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Jan. 29, 2021 - The Matt Walsh Show
38:42
Ep. 647 - The Age Of The Snowflake

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, college students get a professor placed on indefinite leave for referring to a racial slur. Not using one -- referring to it. Also Five Headlines including AOC proving she wants unity by accusing Ted Cruz of attempted murder. And in our Daily Cancellation, I’m afraid we have to talk about COVID anal swabs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Today on the Matt Wall Show, college students get a professor placed on indefinite leave for referring to a racial slur.
Not using one, referring to it on an exam.
That was enough to get him on leave.
We'll talk about that also.
Five headlines including AOC proving that she wants unity by accusing Ted Cruz of attempted murder.
And in our daily cancellation, I'm afraid we do have to talk about COVID anal swabs.
All of that and much more today on The Matt Wall Show.
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So I want to begin today by discussing two stories that may at first seem basically unrelated.
First, we go to Politico, where earlier in the week over 100 staffers signed a letter and sent it to their CEO, further expressing their outrage and grief over the fact that Ben Shapiro wrote a newsletter for them that one time weeks ago.
Yes, you remember that from weeks ago.
They're still talking about it.
Even though two or three weeks have passed since the offensive newsletter, which was not offensive or provocative at all, still, these staffers have not overcome the trauma that it caused them.
They demanded an apology from their boss, along with treatment for their PTSD, which they say must include a dozen therapeutic bunny rabbits in the office, which they can pick up and cuddle anytime they feel scared.
That last part is a joke, but only barely.
In the irony of all ironies, the letter also insists upon I'm not kidding.
Greater workplace diversity.
Yes, they are shouting for more diversity, while in the very same breath, shouting for less diversity.
They are upset that somebody with different views was allowed to write a newsletter.
And the reason they're upset, they say, is that they want more diversity.
But of course, we understand what they mean by diversity.
For them, the perfect image of diversity, what diversity is, Perfect Image is a room full of dozens of people of different races, ethnicities, genders, and sexual proclivities all saying the exact same thing in unison.
It's the kind of diversity that will be best achieved once we're all replaced by robots, which, frankly, at this point can't happen soon enough.
So that's one story.
Let's look at another.
Like I said, these are related, and I'll explain why.
The Daily Wire has a report about a University of Illinois, Chicago law professor, Jason Kilbourne.
The professor has been indefinitely suspended after a campus controversy that stems originally from a question on an exam.
Now, in the exam, Kilbourne presented to the students a hypothetical case dealing with race and gender discrimination.
Okay.
Now I imagine this is the kind of thing that students in law school encounter a lot.
Hypothetical situations and cases that they have to analyze, right?
So in this hypothetical case, an employee quit her job after, and now I'm going to read directly from the exam text.
This is what it says.
After she attended a meeting in which other managers expressed their anger at plaintiff calling her an N blank and B blank.
That's what it says on the exam.
N-N-B.
It does not say the word themselves.
It just says N-N-B with a little blank space next to each letter.
This was enough to provoke outrage.
The Black Law Students Association spoke out claiming that students were shocked and distracted by the slur on the exam.
They couldn't even take the test because they were so upset.
Even though, again, the slur was not written out.
One student said she had heart palpitations just from seeing the letter N on the page.
Let's hope that she never watches Sesame Street when they get to, you know, today the letter is in.
A petition was circulated.
It gained 400 signatures demanding, among other things, that Kilbourn be forced to take cultural sensitivity training for writing the letter N on an exam.
Now you might ask, how the hell can a law professor even teach his students about racial discrimination cases if he can't so much as refer to a racial slur?
If he can't even refer to a racial slur, then how can you communicate what to do legally in these situations?
What if this was an oral lecture and he had just said the N-word?
Not the actual word, but he had said, quote, the N-word.
Would that have been shocking and traumatizing too?
I suppose so.
Meanwhile, of course, most of these students listen to music every day, where the full word is said, shouted really over and over again.
That causes them no emotional pain.
But someone with the wrong skin pigmentation, even so much as refers to the word, however indirectly, it'll cause them to collapse into tears, barely able to breathe.
Sure.
It's all completely absurd, and it only gets more absurd.
Here's what happened next.
Kilbourn, in the midst of the great outrage over the letter N, had a Zoom meeting with a member of the Black Law Students Association.
During the course of that conversation, Kilbourn was asked why the dean of the school had not given Kilbourn the petition from the BLSA so that he could read it himself.
And to that, Kilbourn joked that he hadn't been given the letter, quote, because, this is a quote, I suspect she's afraid if I saw the horrible things said about me in the letter, I would become homicidal.
Obvious joke.
But the BLSA member who heard this promptly reported that comment to the school's behavioral threat assessment team, at which point Kilbourne was placed on indefinite leave for threatening the students.
Now, how does this relate back to the Politico situation?
Because in the case of Politico, these are alleged adults in the real world behaving as though they are so emotionally fragile that they might dissolve into a puddle if you so much as give them a funny look.
In the case of the law professor controversy, these are college kids with the same level of emotional fragility.
This, yet again, demonstrates an important point that I've made before and I'll make again.
We assumed and declared for years that the so-called snowflakes on college campuses would leave the pampered confines of academia, go out into the real world, experience a rude awakening, and then, after some painful adjustment, become mature and well-adjusted adults.
That's what we assumed.
Wait till they get out into the real world.
They're going to see how it really works, won't they?
But that's not what happened.
Instead, snowflakes have gone out into society and remade it in their own image.
As painful as it is for us to acknowledge, they have not gotten the rude awakening that we hoped and that they so much deserve.
And there's no reason to think they ever will.
At least not in the way we thought they would.
This should have been an easy thing to foresee in hindsight.
A lot of things are easy to foresee in hindsight.
After all, each generation inherits the earth and makes society into what they want it to be.
If a bunch of emotionally stunted overgrown babies take over, why would we think that they'd all magically become mature adults?
And besides, this is not a process that happened overnight.
And it didn't begin with the millennial generation.
The boomers, collectively speaking, as a generation, as much as they complain about the millennials, largely have been incompetent, immature, and selfish themselves.
That's why they've ruined every institution they've touched, and they're leaving the country in a much worse state than it was when they inherited it.
The point simply is that many of the rules that make up the real world are determined by society.
Now, physical rules, the laws of physics and so forth, are independent of our whims and attitudes, obviously, as much as we, these days, like to pretend otherwise.
But a rule like society rewards maturity and self-sufficiency, that kind of rule is certainly not universal or innate.
You have to build and maintain a society that operates by that rule.
If you don't, then it won't.
Unfortunately, in our case, we increasingly live in a society that rewards and caters to the loudest, whiniest, most selfish and immature people.
It's not just college campuses anymore that work that way.
One other point about this as I'm thinking about it, you know, we've probably also made a mistake in using phrases like snowflakes, as I have here, to describe the college kids crying over a letter they read on an exam or staffers at Politico writing a letter to complain about a Ben Shapiro article, we call them snowflakes.
Well, this implies that they're merely sensitive, right?
They're too sensitive.
And we've said that many times.
But the truth is actually almost the opposite of that.
Because the sensitivity is performative.
What drives this is not sensitivity, but rather hatred, resentment, a desire for power.
Was the Black Law Students Association actually traumatized by the letter N on a piece of paper?
Do we believe that they actually, the student who said she had heart palpitations, does anyone really believe that she's sincere when she said that?
Or did they see it as an opportunity to vindictively assert their dominance over and destroy a man they despise?
And despise, in this case, largely for the color of his skin.
And what they believe that color represents.
I would say the latter.
The snowflake act is just that.
It's an act.
It's a tool used by these so-called snowflakes to get what they want.
It's a power play.
And an extremely effective one, it turns out.
So, where do we go from here?
What do we do with all this?
What does it mean?
Well, all it means is that our problem is how society is fundamentally constructed.
No big deal.
That's it.
We just have to reconstruct society from the ground up.
We can't wait for the real world to solve the problems.
The real world has been reshaped by these very same people.
So we have to reconstruct it from the ground up.
That's all.
It should only take several generations to do.
That's the good news.
And also the bad news.
But there's no time like the present to get started.
Let's get now to our five headlines.
Or maybe it's King Kong vs. Godzilla.
I can't remember who gets top billing.
But it looks completely stupid.
Really entertaining also.
And I put it on for my kids yesterday.
I put the preview on.
And my boys, 7 and 4, they lost their minds watching it.
And I thought back, I wish when I was 7 years old When I was seven, it wasn't all that long ago.
Well, it was still so long ago, I guess.
But when I was seven, you know, King Kong, if they made a King Kong movie, it still would have been a guy in a suit.
What I wouldn't have done to see a movie like this.
King Kong vs Godzilla.
Can you imagine being a seven-year-old boy and a movie like this is coming out?
But it also brings to mind, because I'm letting them watch this, and I think this is something Maybe it's just me, but I actually think that all parents, at least talking to parents and thinking about my own parents, all parents really struggle to come up with a coherent movie policy for their kids.
And I think all parents end up making these weird decisions where there are certain movies or shows you won't let your kid watch, and then other ones that are definitely inappropriate, you do let them watch.
Like my parents, for example, there are so many shows they wouldn't let, like cartoons, they wouldn't let us watch.
They wouldn't let us watch The Simpsons when I was a kid.
But I think I saw The Exorcist when I was like nine.
And so with my kids, it's kind of a similar thing.
I'm very strict about certain movies, but I'll put on King Kong versus Godzilla.
I put on the Peter Jackson King Kong that came out like in the early 2000s for my son when he was about five.
I forgot there was a scene in that movie where King Kong literally bites a guy's head off and spits it out.
Didn't remember that.
Put it on.
I don't know.
As a parent, you just sort of fumble your way through these things.
And figure it out as you go along.
All right, this is number one from the Daily Wire.
It says, New York's death toll from coronavirus-related nursing home deaths may be much higher than what was reported by the state, especially in the months after Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a mandate requiring facilities to accept COVID-positive patients, regardless of whether those facilities were equipped to handle them.
You've heard a lot about that on this show and other shows.
A report from New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Now, so we knew this was bad.
We knew that thousands of elderly people died because of this policy.
What we're finding out now is that it's even worse than we thought.
So Attorney General Letitia James has determined that COVID-19 resident deaths associated with nursing homes in New York appear to be undercounted by the DOH by approximately 50%.
That 50% refers to a narrow slice of data, and it goes on from there, getting into specifics about it, but the headline here is that it's worse than we thought.
It's a lot worse than we thought.
And we already knew it was pretty bad.
This prompted CNN, with their own headline, an article today, it says, Andrew Cuomo's COVID-19 performance may have been less stellar than it seemed.
Oh, you think so, CNN?
Less stellar than it seemed to you?
And to other deluded morons.
But to those of us with our eyes open, it was very clear from the beginning that it was not stellar at all.
Because, yeah, he was giving press conferences, and he had his whole act in the press conference where he pretended to be this straightforward, tough-talking guy.
But those of us who are not extremely stupid realize that that has nothing to do with what he's actually doing in relation to the coronavirus.
But especially with CNN.
See, you say this now, but during the height of this, when this was actually happening, when there were thousands of COVID patients being put into these nursing homes and this was going on, CNN, this was known, we talked about it on this show, other shows talked about it, we had articles about it on the Daily Wire.
But CNN, rather than reporting on that, They had Andrew Cuomo come on the air several times a week with his little brother, and they had these cutesy little back and forths.
What was it?
The one time he brought out a prop Q-tip to make fun of the fact that Andrew Cuomo has big ears, and they had a big laugh about that while elderly people were dying in nursing homes due to Andrew Cuomo's policies.
So, nice job, CNN.
Number two, a moment of unity.
Moment of unity ruined again.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted yesterday in response to news about Robinhood locking down their app to stop users from buying more GameStop stock.
She said, this was her original tweet, she said, this is unacceptable.
We now need to know more about Robinhood app's decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see it.
As a member of the Financial Services Committee, I'd support a hearing if necessary.
Okay, that's what she said.
And I agree.
I think most people... This has been one issue where it seems like most people agree.
Which is pretty impressive.
Because prior to this, I wasn't sure if there was anything ever again that we could all agree on.
But with this issue, most people do.
Well, Ted Cruz tweeted in agreement.
And all he said was, I agree.
I think that was what his tweet was.
And kind of maybe extending a little bit of an olive branch, AOC proceeded to take that olive branch and throw it in the incinerator.
This is what she tweeted in response.
She said, I'm happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there's common ground, but you, talking to Ted Cruz, almost had me murdered three weeks ago, so you can sit this one out.
Happy to work with almost any other GOP that aren't trying to get me killed.
In the meantime, if you want to help, you can resign.
That's what she thinks of unity.
Now, by the way, when she said, well, I'm happy to work with any other GOP who didn't try to get me killed, what she fails to mention is that she thinks they all tried to get her killed.
She blames all of them.
With very, maybe with the exception of like Mitt Romney and a few others, she thinks they all did.
So what she means is I'm happy to work with any other GOP except for all of the GOP.
You know, and this is what, there are two things we take away from this.
First of all, This is the point we've gotten to now, where a sitting member of Congress accuses another member of trying to have her murdered, and it's like, it's barely even news.
Even ten years ago, this would be unheard of, to have a claim like this.
Completely unsubstantiated.
There's no basis for this whatsoever.
She can't explain.
In what way?
So you're accusing him of attempted murder?
That seems to me to be defamation.
Or libel, whichever one it is when you're saying it.
Or I guess in this case it's a tweet.
I'll let the lawyers figure that out.
But it seems to me that a claim like this, completely baseless, false, smearing somebody, trying to do them damage, that doesn't seem legal to me.
But we're at the point now where it's absolutely expected and doesn't even make any waves.
Oh yeah, sure, just a congresswoman accusing a senator of trying to have her killed.
Eh, par for the course.
But also it shows again what many on the left, especially Democrats, especially Democrats like AOC, what they actually think of unity, which is that they have no interest in it whatsoever.
So there's really no point, even when you agree with them, There's no point in even saying it.
There's no point in trying to find common ground.
Because you try to stand on the common ground with them, they're just going to pull the rug out from under you and kick you while you're down.
That's what's going to happen.
Number three, from the Hill.
We knew this was coming.
Here it is.
President Biden on... President Biden.
I said resident.
Resident Biden actually works.
I kind of like that.
Like a nursing home resident.
I think I stumbled on President Biden, I like that, let's go with that.
President Biden on Thursday signed two executive actions focused on healthcare, describing the directives as a necessary effort to undo the damage done by former President Trump.
Biden signed an order directing federal agencies to open a special enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act.
Then he also signed a presidential memorandum rescinding the Mexico City policy preventing federal funds from going to organizations that fund abortion overseas.
And this is the great Catholic, the great decent Catholic, Joe Biden, who is now going to force taxpayers.
He's going to take food out of your kid's mouths to pay for abortions overseas is what's going to happen.
Now we got here he is signing this order, but you'll notice something and he's kind of explaining why he's signing it, but you'll notice something about this explanation.
Maybe it'll jump out at you.
Listen.
The second order I'm going to be signing also changes what the president has done.
The President — what the former President has done.
And it — a memorandum reversed the — my predecessor's attack on women's health — excuse me — health access.
And as we continue to battle COVID-19, even more critical Americans have meaningful access to healthcare.
If we could just move past the irony of him hacking up a lung while he says the word health, but moving past that, he's talking about funding abortions overseas, but he won't say it.
He won't even say the word abortion.
Instead, he talks about women's health.
Talks about it in a very roundabout way.
And one of the reasons that he still comes from that old school Democrat mentality, old school meaning like 20 years ago, where radically pro-abortion But they won't say it.
They won't say the word.
And I think it's because they still have a little bit of shame in them, and they realize that it's a shameful thing.
So they don't want to openly acknowledge it.
Now, the newer Democrats have no problem talking about abortion.
They're proud of it.
In the end, it all ends with the same policies, and it ends with the same body count of children being killed, so it doesn't matter that much.
But for him, he won't even just come out and say, oh yeah, this is for, so we're going to fund abortions overseas.
And that should tell you something.
When there's a certain policy, and the people, and many of the people who support the policy, and the guy who's signing the policy, enacting it, doesn't want to talk about it, doesn't even want to say the word, well that should tell you something.
You notice that with interesting dichotomy between pro-lifers and pro-abortion people?
Because with pro-lifers, we don't use any euphemisms.
We speak about this issue directly.
We are not afraid at all to say what we really think and to just talk about this issue in a direct, straightforward manner.
It's always been the pro-abortion side.
Many of them anyway, though I say not all of them.
It's always been many of them that they feel the need to dance around it, to find all these different euphemisms, these different terms, women's health, reproductive health.
And anytime you see that, even if you don't know anything about the issue, you know nothing about the issue, you don't even know what abortion is.
And you hear two sides arguing about it.
And one side is talking about it directly and the other side is doing anything they can to not speak about it directly?
That's enough right there to tell you who's on the right side.
Alright, number four.
I have to do this, I'm sorry.
I have to do it.
I take no pleasure in this at all.
But I have to play it for you because I was subjected to it.
This is Kristen Chenoweth.
She's a Broadway actress.
And she made a song.
A Broadway-style song about Kamala Harris.
And I'm going to play it for you, just because.
Here it is.
Her name is Kamala.
It's someone named Kamala.
And truly since I've begun to learn all she's done, I see she deserves that spot.
And also I learned it's no, not Kamala.
So think of it like Kamala.
Because Kamala, she's good for America.
And popular as she was on that Cromwell bus.
Popularity will grow, cause we know how much she's gonna be helping Joe.
After all, there is nobody I agree with the last part.
Very good witch.
I lost my will to live while watching that.
Justice when it came to serving in the senate Where I come from she'd make a very good witch
I agree with the last part.
Very good witch.
I lost my will to live while watching that.
I felt myself plunging into the depths of despair.
I can't even...
There's something about that that's so horrendously depressing.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
And they're still trying to do this with... It will never stop being funny to me.
This enthusiasm they're trying to generate for this woman that they didn't care at all about.
She could have been president!
If you care so much about... I mean, you're literally singing songs about her now!
You're so excited!
But where was this excitement a year ago?
Now she's only the pseudo president.
Now she's the president behind the scenes.
While senile Joe is there as the figurehead.
But she could have been the main person.
She could have been the boss.
Officially.
Top of the ticket.
But you guys chose the old 78-year-old white man.
And now you want to pretend you're excited about her.
Sorry, I don't buy it.
I especially don't buy it in that form.
All right, number five.
This is from the New York Post.
It says, two California women claim that Subway's tuna sandwich actually contains not a scintilla of the fish, that they were duped by the fast food joint's claims.
And they're saying this in a $5 million lawsuit.
Karen Danawa and Nalima Ayman, both of Alameda County, California, say they ordered tuna from the sandwich giant at locations near their home as recently as last year.
It's according to the federal lawsuit.
But independent testing has repeatedly affirmed the products are made from anything but tuna.
The filing of the products has no scintilla of tuna at all, the suit claims.
In fact, Subway's tuna is made from a mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna that have been blended together by the defendants to imitate the appearance of tuna.
This is a kind of a form of, it's a cultural, it's an appropriation of tuna by this imposter.
The filing alleges that Subway has done this in an effort to save money since the blended non-tuna product costs less.
I'm trying to get to the point in this article where they explain why they deserve $5 million because they got fake tuna.
I mean, have they bought $5 million worth of tuna sandwiches?
Because if they have, then I would say, apparently they don't hate the tuna that much.
But I'm okay with this.
If you're going to file the lawsuit against Subway though, the only thing I'll say, if we're filing a lawsuit against Subway, I would rather, or maybe this is something that would come out in the discovery phase, I don't know, but one way or another, I want to know what the smell is in a Subway sandwich shop when you walk in.
There is a smell, and I've asked this question before, I've asked it in Subways before.
Uh, what the smell is.
You know what I'm talking about.
If you've ever been in a subway, there's a very distinct smell and it's not terribly pleasant.
It's this kind of, it's this, it's, it's, it's not, it's not exactly like walking into a, into a, you know, a dumpster.
Not exactly that.
But there's this waff that you smell when you walk in.
It's kind of disturbing.
I don't know what it is exactly.
And the answer I've been given is that it's the smell of baked bread.
No, no.
I know the smell of baked bread, and that ain't it.
I don't know if it's congealed lunch meat mixed with the bread, mixed with the smell of the bathroom.
I don't know what it is.
But that's what I want to know with Subway.
One of the most important things that we can do for ourselves is to always strive to know more information, to learn more, you know, to keep, whether, whether you went to college or you didn't go to college, if you're, maybe you're still in school, it doesn't matter.
Learning is not something we should do just at school.
We've got to continue doing that throughout our lives to become more well-rounded and interesting people.
And that's why Great Courses Plus, I cannot recommend enough.
I use it myself. I've been a big Great Courses fan for a long time.
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I've listened to a lot of great courses over the last several years, especially.
One of the most recent ones I listened to was a professor by the name of Robert Sapolsky,
and he had a lecture on biology and how it determines its relationship to human behavior.
So yeah, I also like to listen to courses on history.
Astronomy and all these different kinds of things.
Anything at all with Great Courses.
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Sign up for The Great Courses Plus to find out.
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I'll say that again.
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Don't miss out on this.
Trust me.
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Another thing you don't want to miss out on is our new feature film, Run, Hide, Fight.
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That's a really important part of this.
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The mainstream critics give it 27%.
Okay, now, if you want to know why you shouldn't, you know, who you should trust, think about the movie Cuties.
Remember that on Netflix?
That disgusting movie?
That has an 87% rating with mainstream critics, 15% with the audience.
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I don't know about the critics, though.
Run, hide, fight again.
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Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
I never thought I had to say this, but today we're going to cancel anal swabs.
The media has been reporting that China, in order to test for COVID, is now using both throat and anal swabs, though not on the same person, or at least not with the same swab, one would hope.
In any case, the Washington Post has this.
They say, the people of China could be forgiven for thinking they'd seen it all during the coronavirus pandemic, but now they face a new indignity, the addition of anal swabs.
Chinese state media outlets introduced a new protocol in recent days, prompting widespread discussion and some outrage.
Only some outrage, apparently in China.
Some Chinese doctors say the science is there.
Recovering patients, they say, have continued to test positive through samples from the lower digestive tract days after nasal and throat swabs came back negative.
Yet for many, it seemed a step too far in government intrusion after a year and counting of a dignity-eroding pandemic.
Everyone involved will be so embarrassed, one user.
of the Chinese social media app Weibo said, "Even Chinese doctors who support the new test
said the method's inconvenience meant it made sense for use only in select groups,
such as at quarantine centers."
That's what they say.
But it seems the anal swab technique is not only being used on people in quarantine centers, even airline passengers are apparently required to subject themselves to this experience.
The Hill reports, quote, nose and anal swabs were taken from a group of passengers on a flight from Changchun, China to Beijing on Monday.
Other travelers arriving in Beijing have also been asked to use anal swabs.
One woman who was not identified by name Thankfully for her, was asked to use an anal swab in a mandatory hotel quarantine in Beijing alongside several nose and throat tests and a blood test.
Again, we hope that they use different equipment for all those different tests.
It's not clear to me whether this swabbing is happening in the airport or on the plane in most cases or somewhere else.
Perhaps they do it while you're waiting in line at the food court Burger King.
For efficiency's sake, at least the mask will help hide your shame a little bit.
There's been a video making the rounds, which appears to be some sort of Chinese official or doctor in an airport demonstrating the anal swab technique.
Thankfully, he's using a dummy in this case.
The good news is that this is all only slightly more invasive than what the TSA already does.
I mean, it's hard to believe.
That a little more than 20 years ago, you could walk into an airport, get right on a plane, carrying a baseball bat and a knife if you wanted.
I mean, literally, you could actually bring that stuff on a plane.
Now they confiscate your water bottles and subject you to a rectal probe.
We have come a long way in the wrong direction.
Now, I haven't done any official polling on this, but based on informal conversations, it appears that It appears that most people are rather opposed to the anal swab method.
The approval rating for anal swabs is rather low.
It's almost as low as the approval rating for Congress.
Why is that?
I mean, why do people recoil at the idea?
Well, I think they recoil at it for a few reasons.
One of them, though, perhaps the number one, is that dignity matters, as it turns out.
And that's the takeaway here.
If there's any lesson to be learned from anal swabs, anal swabs are an extreme example, but why, you know, do most people reject the idea?
Because they want to preserve their dignity.
Even if that form of testing is more accurate, even if it would make us safer, who knows?
Maybe it would.
I don't know.
Doesn't matter, most of us would say, because we have our dignity and we would like to preserve it, thank you.
There have to be limits, okay?
There are things that I will not subject myself to, things I will not cooperate with, simply because I'm a human being and I have dignity.
Dignity is actually a more important consideration than safety.
If there's a choice between staying safe and forfeiting your dignity, or keeping your dignity and forfeiting your safety, you should go through door number two every time.
So we see that, I think, with extreme and absurd things like anal swabs.
I just wish we could see it with things that are only slightly less extreme and absurd, like wearing a mask while walking outside.
Or wearing two masks.
Or three masks.
Or wearing a mask and a visor when you go to Walmart.
Maybe you'll be a little safer if you do that.
Maybe the person with the mask and the gloves and the visor is a little safer.
Maybe if you wear a mask while you go for a jog, you're a little bit safer.
I'm not convinced that's true, actually, but maybe it is for the sake of argument.
Let's say it is.
You're a little bit safer.
So what?
I still won't do it because it's undignified.
It's ridiculous.
It's humiliating.
That's my reason.
My reason is actually not, oh, it's because of the science.
It's actually got nothing to do with science.
I just think it's humiliating, ridiculous, and it looks stupid, and it's undignified.
That's why I'm not going to do it.
We've been told that that's not a good reason.
You need a better reason.
No, I think that's the best reason.
I think it's one of the best reasons you can have for doing or not doing something.
Now, if you don't think it's a good reason, Dignity isn't a good reason to not do something.
Okay, well then ask for the anal swab next time you're getting tested.
Next time you're at CVS getting the COVID test, ask if they have the anal swab.
It'll make you safer.
Dignity doesn't matter, does it?
I say it does.
Which is why anal swabs, along with so many other anti-COVID measures, are cancelled.
And incidentally, I have now used the term anal swab more times in the last five minutes than I had through my whole life to this point.
These are not the sorts of personal milestones that I set out to achieve.
But what can we do?
That's where we are.
And we'll leave it there for today.
Great note to end on for the week.
Have a great weekend.
Talk to you on Monday.
Godspeed.
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