Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a report about rampant child porn on Pornhub has prompted the site to make “major changes.” But the changes don’t go nearly far enough. Also Five Headlines including Eric Swalwell’s ties to a Chinese spy, and dozens shoppers camp out in a Walmart parking lot to buy a new video game console. Why is that okay during a pandemic, but you still can’t visit your grandparents for Christmas? And in our Daily Cancellation, we’ll cancel a school board that voted to remove Thomas Jefferson’s name from their elementary school. The reasons they give are truly, deeply insane.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, a report about rampant child porn on Pornhub has prompted the site to make, quote, major changes.
But the changes don't go nearly far enough.
Also, five headlines including Eric Swalwell's ties to a Chinese spy and dozens of shoppers camp out in a Walmart parking lot.
To buy a new video game console.
Why is that okay during a pandemic, but you still can't visit your grandparents for Christmas or Thanksgiving?
And our daily cancellation, we will cancel a school board that voted to remove Thomas Jefferson's name from their elementary school.
The reasons they give, I mean, you know that they're going to be bad reasons.
These are truly, deeply insane reasons.
All of that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
Before we get started today, you know, if you're on the internet, which you are right
now probably, and I'm sure you spend a lot of time on it as we all do.
You need a VPN to protect yourself.
Everybody, absolutely everybody, needs a VPN.
I mean, does it make sense to you that the same company who controls half of online retail also eavesdrops passively on your private conversations at home?
What about the idea that a single company controls 90% of internet searches?
Runs your email service.
Gets to track everything you do on a smartphone.
Big tech is in fact more powerful than most countries are, and they profit, the way that they get so powerful is by exploiting your personal data.
I think it's time to put a layer of protection.
It's way past that.
Put a layer of protection between your online activity and these tech juggernauts.
And that's why I personally use ExpressVPN, and you should too.
Think about how much of your life is on the internet.
You know, how much of your life you willingly, how much of your personal information you've willingly given over to the internet, then how much the internet has helped itself to and taken.
It's just, it's a lot.
But when you run ExpressVPN on your device, the software hides your IP address.
something big tech can use to personally identify you.
So ExpressVPN makes your activity harder to trace and harder to sell to advertisers.
And again, it gives you that layer of protection that you need and you deserve.
And ExpressVPN does all of this without showing your connection.
That's why it's rated the number one VPN, or rather without slowing your connection.
It's not going to slow everything down. Some VPNs will.
ExpressVPN doesn't do that.
And that's why it's rated the number one VPN service by CNET and Wired.
What I like most about ExpressVPN is that it's very easy to use.
If it was hard to use, I wouldn't be able to do it.
The fact that I use it means that you can do it and you should do it.
So stop handing your personal data over to these big tech monopolies that mine your activity and sell your information.
Protect yourself with the VPN I trust.
Keep me safe online.
Visit ExpressVPN.com slash Walsh.
That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S VPN.com slash Walsh to get three extra months free.
Again, that's ExpressVPN.com slash Walsh.
Go there now to learn more.
The New York Times committed a shocking act of actual journalism this week when they published a lengthy op-ed titled The Children of Pornhub.
Columnist Nicholas Kristof calls attention to an issue that earlier in the year was the subject of a petition that amassed nearly half a million signatures, namely that the behemoth smut site traffics in child pornography, rape videos, and other forms of abuse, and then, of course, films and uploads them for Public Viewing, Christoph writes, quote, Pornhub is infested with rape videos.
It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynistic content, footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags.
A search for, quote, girls under 18 no space or 14YO, which 14 years old, leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos.
Most aren't of children being assaulted, but too many are.
Now, we should emphasize that even if a preponderance of the videos found using these search terms
do not actually depict children being raped, a sizable portion do depict it, as he mentions.
And also, almost as troubling, a significant portion of the non-rape videos
found through these search keys are still meant to appeal to people
who want to see children being raped.
The point is that even the videos on the platform that do not involve child abuse or rape
may still desensitize the viewer to child abuse and rape, and intentionally so.
Pornhub itself proudly tells us that one of its most popular categories is teen.
Okay, are we supposed to believe that the grown men huddled around their computers
in darkened rooms looking for videos of teens are really hoping only to see 18 and 19-year-olds?
No, they want to see young women or girls disrobe and perform sexually for their enjoyment.
Their concern about the actual ages of the people on the screen extends only so far as providing them plausible deniability should the FBI come knocking.
Terms like teen and barely legal are workarounds, you know, sort of a wink between Pornhub and its users.
The site feeds an appetite for illegal porn, even with its legal porn.
But that shouldn't distract from the fact that there is a lot of the straight up illegal stuff on the platform, and there are very real victims to tell the tale.
Here's a little more from Kristof.
He says, Pornhub, quoting now from a woman named Callie, Pornhub became my trafficker.
She says she was adopted in the United States from China and then trafficked by her adoptive family and forced to appear in pornographic videos beginning when she was nine.
Some videos of her being abused ended up on Pornhub and regularly reappear there, she said.
Callie said, I'm still getting sold, even though I'm five years out of that life.
Now 23, she is studying in a university, hoping to become a lawyer, but those old videos hang over her.
I may never be able to get away from this, she said.
I may be 40 with kids, with eight kids, and people are still masturbating to my photos.
You type young Asian and you can probably find me, she added.
Kristoff then notes that a search for young Asian returns tens of thousands of videos along with related
search suggestions, such as young tiny teen and also young girl.
There's a whole channel called Exploited Teen Asia.
Now I suppose we're meant to believe that the people looking for young girls
and young tiny teens or clicking on video compilations with titles like
screaming teen, degraded teen, extreme choking, all examples mentioned in the article,
are really only interested in seeing sober, willing adults engaged in consensual sexual relations.
And we're further supposed to believe that the users uploading this content with these sorts of titles are only providing that sort of legal and above-the-board content.
But anybody who really buys that claim must have already had their brain melted by porn overconsumption.
The fact is clear.
Pornhub makes untold millions monetizing child porn and rape videos, and it's not an accident.
There is a huge market for this stuff, and Pornhub serves that market.
But a funny thing happened after the Times piece was published.
In the immediate aftermath, A spokesman for the company sent a statement to the National Review indignantly denying that they had any serious problem with rape and abuse videos on their platform.
The statement said in part, quote, any assertion that we allow CSAM child sexual abuse material is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue.
We have zero tolerance for CSAM.
Pornhub is unequivocally committed to combating CSAM and has instituted an industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community.
They also claim to manually review every video posted to the site, a claim that itself must certainly be flagrantly untrue, as Pornhub also boasts proudly that users uploaded nearly three hours of porn per minute last year.
But only a day later, Pornhub changed its tune rather dramatically.
Perhaps having something to do with the fact that Mastercard and Visa said they'd be, quote, reviewing their relationship with the filth peddlers, the company announced suddenly that it would be taking major steps, quote-unquote, to, quote, protect our community.
I thought they were already doing an excellent job in that regard, according to their own statement not but 24 hours earlier.
How can you take major steps to better do something that you're already doing nearly perfectly?
These major steps include limiting uploads to verified users only, prohibiting most downloads from the site, and also expanding moderation of the content.
Again, it's hard to understand how they could expand their moderation if they were already manually reviewing something like 1.5 million hours of pornography a year.
The conflicting messaging, though, only makes sense when you remember that This is a multi-billion-dollar company that makes its billions distributing videos with titles like Young Tiny Teen and Extreme Choking, a company that will let you search for porn using a search term like 14-year-old.
In other words, they have no ethical standards of any kind whatsoever, and nothing they say can be remotely trusted.
Their statements and commitments and declarations of how seriously they want to protect rape victims, etc., mean nothing.
After all, if they really cared about protecting victims, they would just shut down operations entirely.
A porn distributor claiming a commitment to combating sex trafficking is about as credible as all the tobacco companies now saying that they want to help rid the world of nicotine addiction.
This is the script they have to read, but it cannot possibly be true.
Their very existence testifies to the falsehood of their claims.
Besides, the measures from Pornhub are laughably insufficient even if they're actually adopted, which they won't be.
What's to stop a verified user from uploading a video of an underage person?
Or someone who's been sex trafficked?
Or somebody who's unconscious or not consenting?
The verified user gambit is also especially unconvincing because the bar for verification is low.
As the website Fight the New Drug notes, all a person has to do to get verified on Pornhub is upload a photo of themselves with their, or a photo of someone, with their Pornhub username and Pornhub's website written on a piece of paper or their body.
There's no attempt to verify age, much less that of all the performers, quote-unquote, in the video, in the videos themselves.
This is just verifying something, really verifying nothing about the person uploading the video.
It doesn't tell you anything about the people in the video.
While the efforts to protect the people in the videos is virtually non-existent, the efforts to protect the people watching the videos are literally non-existent.
Pornhub makes no attempt to prevent children from accessing the hardcore filth on its platform.
No attempt.
At all.
They don't do anything.
To visit Budweiser.com, you can try this yourself, you at least have to enter your date of birth.
If you want to go to the official Camel Cigarette website, you need to register for an account.
To sign up for a Bitcoin exchange like Bitfinex, a user has to provide their address, phone number, email, and two forms of government-issued identification.
Now, surveying the options on the spectrum between the symbolic age verification of a beer company's website to the serious verification process of a crypto exchange, Pornhub elects to do precisely nothing.
They don't choose anything.
They don't even do the symbolic attempt.
Any random eight-year-old can go to its URL and watch gangbang videos without having to jump through any hoops at all.
This gives you an idea of how serious Pornhub is about protecting anyone, least of all children.
And this is why we have to stop relying on the integrity and good hearts of executives at porn sites, trusting them to make good on their word to self-regulate.
We should force the issue, just like we do with all the regulations imposed on the alcohol and tobacco industry.
People don't normally complain about that.
I rarely hear anyone complain that an 11-year-old can't walk to 7-Eleven and buy a pack of cigarettes.
Nobody complains that this is a nanny state or an intrusion or anything like that.
Now, I confess I would be in favor of simply burning the porn industry to the ground, salting the earth with its ashes, but in lieu of that, Pornhub and all sites like it should be legally required to verify the ages of all users, at a minimum.
Those uploading content and those viewing the content.
If you want to buy a porn magazine from a gas station, if that's even so possible anymore, you have to show ID.
There is no reason why you shouldn't have to show one online.
And don't tell me about, oh, it's the parent's job.
Okay, yeah, the parents should be doing more to protect their own kids.
But again, if a nine-year-old walks up with a Hustler magazine to buy, you know, to the cashier at a gas station, would you be okay with the cashier just selling it to him on the basis that, well, his parents aren't doing anything about it?
Might as well just make a buck.
No, there should be at least the same level of scrutiny placed on Pornhub as there is on gas stations.
Now it's true, such a requirement may destroy Pornhub, as most of its users would be too ashamed and freaked out to give their ID to a porn site.
That is a risk that I am more than happy to take.
Now the government could go even further, and should, as Terry Schilling outlines in his excellent First Things essay published, I think, earlier in the year.
You should check it out.
He talks about what we could do to regulate porn.
He says we could have zoning laws requiring porn sites to move to a .xx domain where age verification would be needed to access it.
More aggressively, Congress could amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, getting rid of the blanket immunity enjoyed by big tech companies and holding them liable for the content posted on their platforms.
This would mean that a sex trafficking or revenge porn victim could sue Pornhub for hosting and monetizing the footage of their abuse.
Why shouldn't they be able to sue?
If it doesn't seem possible for a massive multi-billion dollar porn platform to really regulate its content and guard against child porn and rape porn, that might be a sign that massive multi-billion dollar porn platforms shouldn't exist.
The only real downside to regulating porn companies, as far as I can see it, is that it might make porn executives a little less rich, and it might cause some mild inconveniences for internet users who want to watch other people having sex.
These are trade-offs that I think a society can live with.
Indeed, trade-offs that we should embrace enthusiastically in exchange for offering at least some protection to the porn industry's many victims on both sides of the camera.
And it's as simple as that, as far as I'm concerned.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
All right, um...
Now we get to our five headlines as I pull it up here.
I got a bunch of clips to play today, but before we get to any of those, here's a report from The Daily Wire.
Representative Eric Swalwell, Sits on the sensitive House Intelligence Committee, said in response to an explosive story about ties to a suspected Chinese spy that, quote, congressional leaders knew about it.
They knew about the matter and implied that they apparently did not think that it was a big enough issue to keep him off the intelligence committee.
The alleged spy, Chinese national Christine Feng, Quote, targeted up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country who had the potential to make it big on the national stage through campaign fundraising, extensive networking, personal charisma, and romantic or sexual relationships.
This according to a report from Axios.
Even though U.S.
officials do not believe Feng received or passed on classified information, the case was a big deal because there were some really, really sensitive people that were caught up in the intelligence network, according to a current senior U.S.
intelligence official.
Yeah, I would say it's a big deal.
I would call that a big deal.
When you've got a congressman who is potentially involved with a Chinese spy.
This again, you know, we find this pattern playing out where the people Who were accusing the Trump campaign of this sort of thing, with relation to China, were actually doing it themselves.
We see this over and over again.
Yet another guy who was railing about Donald Trump and Russia, and his supposed ties to Russian espionage, that whole time, he's got some sort of acquaintance with a Chinese spy.
That, of course, is a big story.
Should be a big blowback for Eric Swalwell, at a minimum.
I still don't think it's as big of a story as Eric Swalwell farting on camera during the MSNBC interview.
That to me is... Well, here's what I'll say.
That is what will still ultimately define him, and I'm glad for that.
That's not as big of a scandal, but I'm happy for the fact That this just absolute mediocre, unimpressive, empty nothing of a man will ultimately be defined by the fact that he farted on camera.
That's all his entire public life will come down to.
And I really, I hope it's more that than the Chinese spy thing.
Okay, Biden.
So Biden's got his COVID task force together.
And I want to play some of this.
Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith.
Um, she's one of the people on the Biden COVID task force and she's found, and we're going to get a lot of this, um, from the potential Biden administration.
We're going to get a lot of, of, of course, racializing everything like the left always does.
She's found a way to racialize the COVID pandemic and identifying what she calls a racial grief gap.
You've heard of the wage gap.
Well, here's the grief gap.
Listen, It is not a coincidence, and it is not a matter of genetics, that more than 70% of African Americans and more than 60% of Latinx Americans personally know someone who has been hospitalized or died from COVID-19.
The same disparities ingrained in our economy, our housing system, our food system, our justice system, and so many other areas of our society have conspired in this moment to create a grief gap that we cannot ignore.
Yeah, she says it's not a coincidence.
I mean, you're right.
It's not a coincidence.
There's a reason behind it.
As we hear about how racial minorities are disproportionately Affected by COVID and infected by the virus.
The reason is that racial minorities disproportionately live in cities.
And so that's the reason.
And when you live in a city and there's a large population, condensed population, the population density is high, you're gonna have more spread of a virus.
That's the reason.
There's no nefarious racism behind it.
I'm not even sure.
You hear this implied from people like Dr. Marcella here, implying that there's racism behind it, that more black people are getting, a disproportionate number of black people are getting COVID.
Oh, it's racist.
She never explains how exactly is it racist.
What exactly are you implying?
She never gets there.
She just throws it out.
And of course, we get the Latinx thing, too.
That is another thing with a potential Biden administration.
We have to get ready for that, that we're going to hear this Latin X thing from bureaucrats in the federal government all the time.
Now, of course, you talk to any Latino person or most of them, and I have asked.
I mean, I put a poll out on Twitter recently asking any Hispanic followers of mine how they feel about this Latin X thing.
And what you find, unsurprisingly, it's almost all just white liberals, or non-white liberals in this case, who are doing Latinx.
And also, by the way, it should be pronounced latinx.
So first of all, can we decide is it latinx or latinx?
But either way, it's utterly ridiculous.
These are non-Hispanic liberals trying to impose this change on the Hispanic community.
And the Hispanic community, for the most part, says, what?
No.
By the way, if you really, if for some reason Latino or Latina offends you or upsets you, what's wrong with just saying Latin?
What do you even need the X for?
Of course, I'm trying to make sense of something that is nonsensical, so maybe there's no point in doing that.
Now we got Bill Nye here.
Bill Nye is begging for attention again.
Probably we shouldn't give it to him, but here we are, and here's the video.
Let's watch.
Here's a map of the United States.
The red ink shows where people are wearing masks.
The black ink shows where people are getting sick with coronavirus.
I hope you can see.
The fewer the masks, the more the sicks.
And there's a perception that a virus can travel through the fibers of a mask like this red dot.
Because viruses don't travel by themselves.
They travel in little groups.
Droplets of spit and snot.
And the fibers are a tangle.
So when the droplet gets into the fibers of a mask, it gets trapped.
This is not that hard to understand, everybody.
That's why we have rules about wearing a mask.
Now, you know about rules.
You pay taxes on the whole road, but you only get to drive on one side at a time.
Otherwise... So everyone, please wear a mask.
Thank you.
Every time we see Bill Nye, we have to remember that he goes by the science guy for a reason.
It's not just that it rhymes with Nye.
It's because he's not a scientist.
Anyone can call themselves a scientist.
I'm Matt Walsh, the science guy.
Anyone can call yourself that.
Sure.
I like science too.
I'm a science guy.
So he's not a scientist.
He's a science guy, which means nothing at all.
But you keep hearing this claim from people like Bill Nye, everybody else on the left, Democrats.
We keep hearing this claim that, you know, we've got the new surge because people aren't wearing the masks and that's why the virus is surging again.
Where is that the case?
Because everywhere I go, I mean, this is all anecdotal, but everyone must be just be basing this on anecdotal evidence.
So my own anecdotal experience, Almost everywhere I go, people are wearing the masks.
Certainly a large, a large, large number of people are wearing the masks.
Red states, blue states.
I have traveled quite a bit during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Forgive me, I have.
And everywhere I've gone, people wearing the masks.
It's actually shocking how many people wear them and how consistently and how, you know, the one thing that I noticed, especially on planes now, Because you're sitting around people for hours at a time.
And when I look around, people don't even fidget with the mask.
I don't even see that many people anymore putting the mask underneath their nose.
I still do that so I can breathe.
But most people, they just have it over their nose.
They don't touch it.
They have it on right.
And they keep it on for hours at a time.
It's creepy.
But that's what people are doing.
And yet, the virus is still surging.
Maybe there's a connection here.
Something to think about.
Finally, I probably enjoyed this a little bit more than I should.
Here's a local news report out of Troy, Michigan, about a bunch of grown adults who lined up all night in frigid temperatures.
This is Michigan, remember.
It is December now.
And they lined up all night outside of a Walmart for a video game console only to be severely disappointed when the Walmart actually opened.
Watch this.
So the rumor was that Walmart here in Troy had the PlayStation 5.
It's one of the hottest items for this holiday season.
Well, word got out and about a hundred people started lining up at about midnight.
Look at this!
How long you guys, how many days you guys tried to get this PlayStation?
We've been here for 12 hours.
12 hours you've been here?
Yes sir.
Why is it so important to get one of these?
We need them.
When the doors opened, a stampede of people went into the store led by Fadi from Troy.
And people are running to get in.
Look at this.
Look at this.
But only to find out that Walmart had no PS5s.
That's according to the manager, right Fadi?
Uh, she comes out and tells us that they have none in stock.
So if we were told that they're gonna have them in stock Monday and we waited seven hours in the freezing cold of 28 degrees, why is there zero stock?
Okay.
Uh, that's, uh, that's good.
You know what?
Serves you right.
Serves you right.
This is how you decide to spend your night waiting in a Walmart parking lot for 12 hours?
How do you not call the Walmart first?
That's my question.
Now, we were told in the report that a rumor, there was a rumor, they heard from somewhere.
Before you even think about getting your tent out and camping out, how do you not just call them and say, hey, are you getting the PS5s in?
Apparently, nobody did that.
I don't know, they were driving by, they saw other people waiting.
What are you guys waiting for?
Oh, we've been waiting for 12 hours for a PS5.
Well, I guess I will too then.
And then they run in and there's no PS5.
They have to be escorted out by a police officer.
So many questions arise for me when I see this.
First question is why?
Just why in general?
I have never wanted a consumer product Enough to wait even an hour for it.
I've never seen an hour-long wait for anything where I actually said to myself, oh, I'll do that.
That's worth it.
This is why my wife tries to get me to go to Disney World.
I won't go to Disney World.
I won't go to amusement parks.
Even like a five-minute wait.
That needs to really be justified.
It has to really, really be worth it.
An hour?
Hell no.
I'm not waiting for a thing, a product.
Especially when I know that, okay, I can just order it online.
What are you doing?
You just order it online.
Might have to wait a couple more weeks.
Um, so that's, that's the first question I have.
And then the second question though, maybe more, more pertinent is, is, uh, this is in Michigan and we're not, not only is it like 20 degrees overnight, but very strict with the COVID restrictions there in Michigan.
You know, that's definitely one of those states where they're telling you, no more than ten people, don't visit your grandmother for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
So, you know, you can't get together with your family over the holiday.
They're shutting down all these, you know, all these indoor establishments.
Yet, a hundred people can huddle together outside of a Walmart to buy a video game console?
They weren't even wearing masks!
Did you notice that?
Normally that wouldn't bother me.
I don't care if you wear a mask or not.
But no police showed up.
The police only showed up when Walmart called them to escort the people out of the building because I guess they were disgruntled over the fact that there was no PS5.
That's amazing to me.
Or it's not really amazing because we're used to this sort of hypocrisy by now, but it should be amazing.
It's what we've discovered.
This immunity enjoyed by shoppers at big retail outlets continues, I guess.
If you're shopping at Walmart for consumer products, you're immune.
Just like if you're marching for racial equity, you're immune.
You're celebrating Joe Biden, you're immune.
You're going to the funeral of a passed away Democrat.
Or someone who was shot by police.
You're immune.
Really incredible, scientifically.
Maybe Bill Nye, the science guy, can explain the science behind that.
Because I gotta admit, I'm pretty stupid.
I don't fully understand it myself.
But there it is.
Maybe they could check, maybe just order it on Amazon and wait at your house.
Maybe while you're waiting for the PS5, it might take a few weeks I guess, maybe you could think about Developing a hobby of some kind that doesn't involve sitting on your couch?
Just a suggestion.
Now, before we get to our daily cancellation, with the new year coming up, Christmas coming up, how about give yourself a present?
Give yourself a gift with a Daily Wire membership.
And now's the time to do it, because we've got a lot of great stuff coming up.
We have a lot of great stuff right now that you could take advantage of, like this.
This is the new and improved Leftist Tears Tumblr.
And you know what?
That coffee's been sitting there for about two days, but I won't blame the tumbler on that.
This tumbler is wonderful.
It keeps the coffee even though it's been sitting there for days.
It's still somewhat lukewarm and it tastes horrible, but the tumbler is still great.
On top of that, though, You get, with the membership, you get so much more.
We're adding a lot of content to The Daily Wire.
Michael Knoll's show is now five days a week, adding more content for our members to enjoy.
We're adding the entire PragerU catalog to dailywire.com by the end of the year.
We've already got the PragerU's five-minute videos uploaded.
We've got the Candace Owens show from PragerU.
Michael Knowles' book club.
The rest of the library will be added soon.
It's being added as we speak.
So more and more.
Every time you go, there's more stuff.
And early next year, Candace Owens is joining The Daily Wire here in Nashville.
She's going to be launching a live studio audience show.
That's going to be great.
We've been telling you about the investigative journalism team.
We're making movies.
We're doing so much.
You've got to become a member.
Dailywire.com slash subscribe.
We're loud and opinionated, having a good time.
And I'm having a great time, actually, today.
Change of pace, because I have just been informed the big news.
Today is the last day that you can buy the Daily Wire Christmas tree ornaments.
They have just been sitting lonely in a warehouse because nobody wants them.
But if you have been putting it off, if you've been procrastinating, And you've been telling yourself every day, I gotta buy the ornaments so I can have Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles and Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boring as adorable Christmas tree elves.
Christmas elves on my Christmas tree.
You've been putting it off.
Now's the time.
You gotta do it.
This is the last day that I will have to talk about that.
Text CHRISTMAS to 83400 to get your tree decorated.
Or don't.
It doesn't really matter to me.
But this is your last chance to do it.
Again, that's 83400.
Text CHRISTMAS.
All right, let's get to our daily cancellation.
Today we're canceling the Falls Church School Board in Virginia.
On Tuesday, the school board voted unanimously to change the names of Thomas Jefferson Elementary School and George Mason High School, achieving what I think is one of the great feats of bureaucratic cowardice, by knocking out the father of the Bill of Rights and the author of the Declaration of Independence all at once.
In one evening.
School Board Chair Greg Anderson, in announcing the change, said,
quote, The board took seriously the viewpoints and concerns raised
by many students, parents, staff, and community members.
We thank everyone who shared their perspectives with us and will be mindful of their comments
as we now begin selecting names that reflect the diversity of opinions in our community.
Our schools must be places where all students, staff, and community members
feel safe, supported, and inspired.
Contrary to Mr. Anderson's blatherings here, the viewpoints of anybody who claims to feel unsafe because
an elementary school is named after Thomas Jefferson should not be taken
seriously.
A person who raises such concerns should be summarily dismissed as mentally ill, stupid, insincere, or some combination of the above.
Their opinions on the issue are not important.
Their feelings don't matter.
Their desire to dethrone our greatest national heroes should not be treated with even a modicum of respect.
But that's how it should be.
And we know that how it should be and how it is are two different things, especially these days.
A report from the local Falls Church News Press says that the board was making the move out of respect for the strongly felt sentiments of students, teachers, and citizens.
Although it also notes that a majority of that group, student, teacher, citizens, didn't want the name to be changed.
The board members ultimately caved to the demands of the unreasonable minority, as it often goes.
It takes a special sort of coward to make this sort of decision under those circumstances, and footage from a school board work session in June, when they first began talking about this issue, shows that the board is indeed occupied by those sorts of cowards.
The members can be seen babbling semi-coherently about equity and inclusion, none of them seeming too terribly excited about the name change, but none possessing the minimal courage required to speak up decisively against it.
This is how bureaucracies from the local school board all the way up to the federal government often wind up making mind-numbingly terrible decisions.
Not everybody involved has to be radical ideologues.
There are usually only a few of those.
The rest just have to be so spineless that you wonder how they managed to sit up straight in their chairs.
And that's certainly the case here.
Let's take a look at some of that work session.
Listen here.
Deeply held concerns about George Mason, Thomas Jefferson as owners of enslaved people have led a lot of folks to push for a new name for one or more of our schools.
You know, long-standing racism, inequities, they're being denounced and they're being fought on a scale that we haven't seen in decades.
I had a debate with myself whether I should say within my lifetime because I wasn't sure if I really wanted to say that out loud, but there you go.
Certainly in decades.
And people across the country are looking to themselves, to each other, and to their elected leaders to make the changes that are needed.
Thank you, Chair Anderson.
I agree with everything that you said.
I consider myself a pretty decisive person, but this is definitely something that I have kept an open mind on, and I definitely see both sides of this issue, and I do feel that it's an important one.
I agree with, I think, almost everything you said.
I also support the notion of starting a process.
I think the question is far from clear, certainly in my mind and in the community's mind, because we are talking about two people, in this case two men, who have mixed legacies, who accomplished a lot, but clearly unslaves.
And that's an extremely hard thing to forget.
And you can't forget or really forgive.
You can just perhaps understand.
What just an absolute parade of mediocrity we just witnessed there.
Especially the first, I mean all of them, but especially the first guy.
He makes the perfect cowardly bureaucratic type of dude.
Chair of the school board.
Nothing going on at all.
Yes, we care about diversity and inclusion and people have different opinions and everyone's opinions are valid and some people have an opinion that says one thing and others have opinions that say another.
Everyone has good opinions and Opinions are all good.
Tolerance is good.
Diversity.
Diversity is very, very good.
We value diversity.
Just shut up, dude.
Say something.
Can you string together a sentence that means anything?
I don't care what it is.
Are you capable of that?
Probably not.
But all the wimpish waffling and platitude spewing eventually gave way to a decision, the wrong one, as expected.
One of the school board members, Philip Reitinger, and you just saw him at the end of that clip, in explaining his vote during the meeting on Tuesday night, inadvertently provided, I think, a master class in Orwellian rationalization.
Reading from his prepared remarks, Reitinger says that he decided to vote for changing the name partly because Donald Trump put kids in cages, Now it's not clear why Thomas Jefferson should be blamed for the immigrant detention policies instituted by Obama, or even why Donald Trump should be blamed for them.
All Reitinger could say was that Trump's alleged bigotry had led him to conclude that the board had to do more for diversity.
He also implied, though, that having a school named after Jefferson and Mason makes a statement That people are not created equal.
And then he claimed that the best way to live up to the words of Thomas Jefferson is to, quote, no longer have a school named after him.
You have to hear this for yourself.
Take take a listen.
But I will vote to change the names.
I believe that at this time, in this place, it is the right thing to do.
The critical moment for me was the presidential election.
I know this is a nonpartisan board, but I hold political views.
And those views are affected by my values, just as were the presidential candidates' views affected by their values.
I was proud that in the Falls Church City, the Democratic candidate whose views favor equity and inclusion won with over 81% of the vote.
However, outside of Falls Church, approaching half the country voted for the other candidate.
That candidate put children in cages.
He said there were good people among the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville.
He stoked division at every turn.
I am appalled both by his behavior and what the vote means for the country.
I feel the need, both personally and in my capacity as a member of the Falls Church City School Board, to help change our course and do more for diversity and inclusion.
We need to fight inequality and racism with action.
We need to speak out.
Although actions matter more than words, words matter.
By having schools named for George Mason and Thomas Jefferson, we are making a statement.
And I think we should make a different statement.
We should instead make a statement that we believe all people are created equal.
Thomas Jefferson wrote almost those very words, and we can better live up to the goal he set by no longer having a school named for him.
Amazing.
Amazing.
By the way, I just noticed, watching that clip back, that two of the people there, Anderson, the school chair that we heard from earlier, and then one of the other guys has the pronouns up on the Zoom call next to their name.
They got the he-him.
Of course.
Of course they do.
Of course they do.
And, you know, as I've said before, if you are so often mistaken for a woman, That you have to specify to everybody that you meet that, by the way, I'm a man?
That's a separate issue you might want to look into.
You might even talk to your doctor about that.
Maybe testosterone pills or something might be a good idea to look into.
What I find is that I don't have to go up to people and say, I'm Matt Walsh.
He, him.
Because they sort of just get it by looking at me.
They get the he, him part.
But it's not the case for everybody.
And I can see how it wouldn't be the case for Greg Anderson.
In any case, there we have Wright and Zern.
He's appalled.
He's appalled.
Appalled by Donald Trump.
And for some reason, he's appalled by Donald Trump for a bunch of stuff that isn't even true.
And the way to solve that is to take it out on Thomas Jefferson.
Now the cowardly coup de grace came later that night when the school, formerly known as Thomas Jefferson Elementary, perhaps we could take the Washington football team approach and rename the school simply The Elementary School, tweeted out the news of the name change and then deleted it as soon as people started criticizing it.
The schools have made their decision, now they're just going to hide under their beds until the mean people stop yelling at them about it.
As it happens, the board members are able to hide under their beds, or in their beds, because schools in Falls Church have been shut down since spring of last year.
They recently voted to extend the remote learning farce until 2021 at least.
So, while students remain abandoned, In limbo, having not received a real education in nine months, the board has spent its time conducting a moral assessment of a founding father who died 200 years ago.
That's what they're doing with their time.
Needless to say, their moral assessment is wrong.
Yes, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.
So did George Mason.
These were flawed men.
But their flaws were nearly ubiquitous in their time.
Not everybody owned slaves, of course, but I doubt whether any single person on Earth in the year 1776, or any year before it, or even in the century after it, could have passed as racially enlightened by our standards today.
Most of the world still cannot pass that test.
And many people in the world still own slaves, in fact.
Just not in the Western world.
In Jefferson's time, his perspective was about as enlightened as it got.
And that's how he and George Mason and their compatriots managed to lay the groundwork for what would soon become the greatest, not to mention most diverse and racially tolerant country on earth.
We honor the founding fathers for that great achievement.
We don't honor them because they were perfect.
We honor them because we are Americans.
This is America.
And they are the men who built it.
That should be reason enough.
If it's not reason enough, Then no historical figure is safe.
None.
Great people often commit great sins.
Martin Luther King Jr.
was allegedly a serial philanderer who watched and laughed as a woman was raped.
If we cannot put Thomas Jefferson's bad choices into context, then why should we lend that grace to MLK?
If we're looking for a perfect hero among mere mortal men anywhere on earth, anywhere in history, we will not find him.
Even if we're searching simply for somebody who wouldn't be called racist and bigoted and sexist by our standards today, we still will not find him.
Either we can choose to see historical figures in the context of their time, judge them accordingly, celebrate them for the great things they achieved while choosing not to emulate whatever evil they committed, or we can systematically go back through time and condemn every person who's ever lived and all of our ancestors who established, fought for, and passed down to us every good thing we have in our lives.
The left has chosen its path, and it's one that leads nowhere.
But to insanity, as you just saw.
And that is why the Falls Church School Board is cancelled with a vengeance.
Everybody else attacks our history, tears down statues, monuments, takes names off of buildings.
All cancelled.
Thomas Jefferson, though, is not cancelled.
No matter how much they try to do it, they won't succeed.
You know why?
Because Thomas Jefferson achieved something.
That withstood the test of time.
He did something.
He changed the world.
These people on the school board are doing nothing.
They're not going to be remembered.
They're not even remembered now.
You could be in the room with them and you'd forget they were there.
That's how utterly vacuous they are.
Not Thomas Jefferson.
Anyway, so that's why they're canceled.
And we will leave it there today.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
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.
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