn't any reason to think that there's anything beyond that.
Or that there isn't any reason to postulate anything besides that you exist physically and that's why you're experiencing stuff.
And that's another problem with the theory.
That the simulation to be worth doing would have to function exactly like real life, right?
Which means you can't say that there's something in your life that would be best explained by the simulation, because if the simulation seems like a simulation, then there's no point to it.
Which means that even if we're in the simulation, there could never be any reason to think we are, by definition.
So even if it's true, by far the most rational thing regardless is to still assume that it isn't true.
Which makes the theory useless, at best, because if it isn't true, it has no explanatory power.
And if it is true, it has no explanatory power.
That's the thing about a theory.
See, an actual theory has to explain something.
It has to have explanatory power, as in, you know, you come up with this theory, and now you're looking around the world at stuff, and you say, okay, well, this makes sense now.
That's what a theory does.
But by definition, this simulation hypothesis can have no explanatory power.
Because again, if it does, then that means that the simulation in some way seems like a simulation, which means it's a bad simulation and there's no point to it.
I mean, why would you have a simulation to see how people operated in the past if they know they're in the simulation and then that's going to throw off everything?
There's no point to doing it, right?
Also, you still haven't explained how a simulated being could have conscious experiences.
And you can't just say, well, technology will figure that out.
I mean, you can say that, but it's literally a deus ex machina.
You're invoking some random unexplained machine or tech to explain this massive hole in your theory.
How could a simulated being have inner experience?
It would seem that a simulated being could not have inner experience because inner experiences are themselves, in effect, simulations.
Your brain, organic matter, this is the only way we know how consciousness works.
Your brain, organic matter, takes bits of information from reality, reconstructs it in your mind, so that really we're all sort of hallucinating all the time.
We're all experiencing a hallucination every second of the day, in effect.
Because our brain is reconstructing from all the billions and trillions of bits of information, it's reconstructing.
And this is how illusions and things work, by manipulating what your brain predicts.
So that means the simulated beings would have themselves the capacity to simulate.
We are then simulated beings building simulations of the simulation.
You see how absurd this gets?
Especially when there is no known way, even in theory, to build such a machine.
Now, we know of ways, in theory, to travel across the galaxy, even if we have to use wormholes, which are also theoretical.
But in theory, we understand how that could work.
Nobody, even in theory, could tell you how it could work for a machine to create simulated beings that have consciousness.
Because we're not even talking about robots.
I mean, you could sooner argue that we're all a bunch of lifelike robots.
I mean, why not argue that?
You could do the same exact thing with that.
And at least robots are material.
Now, I still think that putting consciousness in a robot is impossible.
But the idea of having consciousness sort of hovering in the ether with these simulated beings, we have no way in theory of doing that.
One other thing, if humanity is moving inexorably towards building simulations with conscious experiences, which I don't think it is, and honestly, I think my dreaming dog theory is just as likely, but if it is, then wouldn't the simulation be headed in that direction too?
So wouldn't the simulation build simulations, and then the simulations in the simulations would also build simulations, and then the simulations in the simulations would build simulations in the simulation, you know, on and on and on?
So maybe we're the simulation of a simulation of a simulation of a simulation of a simulation of a simulation of a simulation and maybe all of this simulating is happening in the mind of a dreaming dog.
Maybe.
But there's no reason to think any of this.
There's no tangible evidence.
So that's my answer.
As fun as it is to Think about it.
At least for me.
You know, for me and you and some people emailing, it's fun to think about and talk about.
I suspect I may be boring everyone else to death.
So I will leave it there.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Have a great day.
Godspeed.
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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.
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Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
Well, Joaquin Phoenix won the Oscar for Joker and made a speech denouncing milk.
I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, Claven, the stuff you invent just cracks me up.
Nope, it really happened.
And I will tell you what it all means on The Andrew Claven Show.
