Ep. 579 - Yelp Creates Insane 'Racism' Tag For Businesses
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Yelp has introduced a new feature that will tag and label any business “accused of racist behavior.” What could possibly go wrong? Also Five Headlines including Nancy Pelosi invoking the 25th Amendment and Mel Gibson starring in a film about an alcoholic Santa Claus being hunted by a hitman. The Oscar buzz has already started. And today in a very serious and emotional Daily Cancellation, I will be canceling the people who have been cyber bullying me over the past day.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, Yelp has introduced a new feature that will tag and label any business that's accused of racist behavior.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, lots of things, and we'll talk about those things today.
Also, five headlines, including Nancy Pelosi invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump from office, and Mel Gibson starring in a film about an alcoholic Santa Claus who's being hunted by a hitman.
The Oscar buzz has already started on this movie.
Actually, the leftists are very upset about the movie because it involves Mel Gibson, and that's kind of funny, too.
So we'll talk about that.
And today, in a very serious and emotional daily cancellation, I will be canceling the people who've been cyberbullying me over the past day.
You're never going to guess why they're cyberbullying me, but they're going to get canceled.
All of that on the way.
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All right, well, the problem with calling anyone racist these days, of course, is that the word is like a blank space in a Mad Lib.
Fill it in however you like.
It can mean whatever you want it to mean.
This is by design, of course.
It's easier to weaponize the racism label if you don't have to worry about using the label correctly.
That's what makes the latest publicity stunt from Yelp so disturbing.
Now, Yelp has long been hated by some small business owners who complain that negative reviews on the site can have a significant impact on their business, despite being potentially inaccurate or malicious.
A recent documentary actually called Billion Dollar Bully claims that Yelp essentially extorts smaller companies demanding that they buy advertising in exchange for minimizing negative reviews.
That's what the documentary claims.
Yelp denies this charge and even bought the BillionDollarBully.com domain name and redirected it to a page on its own site clarifying, or claiming anyway, that it does not extort small businesses.
Now you can judge for yourself whether buying the domain name of a documentary that accuses you of dishonest tactics is itself a dishonest tactic.
What we can say, Yelp's latest innovation, which begs to be exploited by bad actors, is an official business accused of racist behavior alert.
Company explained the new system in a series of tweets.
Here's what they said.
Today, we're announcing a new consumer alert to stand against racism.
The last few months, we've seen that there is a clear need to warn consumers about businesses associated with egregious, racially charged actions to help people make more informed spending decisions.
Communities have always turned to Yelp in reaction to current events, and our user operations team already places alerts on business pages when we notice an unusual uptick in reviews that are based on what someone may have seen in the news, rather than on first-hand experience.
Now, when a business gains attention for reports of racist conduct, Yelp will place a new Business Accused of Racist Behavior alert on their Yelp page to inform users, along with a link to a news article where they can learn more.
Now the alert, which you can see here, and this will pop up for any business under suspicion of racism, says in big bold letters, business accused of racist behavior.
And then it explains, recently someone associated with this business was accused of racist behavior, resulting in an influx of people posting their views to this page.
Racism is reprehensible and has no place on Yelp.
And we unequivocally reject racism in any form.
Read about the reports of racist behavior here.
While we understand the desire to warn others about racist behavior associated with a business, all reviews on Yelp must reflect actual firsthand consumer experience.
We have temporarily disabled the ability to post here as we work to investigate the content.
What could go wrong?
Businesses will be tagged with the scarlet R and then Yelp will investigate to see if the claims are actually true.
How will Yelp know if they're true?
How will a business owner prove that a supposedly racist thing didn't happen?
Or that a supposedly racist statement wasn't made?
Classic case of guilty until proven innocent, and here there's no way at all you could possibly prove your innocence.
Keep in mind that racism is not just a vague and ambiguous word these days, but also, according to Black Lives Matter and other proponents of critical race theory, it's a word that applies to all white people inherently by nature of their whiteness.
You know, by this way of thinking, any action taken or words spoken by a white business owner is automatically racist at some level because racism is embedded in the structures of whiteness or some such nonsense.
It would seem that the only evidence needed to prove a racism charge against a business owner is that business owner's skin color.
But not to worry.
If you run a small company, you've already been decimated by COVID lockdowns, perhaps rioting mobs on top of it, and are now worried about being labeled a racist by a vindictive customer or hate crime hoaxer, Yelp has resources to help.
Yelp has partnered with a group called Open to All, quote, to bring local businesses a new toolkit that allows them to take the next step in creating an inclusive community.
The toolkit includes a 60-minute unlearning bias training video for employees, outreach language for customers and employees, social media assets, and more.
And for just $10, you can get a sticker to put on your window that declares your business open to all, which hopefully will convince the woke mob to spare you like the angel of death passing over the homes of the Israelites with lamb's blood smeared on their doors.
The Open to All website also has a number of videos that illuminate the discrimination and racism issue, including this one I'll show you here, which condemns businesses that require biological males to use the men's restroom.
Watch this.
I'm a transgender woman.
I was born and raised as a boy, but inside I always knew I was female.
So I transitioned, and now I live every day as the woman I've always known myself to be.
It can be hard to understand what it means to be transgender, especially if you've never met a transgender person.
In most states, our laws don't protect transgender people from discrimination in public places, or when it comes to using the restroom, something we all need to do every day.
I've lived as a woman for many years.
Most people, when they stop and think about it, they realize that when businesses can legally force me to use the men's room, it puts me at risk for harassment and violence.
Safety and privacy in bathrooms are important for all of us.
It's already illegal to enter a restroom to harm someone, and anyone who does that can and should be arrested.
Obtaining the law to protect gay and transgender people from discrimination won't change that, but it would help to ensure that people like me aren't mistreated when we need to do something as basic as using the restroom.
If you're wondering whether Yelp will be judging racism and discrimination complaints fairly, there's your answer.
This is the radical leftist lens through which Yelp, like so many other billion-dollar corporations, views the world.
No surprise, given that this is the same company which a few months ago unveiled a new search option making it easier for users to find and support specifically black-owned businesses.
This is, quite blatantly, racial segregation and discrimination, but it's the good kind, according to the far left.
And potentially destroying innocent business owners by enabling libelers and slanderers to smear them as racist without evidence is also good if it advances the cultural agenda.
We can only hope that the first business owner unfairly targeted by the racism alerts will be able to afford a high-priced attorney and can sue Yelp into bankruptcy because, based on this, it seems they certainly deserve it.
Let's get to our five headlines.
Well, Nancy Pelosi had an announcement yesterday.
Here it is.
Listen.
When we hear people saying I'm young and I'm a perfect specimen, instead of addressing the fact that what, 50,000 people were infected, reported to be infected yesterday, nearly a thousand people died.
What are we talking about here?
Tomorrow, by the way, tomorrow, Come here tomorrow.
We're going to be talking about the 25th Amendment, but not to take attention away from the subject we have now.
Yes, the 25th Amendment.
They'll be talking about how to potentially remove Trump from office with the 25th Amendment.
Now, Trump fired back about this.
Here's the Daily Wire report.
It says, President Donald Trump and prominent Republicans fired back at Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi Thursday afternoon if the Speaker suggested that she and Democrats will hold discussions Friday about the 25th Amendment, presumably to talk over how to potentially remove the president from office.
Retweeting a supporter who suggested that Democrats were already plotting to get Trump out if the president wins re-election in November, Trump added that Crazy Nancy should be evaluated for her own mental fitness.
Crazy Nancy is the one who should be under observation.
They don't call her crazy for nothing, he tweeted.
Pelosi announced her event at a weekly press conference, so you just heard that.
Later on Thursday, The Hill reports Pelosi said that she and Representative Jamie Raskin We're planning to commission, quote, to determine whether a president is fit for office.
Raskin originally introduced legislation in 2017, which should not get any legislative action since Republicans controlled the House at the time, that would create an oversight commission on presidential capacity comprised of physicians, psychiatrists, and retired public officials like former presidents and cabinet secretaries.
Congressional leaders will be responsible for naming members of the commission.
And then as far as what this would actually entail, like how would you actually do this?
Well Pelosi has an uphill battle according to the 25th amendment itself, which governs succession if the president's no longer capable of discharging his duties.
The vice president and either a majority of cabinet members or a majority of both houses of congress must agree To summarize, this, of course, isn't really going to happen.
They aren't going to depose the president, especially not a few weeks from the election.
It's just not going to happen, though it wouldn't happen at any other point either.
This is a political stunt and a rather stupid one from the Democrats, I would think.
There's just no benefit to them to do this.
All this can potentially do is fire up the right-wing base.
That's the only potential effect here.
And by the way, that's what Donald Trump needs to win the election.
Which, of course, is obvious.
Of course, he needs his base.
But the point is, you know, I don't think Trump has done a whole lot to appeal to people in the middle.
I don't think he's done much there, really.
He's playing to his base all the time, exclusively.
And, uh, which I don't think is the best strategy, but that's what he's doing.
So if you're the Democrats and you're helping him mobilize the base, not a great, not, not, not a great strategy there either.
So that's why I say, go for it, Nancy, please move forward.
There's some conservatives that seem to be upset or angry about this.
No, go ahead.
This is great.
Talk about the 25th amendment.
Talk, talk openly about trying to depose the president.
You can't actually do it, but if you want to talk about it, please do.
Number two, here's a story that I've been meaning to hit for a few days, but there's an update to it.
The story is that a school system in Virginia was going to adopt a speech code banning their teachers from criticizing, in public or private, the school system's critical race theory program.
Or it's, sorry, excuse me, it's racial equity program is what we're calling it now.
So they weren't going to be allowed to criticize it anywhere on campus or off.
So here's the update from the Free Beacon.
It says, the Loudoun County Virginia Public Schools District will revise a proposed speech policy which would have prohibited teachers from criticizing the district's racial equity plan following backlash from the Teachers Union and a Washington Free Beacon report.
Leadership from the Loudoun Education Association, the district's largest teachers union, Told the Free Beacon that a school board member plans to take the speech policy off of the upcoming board meeting itinerary, effectively stalling any vote.
This change will allow the Human Resources Department to revise and review the policy that, as currently written, prohibits employees from criticizing the school district's commitment to action-oriented equity practices in all forms of public and personal communication.
And then it goes on from there.
They're going to revise and review, revise and review the policy.
Fine.
But even so, the simple fact that this policy was ever being considered, the fact that this is what they want to do, right?
It tells you everything you need to know.
And it shows, I think it was Rod Dreher who made this point about this particular story.
It shows again why, you know, you can't pin all your hopes on, all your hopes for the culture on winning presidential elections.
Because every election, since I was born, every election that I was conscious for, that I can remember, you always had conservatives saying, we need to elect a Republican or America is over.
This is it.
This is the last election.
This is it.
Every single election, we hear that, and we're hearing that now, too.
And every single time they say that, right, but they say, no, no, no, this time it's right.
It wasn't true before.
This, I know I said it before, but this, this, I'm telling you, this time, this is the, if we don't win this election, it's over, period.
But then what happens?
Sometimes Republicans are elected, sometimes they're not.
And America's cultural march into insanity continues apace.
Regardless, it doesn't appear to matter that much culturally, whether there's a Republican in office or not.
In fact, if I go back to 2016, before the election, all of these dire predictions about what the country would look like if Hillary Clinton was elected, and I'm glad that she wasn't.
And I do believe that it would look worse if she was elected than Trump.
Let's say, you know, 2016, before the election, let's say someone from 2020 comes back from the future and describes what America looks like and tells you about the rampaging mobs and, you know, critical race theory in the schools and gender ideology going crazy, just describes what the culture looks like in 2020, and then says to you, who do you think won, Hillary or Trump?
You would probably say, oh, that means Hillary won.
I mean, that's exactly the America I expect if Hillary wins.
Nope, Trump won.
Now, I don't blame Trump for that.
It's not really a criticism of Trump, really, because there's nothing the president can do about a lot of this stuff.
I mean, there's really nothing the president could do, for example, about decisions made by local school boards.
So this is not an argument That elections don't matter at all or that you shouldn't vote or whatever.
I'm simply pointing out that the real fight, the real fight for the culture has almost nothing to do with national elections.
And that we as conservatives continue to lose the culture, no matter who's in office.
And so a certain point, I think we need to realize that we're not going to solve the problem just by electing Republicans.
That doesn't even get close to it.
We can elect all the Republican presidents we want.
But if we're still doing things like sending our children into these schools to be brainwashed for seven hours a day, it's not going to matter.
The culture's lost anyway.
How many of the Republicans who are saying, oh, we need a Republican in office, how many of them are willingly sending their own children into these government buildings to be brainwashed into things like critical race theory and radical leftist gender ideology?
You think Trump's going to save your kid when you're willingly subjecting your child to that?
At a certain point, we have to be willing to make difficult decisions, do hard things beyond just voting for a Republican.
And we have to start thinking long-term also.
We have to realize that we're not going to halt this march.
We're not going to turn things around.
I get this all the time when I go and I was just yesterday, I was speaking at Grove City College and it was a great event and a lot of great questions.
But anytime I'm speaking, I always get this question, like, what do we do about this?
How do we solve the problem?
And I mean, it's a fine question.
It's a natural question to ask.
But I think the answer is, these are not problems we can solve in a year or two years or five years.
These are generational problems.
We're going to solve this problem over the course of generations.
We have to accept the fact that, you know, those of us alive today, we are probably not going to witness much improvement.
This is about our children and our children's children.
The left claimed the culture over the course of generations.
They didn't do it in a year.
They did it in 60 years, 70, 80 years.
So that's what it's going to be for us.
We have to be willing to accept that.
Okay.
This is supposed to be the headline portion, not me rambling on for 15 minutes.
Number three, Joe Biden was asked about court packing again, and here's what he had to say about that.
They'll know my opinion in court packing when the election is over.
Now look, I know it's a great question, and I don't blame you for asking it, but you know the moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be about that.
Other than, other than, Focusing on what's happening now.
The election has begun.
There's never been a court appointment once an election has begun, but four million or so people have already voted.
They're denying the American people the one shot they have under constitutional law to be able to have their input.
What a brave man.
What a brave, brave man, isn't he?
We're always told he's such a brave, bold man.
No, this answer from him is nonsense.
And by the way, his answer about court packing, he says, oh, I don't want it to be headline news.
Well, it would only be headline news if he would support court packing.
If he's against it, it wouldn't get much play in the media at all.
So the fact that he's, that he won't say because he's worried that it'll make the headlines, that's just him admitting that he's in favor of quarterbacking.
Number four, the number one song on iTunes right now is Dreams by Fleetwood Mac.
And no, not like a remake or something.
This, this was a, or a cover or something.
This was released, the original song released in 1977 is the number one song on iTunes right now.
The reason it's number one is because of a viral TikTok video that incorporates This song in the video.
The video apparently massively viral, very influential, enough to propel this song from 1977 up the charts.
So you're wondering what's in this video.
It must be really, really amazing stuff.
Well, here it is.
Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom.
Well, who am I to keep you down?
Which only right thing should play the way you feel it?
Yes, that's it.
That's the, uh, that's it.
That's the viral video right there.
That's millions of views on that thing.
That's a guy drinking cranberry juice while skateboarding.
Okay.
You know, there's a book out now By Ross Douthat, New York Times columnist, conservative.
He wrote a book called The Decadent Society, which I'm reading right now.
I don't read a lot of current affairs books actually, but this one I find to be Pretty compelling.
And he makes the case that we live in a decadent society.
And he doesn't define decadent the way most people think of it.
For him, a decadent society is one that's sort of stagnant, stale, repeating itself, kind of running in place.
Nothing's really happening.
We're just sort of coasting along.
And I think he's right about that.
And he talks about how a lot of evidence of this decadence, a lot of indicators of it, and one of them is in the area of cultural output.
And so we bring up like people complain all the time about all the remakes and everything and the number one movies are always like Star Wars movies or Star Wars franchise go back to the 1970s.
And so he talks about that.
I was like, we're not even even in the area of pop culture and art.
We're not coming up with new stuff.
We're just recycling the old over and over and over again.
And this Would be a great example of that.
Not just that this song from 1977 is number one, but the reason for it is that because of a video of a guy skateboarding while drinking cranberry juice.
All right, now here, though, is a unique movie.
This is something new, okay?
This is some cultural output we can be proud of.
Number five, finally, Mel Gibson set the start of a movie where he plays a down-on-his-luck alcoholic Santa Claus who's being hunted by a hitman who was hired by a child who was angry that he got a lump of coal for Christmas.
Film sounds incredible.
It looks incredible, too.
Here's a little bit of the preview.
your watch.
What's the job?
I'd like you to kill Santa Claus.
I've come for your head, fat man!
You think you're the first?
Think I got this job because I'm fat and jolly?
Flee!
I'll come while you're sleeping.
you The fat man's got his eye on you, kid.
Yeah, I'm in.
I'm sold, personally.
You don't have to tell me twice.
Some people are upset about this because it's Mel Gibson, and they're automatically offended by anything Mel Gibson does.
But I'm sorry.
First of all, Mel Gibson is a great filmmaker and a great actor.
He has yet to direct a bad movie.
Every movie he's directed has been good.
He's not directing this, though.
And most of the films that he's starred in have been pretty good, too.
As far as his personal issues go, everybody in Hollywood I mean, Roman Polanski, a child rapist, is still making movies.
And Mel's have been more public than others perhaps, but that doesn't make it worse than
what other people have done.
I mean, Roman Polanski, child rapist, is still making movies.
So that's where the bar is set for scumbag behavior.
So yeah, you can avoid Mel Gibson movies because you find his personal behavior abhorrent,
but then you should also be avoiding a great many films because a great many actors and
directors engage in behavior far more abhorrent than anything Mel Gibson has been accused
That is a movie though that I will be watching.
All right, let's get to our daily cancellation.
Today I am canceling all of the people who are guilty of mocking my lived experience and that of my daughter.
People on the internet who have said the meanest things, things that have injured me down to the very core of my being.
What started this was a tweet that I sent out.
I should have known better, I suppose, than to be so raw and honest and bold and real on the internet.
That doesn't mean that I deserve the treatment that I receive.
Let's not victim blame.
So here's what I tweeted.
This, of course, is completely serious and meant to be taken absolutely literally.
This is what I tweeted yesterday.
I said, during the debate last night, my six-year-old daughter turned to me in tears and said, Daddy, that rude sexist man keeps interrupting Senator Harris.
This must be what misogyny looks like.
I didn't know how to respond.
We hugged each other and cried.
That's a true story.
I mean, that really happened.
And the good news, at least, is that a striking number of people took this completely literally and believed that I actually was making this claim in all sincerity.
And that's good because, of course, I was.
It ended up also on a Facebook page called Occupy Democrats Logic, a screenshot of the tweet and thousands of comments there as well, many of them taking it seriously.
And the surprising thing is that even some of the people who took it seriously apparently knew who I was and yet still read this with no irony, which again is the right thing.
It's correct because I am never sarcastic.
I don't believe in sarcasm.
It's extremely off-putting and beneath me.
I certainly would not be sarcastic about something like this.
The last thing I would ever do is be flippant or sarcastic about the problem of sexism and misogyny.
This is an issue that is deeply personal to me, and you know if you watch this show that I've always been a passionate advocate for women's rights, for women's rights and equality.
The problem is that many of these comments from people who took it seriously, and their messages too, I got a lot of private messages, a lot of hate mail, a lot of it was quite vicious.
The harassment and bullying has been out of hand completely.
I cried to my daughter about it for hours last night.
I cry pretty much every night in front of my children.
I think it's important for them to see that their father is emotionally unstable.
I want them to know that they never have to worry about toxic masculinity with me because I don't have any kind of masculinity.
Better safe than sorry, I say.
Now, people accuse me of being a bad father.
Some accuse me of lying about this story.
Some said that I am emasculated.
Some said that my six-year-old daughter shouldn't be watching the debate at all, much less repeating feminist talking points in response to it.
One private message called me, get this, a sobbing eunuch.
Someone else said that I should have CPS called on me.
Lots of people said that I'm filling my child's head with lies and propaganda.
My character was attacked, my integrity, my parenting skills.
But you know what?
I read many of these comments to my daughter, and my three-year-old son was also there.
And actually, he made a great point.
I'll never forget this.
This is what my three-year-old son said to me.
He said, Father, dry your tears.
Do not be troubled.
For another man's opinion is irrelevant and ephemeral.
But I know who you truly are, and nothing they say can change that.
And I looked back at him, tears again welling up in my eyes, and I said, Stop mansplaining to me, you sexist jerk.
And I sent him to his room.
It's what had to be done.
And so he is cancelled.
And so is everyone else who bullied me.
Though it will not stop me from speaking my truth and weeping uncontrollably.
So we'll leave there, I think, on a bit of an emotional and serious note.
Something for us all to think about as we head into the weekend.
Thank you all for watching.
Have a great weekend.
Godspeed.
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