Ep. 722 - Stop Waiting For Permission To Live Your Life
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the CDC has given us permission to breathe fresh air again. Some of us, anyway. Many people have been waiting for this permission and are grateful that the CDC will allow them to show their faces in public again. It’s a rather pitiful and embarrassing picture, altogether, and we’ll talk about it today. Also Five Headlines including the hackers who caused a gas shortage across the US win a big ransom for their troubles. AOC calls in extra security because another member of Congress yelled at her. And Disney goes for Gold in the woke Olympics with its new cartoon show features interracial gay dads. Finally in our Daily Cancellation, we’ll discuss the American Idol contestant who was forced off the show for something he posted when he was 12 years old.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, the CDC has given us permission to breathe fresh air again.
Some of us, anyway.
Many people have been waiting for this permission and are grateful that the CDC will allow them to show their faces in public again.
I think it's a rather pitiful and embarrassing picture altogether, and we'll talk about it today.
Also, five headlines, including the hackers who caused a gas shortage across the U.S.
win a big ransom for their troubles.
AOC calls in extra security because another member of Congress yelled at her, and Disney goes for gold in the woke Olympics with its new cartoon show featuring interracial gay dads.
And finally, in our Daily Cancellation, we'll discuss the American Idol contestant who was forced off the show for something he posted on the internet when he was 12 years old.
Twelve.
And he's cancelled for that.
All of that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.
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As always, write Walsh in there.
How did you hear about us, Fox?
So they know that we sent you.
This has been a tough week for those of us who have a weak stomach.
Mayor Bill de Blasio really tested our intestinal resolve when he unveiled New York's ingenious new plan to incentivize vaccinations in the city.
As the mayor explained, while munching like a disgusting cow, anyone who gets vaccinated will be eligible for free french fries and a hamburger from Shake Shack.
Or, you know, you could just pay the $6 and buy it yourself.
Anyway, here is Bill de Blasio making his pitch with a mouthful of half-chewed food.
Free fries when you get vaccinated?
Um, I got vaccinated.
You're saying I could get this?
These delicious fries?
Wait a minute.
But there's also a burger element to this?
Let me check with Bill Neidhardt.
Is it too early in the day to eat a burger?
No.
This could be breakfast?
Okay.
I want you to look at this and think about, again, some people love hamburgers, some don't.
I really want to respect all ways of life, but if this is appealing to you, just think of this when you think of vaccination.
Mmm.
Vaccination.
Mmm.
I'm getting a very good feeling.
About vaccination rate this moment.
By the way, what was the guy who he was talking to?
What was his name?
Bill Meat Tard?
Was that his name?
I didn't really hear it, but anyway, that's horrifying.
It's a rare talent to make french fries seem unappealing, but the Blasios pulled it off.
Speaking of which, what kind of person picks up a french fry, takes three bites of it, then puts the remainder of the fry back down and moves on to the hamburger?
Did you see him do that?
Who does that?
He didn't even finish the one french fry he was holding.
Takes two bites and puts it down, picks up the hamburger, returns to the french fry.
The man eats like some sort of Martian body snatcher who's never consumed earthly food before.
So no surprise there, I suppose.
More to the point, this strategy for pushing vaccinations is incredibly insulting, as well as nauseating.
Do they really think that a person hesitated about getting vaccinated for whatever reason is going to be swayed by the promise of a fast food coupon?
The assumption is that an unvaccinated person must necessarily have frivolous and stupid reasons for their choice, and therefore a frivolous and stupid incentive might push them in the other direction.
The whole thing is demeaning and infantilizing.
With that said, we have to admit that some members of the public are quite happy to be demeaned and infantilized.
That's one of the many disturbing lessons of the last year.
It was in evidence again yesterday when the CDC, around the time that Bill de Blasio was making us all vomit, made the announcement that we've all been waiting for.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who just a few days ago was seen testifying to Congress that it's not safe for kids to go to summer camp, she's now decided that vaccinated Americans can take off their mask.
Here she is making the announcement.
Considering all of these factors, the data on vaccine effectiveness, the science on their ability to protect against circulating variants, and our growing understanding of the low risk of transmission to others, combined with universal access to vaccines for those 12 and older, today, CDC is updating our guidance for fully vaccinated people.
Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing.
If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic.
We have all longed for this moment, when we can get back to some sense of normalcy.
Based on the continuing downward trajectory of cases, the scientific data on the performance of our vaccines, and our understanding of how the virus spreads, that moment has come for those who are fully vaccinated.
The moment has come.
I said this is the announcement we've all been waiting for.
I should clarify, some have been waiting for this announcement.
I haven't been.
I've already been going maskless everywhere that I can.
I've been doing that from the very beginning.
I didn't need the CDC's permission, and I don't care whether they give it or not.
Still, this announcement raises some questions, like why now?
Is it safer to go maskless today than it was yesterday or last week or a month ago?
The CDC issued guidance in the form of a handy chart not but a week or two ago, and in that chart, they called for everyone, everyone vaccinated or not, to wear masks everywhere indoors.
Then a short time later, they dramatically changed course, announcing that the vaccinated can take their masks off inside.
Did the science change in the course of 14 days?
Does the CDC have scientific data today that it didn't have two weeks ago?
These are all rhetorical questions.
Of course, I can answer them.
No, there is no new scientific data.
No, the science did not change.
No, there's no science-based reason why the CDC made this announcement today and not earlier.
This is part arbitrary, part theater, part politics.
All manipulation.
And it only underscores why you're better off reading the science for yourself and using your common sense.
As always here, the public health officials are belatedly confirming what common sense told us all along.
Indeed, they're confirming the common sense determinations that they condemned us for making as recently as, like, two days ago.
Common sense and science all told us from the beginning that there's no good reason to have everyone of all ages wearing masks everywhere, all the time, indoors and outdoors.
And yet, if we operated according to that common sense, we were castigated.
Because common sense didn't count unless the CDC said so.
That has been the most disgusting thing to witness over the last 24 hours since the CDC's announcement.
Even more disgusting than Bill de Blasio gnawing on his lunch like a damned warthog.
The most disgusting thing has been all of the people tearfully thanking the CDC for giving them the permission to take their masks off.
There's been a lot of that kind of thing on cable news especially.
Here's a CNN host on the verge of tears, so overcome with gratitude for the liberties she has now been granted by our CDC masters.
I just want to take a moment to mark this minute because I found myself welling up when Dr. Walensky was talking and she said we have an exciting announcement and I still find myself welling up even right now because, you know, You and I talked every morning, you know, during the past year about how many more Americans were going to die, you know, what was going to happen?
Were we going to make it to the vaccines?
Were we all going to survive?
What was going to happen?
And, you know, 580,000 Americans didn't make it to this day, you know, this day that they say that we can throw these away, that we've all been clinging to.
And here we are.
I mean, we just didn't know when this day would come.
But it feels a little bit like it's over.
The masks we've all been clinging to.
I mean, speak for yourself, Allison.
They really think this is how out of touch these people are.
I got goosebumps as you're talking.
I mean, it's a really important day.
-The masks we've all been clinging to.
I mean, speak for yourself, Allison.
They really think.
This is how out of touch these people are.
And they wonder why they have trouble connecting with most Americans.
She really thinks that we've all been clinging desperately to our masks.
No, I haven't been.
You know, I would throw my mask away in celebration or burn it or something, but I don't even know where it is.
That's how much I've been clinging to it.
But if that wasn't quite sickening enough, Rachel Maddow over on MSNBC says that now, with the CDC's permission, she will have to rewire her brain and figure out how to be around other bare-faced people without having a panic attack.
Let's listen.
Everybody had very personal feelings about it, and I realized I did, too, in all these questions.
Part of it is that I feel like I'm going to have to rewire myself so that when I see somebody out in the world who's not wearing a mask, I don't instantly think, you are a threat.
Or you are selfish, or you are a COVID denier, and you definitely haven't been vaccinated.
I mean, we're going to have to rewire the way that we look at each other.
President Biden spoke to that a little bit today, asking for people to — President Biden, actually, and Dr. Fauci both spoke to that today, asking for people to essentially be patient, be compassionate, give people respect for whatever they decide on this front, because with this changing guidance, we're going to now have changing norms, and we've got to give each other space to have feelings about that.
As we go through what's going to be a big change that's going to create a lot of visceral, a lot of visceral reaction in a lot of us just in our day-to-day lives.
Big day.
Big change.
So that was all a really long way of saying, I'm mentally ill.
You could really summarize it there, Rachel.
Just say, I'm mentally ill.
Which, yes, we know.
We know you are.
But there's been a lot of this kind of sentiment expressed.
People have waited for the CDC to give them permission to breathe fresh air.
They literally needed permission to breathe.
The reason given for this obsequious, submissive demeanor is that they're, you know, following the science.
And that's why they're waiting for the CDC, because I'm following the science.
Well, the CDC is not the science.
The National Institute of Health is not the science.
The World Health Organization is not the science.
These are institutions comprised of people, and the people are oftentimes self-interested and highly political.
Yes, they have science-y sounding words in the names of the organizations, but that doesn't mean that they are themselves synonymous with science.
If you have trouble understanding this point, just think about this.
What if I justified a decision made by a court of law by saying, hey, it's the justice system.
What, do you disagree with justice?
I mean, if you disagree with something that the justice system does, you must have a problem with justice.
Yes, it's the justice system, as in it's a system that's supposed to enact justice, but the system is made up of people and those people can be wrong and often are.
To act as though the justice system is synonymous with justice itself is, as a concept, is to engage in the most debased form of brainless bootlicking imaginable.
It would sound insane for me to make that argument, and it sounds just as insane when it comes to science and the CDC.
Of course, all that established, the people who are celebrating today and popping the champagne because their CDC overlords are allowing them to show their face in public again are certainly pitiful and embarrassing and a disgrace to our country, but they're not nearly as bad as the countless others who are jealously clinging to their masks, still refusing to take them off because they've become psychologically and emotionally dependent on them.
Altogether, it's clear that the pandemic, and the government's response to it, and the media's fear-mongering over it, have all been simply too much to bear for many Americans, who already lacked a moral and intellectual foundation, and who had lived distracted and superficial lives, and had never even considered the issue of their own mortality until this past year.
All of these factors together have ruined many of these people, possibly permanently.
They'll never be able to breathe fresh air again without it causing anxiety.
Or else they become conditioned like Pavlov's dogs to follow the orders and edicts of anyone with health official in their title.
Perhaps some will return to normal lives, but they'll be ready to abandon those lives again whenever the next crisis emerges.
Whether real or imagined.
But those of us who have operated by common sense, who kept living our lives, who used our critical thinking capacities and made our own decisions as adults and Americans and didn't wait for anyone's permission to exercise our basic liberties, we at least come out of this with our minds sharp and our dignity intact.
And maybe we could take some solace in that.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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Alright, so...
Mediaite reports Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you know, she has it pretty rough.
There's, you know, she's had many near-death experiences where in fact she wasn't near death at all, but at least in her mind she's constantly under attack.
And here's another such case.
Mediaite reports, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has reportedly sought increased security after Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene aggressively confronted her in the Capitol building Wednesday, accusing her of supporting terrorists and Antifa.
According to a new report from the Washington Post, Taylor Greene began shouting at Ocasio-Cortez as she left the House chamber.
And we have only the report of this.
I wish we had a video.
That'd be great.
That'd be fun to watch.
There's no video as far as I know.
So this is the report.
It says, two Washington Post reporters witnessed Ocasio-Cortez exit the House chamber late Wednesday afternoon ahead of Greene, who shouted, hey Alexandria, twice in an effort to get her attention.
When Ocasio-Cortez did not stop walking, Greene picked up her pace and began shouting at her and asking why she supports Antifa, a loosely knit group of far-left activists, and Black Lives Matter, falsely labeling them terrorist groups.
This is the Washington Post framing, by the way, with the falsely labeled.
Because in reality, that is a correct label, but... Green also shouted that Ocasio-Cortez was failing to defend her radical socialist beliefs by declining to publicly debate the freshman from Georgia.
Green shouted, you don't care about the American people, why do you support terrorists and Antifa?
Ocasio-Cortez did not stop to answer Greene, only turning around once and throwing her hands in the air in an exasperated motion.
The two reporters were not close enough to hear what the New York Congresswoman said, and her office declined to discuss her specific response.
And then in a statement, Ocasio-Cortez's spokeswoman, Lauren Hitt, said the following.
Representative Greene tried to begin an argument with Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, and when Representative Ocasio-Cortez tried to walk away, Congresswoman Greene began screaming and called Representative Ocasio-Cortez a terrorist sympathizer.
We hope leadership in the Sergeant-at-Arms will take real steps to make Congress a safe civil place for all members and staff, especially as many offices are discussing reopening.
One member has already been forced to relocate her office due to Congresswoman Greene's attacks.
Yeah, what is she, dropkicking people in the hallway?
Doing cartwheels?
Like some kind of ninja?
Her attacks.
We gotta keep everyone safe.
Yeah, as I said, another near-death experience here for poor Alexandria.
Somebody was raising their voice in her presence.
Oh god, no!
No!
She nearly died!
First of all, everything that Marjorie Taylor Greene reportedly said is true, so let's establish that.
And so she raised her voice a little bit.
Get over it, sweetheart.
You'll be fine.
You gotta call in security for that?
It's a good question, actually.
Why are you supporting this organization?
Why won't you denounce Antifa?
Pretty good question.
And Ocasio-Cortez refuses to answer that question, so... Hey, what is it that... I'm trying to remember.
What is it that Maxine Waters was urging people to do?
What was the word she used?
Oh yeah, confrontational.
Didn't she say that?
Get more confrontational?
She said that multiple times.
I mean, she told her supporters to get in people's faces.
Let them know they're not welcome.
So at worst, Representative Greene is merely taking Maxine Waters' advice and doing as the Democrats, and other Democrats too, have encouraged.
Of course, I know the difference is that, oh no, no, no, you're not supposed to do that.
I was talking to, it's only if you have the correct political views, that's when you're allowed to be confrontational.
To the point of even like burning down a building if you want to.
Invade a police station, drive everybody out, and burn it to the ground.
You can do that.
That's confrontation.
That's okay, as long as you have the correct political views.
Now, it sounds like Marjorie Taylor Greene just doesn't accept that double standard, and so she was responding that way, and I don't, man, it's fine.
Deal with it.
You know, in Congress, they used to be a lot more confrontational than that.
They used to hit each other with their canes and pokers from the fireplace.
You would have politicians getting into duels and that kind of thing.
So this is really not too aggressive compared to that.
All right, next from Yahoo, it says, Colonial Pipeline Company paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers on Friday, contradicting reports earlier this week that the company had no intention of paying an extortion fee to help restore the country's largest fuel pipeline.
The company paid the hefty ransom in difficult-to-trace cryptocurrency within hours after the attack, underscoring the immense pressure faced by the Georgia-based operator So they paid the ransom of five million and now supposedly the pipeline is getting back online.
And I think they're saying it'll take a couple of weeks before things maybe get back to normal.
You can't really.
You could say that the company here at least refused to negotiate with terrorists.
Because they just give the terrorists everything they wanted, so that's one way of not negotiating.
Not negotiating could go one way or another, and they chose their way, but from a business perspective, they're just looking at this like, listen, we can lose five million, or we could keep this thing going and lose a lot more than five million, business decision, we're just gonna pay the ransom.
So from a business standpoint, you can understand it.
But I really think we can't, it can't be emphasized enough Just how disturbing it is that we could have these foreign hackers, 6,000, whatever, 5,000, 6,000 miles away, other side of the world, sitting in front of their computers.
They press a couple of buttons, and next thing you know, we have a gas shortage in the United States.
That's what happened.
Hackers pressed some buttons and caused a gas shortage across the United States.
And that makes you wonder, what else can they do?
If they can do that pretty easily, then what else can they do?
What happens when they attack the power grid?
Where are we then?
But you know, as we discussed yesterday, the good news is that our intelligence agencies, they're not so much focused on that, but they are focused on promoting diversity and tolerance.
So if the hackers ever come after the power grid, And send us back into the Stone Age?
That'll be unfortunate, but at least when our civilization is destroyed and we're in the Stone Age, we will be a diverse and tolerant Stone Age civilization.
So at least we'll have that.
Alright, speaking of being diverse and tolerant, from the Daily Wire it says Disney is revamping the Proud family, a 20-year-old cartoon sitcom about an African-American family and will be featuring a cast that includes two interracial gay dads whose adopted daughter is a teenage racial activist.
I told you, they're going for gold in the Woke Olympics with this show.
Actors Zachary Quinto and Billy Porter, both of whom are gay, will be playing Barry Leibowitz-Jenkins and Randall Leibowitz-Jenkins, respectively.
The two are a couple and mixed-race adoptive parents to Maya Leibowitz-Jenkins, a 14-year-old black activist voiced by Kiki Palmer.
The show will be titled The Proud Family, Louder and Prouder.
And apparently this show aired back in, whatever, 2005, or from 2001 to 2005, and I don't know if it had the gay element back then, but they're injecting that in now.
We are rapidly approaching the point where there will be more gay parents on children's TV than exist in reality.
We might actually already be there.
I don't know.
And the difference, because what you hear to justify a lot of this stuff is that For so long, all the parents that you saw on TV and all the couples were all heterosexual, and that's not representative of what's happening in the culture.
And so this is just about representing the reality and making other lifestyles visible and so on and so forth.
That's the justification.
That's the argument for it.
But there are a number of significant differences.
I'll just point to one.
For so long, when you had, say, you know, just a cartoon and you had a mom and a dad and a kid in the cartoon or a sitcom or whatever, nobody was trying to make a point.
There wasn't any political point being made by the fact that you had a mom and a dad and a kid.
It's just a family.
The heterosexual, the sexual nature of the parents' relationship didn't, it wasn't a subject.
It didn't come up.
It wasn't the point.
But now, with all of these shows, it is all about making the point.
The storyline is secondary.
Whatever humor they try to inject into it is secondary.
Every plot is secondary.
Because all of that is just providing a forum to make the ideological point that they want to make with this.
And that is a pretty big difference.
And that's also why all of these shows are terrible.
Because it's not about the story.
As far as they're concerned, there is no story to tell.
They've made a show with interracial gay parents, and that's it.
That's all they wanted to do.
Every story that they tell within that context is secondary.
All right, next, people.com has this, says, Jeff Bezos is eyeing a new ride, a massive one-of-a-kind super yacht.
The Amazon CEO, 57, reportedly plans to purchase a 417-foot-long yacht that spans several decks and boasts three enormous masts.
It also has a support yacht with a helipad.
The vessel, known only as Project 271, reportedly costs roughly $500 million.
Jeff Bezos is getting a half a billion dollar yacht and it has its own support yacht that comes with it.
That's when you've really crossed the threshold into obscene wealth, which really he crossed that threshold a long time ago.
Now, of course, this story came out a few days ago, and a lot of people, especially people on the left, were upset about this, and were talking about how disgusting it is that Jeff Bezos is getting a $500 million yacht with a support yacht, and how dare he?
Couldn't that money go to the poor?
Couldn't that money go to better causes?
And so on.
I think what often happens in these arguments The left says that, says, oh, this is immoral, it's gratuitous, it's obscene, it's greedy, it's all these things.
And then you have the right, people on the right, defending it by saying, yeah, but it's creating jobs, and think about all the people now who are hired to build the yacht and to maintain it, and those are, you know, those are, it's a job-creating thing, and that's good.
Now, the thing is, I look at this argument, and to me, both sides are actually correct.
That doesn't happen very often.
But I think both sides are right here.
On one hand, yeah, it does create jobs, so it is good in that sense.
There's been a lot, hundreds of people, if you're getting a $500 million yacht, there are hundreds and hundreds of people involved in making it, maintaining it, all that kind of stuff.
And so I'm sure all of them and their families are quite grateful for Jeff Bezos's greed and his obscene wealth.
But it is also true that It is obscene.
And it is greedy.
And there really is no moral justification for that.
If you've got that kind of money to spend, you're spending it on a temple to yourself and to your own vanity.
And who could deny that of course that money would be better, not because the government takes it, but of his own free will and volition, he should choose to take that money and use it, give it, yes, give it to those who are in need.
As Christians, we cannot deny that claim at all.
What would Jesus do?
What is Jesus Christ's opinion about this?
Does he think that when you've got all that money, you should spend it on a yacht for yourself?
Or should you give it to the poor?
What do we think Jesus says about that?
I think we know.
There's no doubt about it.
Um, it is...
It...
We have to be able to draw this distinction.
to be able to draw this distinction.
That's another thing a lot of people on the right, I think, struggle to draw this distinction.
Where anytime you criticize what rich people spend their money on, people on the right get their antennas up because they think you're making a pitch for socialism.
And they say, oh, but they have the right to spend it.
They might have the right to, but that doesn't make it right to.
There's a difference sometimes between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.
And you have the right to do a lot of things that aren't actually right to do.
And that's the distinction.
With all that said, it must also be pointed out that the leftists who are criticizing someone like Jeff Bezos for a $500 million yacht, even though their moral point is correct, That it is vanity, and it is greed, and of course he should be using that in more productive ways for those who are in need.
It's hard to deny, right?
Like you've got Jeff Bezos in his $500 million yacht, meanwhile you've got some people living on $12,000 a year
and can barely feed their kids.
But the problem is that on the left, you actually don't have the moral standing
to make that argument.
You don't have the moral framework for it.
Because by your philosophy, by your worldview, Jeff Bezos is living his truth as a billionaire.
You know?
He's living his truth.
He's enjoying his life.
He's enjoying the luxuries of life.
He's living each moment trying to maximize his pleasure and his own personal enjoyment in each moment.
And for most people on the left, for them, that's the whole point of life.
There is no other point of life beyond that.
There also is no objective morality.
Morality is subjective.
They're moral relativists.
And so, this is right for him.
It's what he wants to do.
You have no basis to criticize it.
There's not much of a moral difference between a rich guy spending his money to make himself feel good and building temples to his own vanity.
Not a lot of difference between that and a glutton who just gorges on food and gets really fat.
We're supposed to celebrate someone like that.
Or a woman who goes and sleeps around and gets abortions and kills her kids to escape the consequences.
We're supposed to celebrate that woman.
Because she's living her truth, living her life as she sees fit, enjoying her life.
Who are we to judge?
Jeff Bezos belongs in that category.
With the gluttons.
And all of that.
It's all in the same category.
So in order to criticize him, you have to adopt some kind of objective moral framework.
Where you recognize that people have moral responsibilities and moral duties that go beyond their own whims.
And that sometimes a person may really want to do something and it may make them feel good to do it, but they shouldn't do it.
Because there's some moral truth that is above and beyond themselves.
There is no way to criticize rich people for buying yachts unless that is your worldview.
Unless you accept that truth, which the left doesn't, so they have no room to criticize, unfortunately.
All right, let's move to reading the YouTube comments.
In fact, actually, one more story here.
Although this is kind of interesting.
This is from dnyuz.com, whatever that is.
It says, just how many friends can one person have?
In a 1993 study, Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, theorized that humans can have no more than about 150 meaningful relationships, a measure that became known as Dunbar's number.
But researchers at Stockholm University published a paper last week
calling that number into question, finding that people could have far more friends if they put in the effort.
Jonah Lind, an author of the study, said, "We can learn thousands of digits of pi and we can engage with lots of
people.
Then we will become better at having relationships with lots of people."
In his original research, Dr. Dunbar studied monkeys and apes and determined that the size of the neocortex,
the part of the brain responsible for conscious thought, correlated with the size of groups they lived among.
The neocortex in humans is even larger, so he extrapolated that the ideal group size was on average 150.
In the new study, Dr. Lin said he and his team used updated data sets and statistical methods and found that the size of the neocortex does not limit the number of connections people can maintain.
Dunbar's number, he said, has been criticized for quite a time.
Dr. Lin's team found that no maximum number of friendships could be established with any precision.
So...
The original thought was that you can have no more than 150 friends, and now we're being told that, oh, you can have a lot more than that.
I would think that the real number is quite a bit smaller than that.
There is no way a human being can maintain 150 meaningful friendships.
I can't even remember, and I guess I can only speak from my own experience, but I can't even remember the names of 150 people.
I could say right now, I don't think I personally know the name of up to 150 people.
If we're not counting like famous people, people in the public eye, but in my own personal life, are there 150 people that I personally know who I could name them all?
I'm not even sure that I could.
And yet you could have meaningful relationships and friendships with 150.
No, it's what's, what's the real, how many meaningful Lasting, because I think in order to be a friendship it has to be that, meaningful and lasting.
Relationships can you have outside of your own family?
I'm going to put the number at, I don't know, two?
Three maybe?
Maybe a little bit more than that.
This is another thing we've seen in our culture is this cheapening of the idea of friends.
And I think even though this original idea of 150 friends came before the advent of social media, still, the advent of social media has pushed this along because we talk about, you know, your friends on Facebook and the people that you follow on Twitter or Instagram or whatever.
And yeah, you could have thousands and thousands of people, but none of them are actually your friends.
You don't have any actual connection, no intimate relationship with any of them.
And so, if you take a very shallow idea of friendship, then sure, the sky's the limit.
But if friendship means something, I'm gonna say, I'll put it at two.
You can have two friends.
Pick your two, and that's it.
Alright, let's move now to reading the YouTube comments.
This is from username Ethanol.
Says, imagine the scene, it's the middle of a war, it's raining bullets, the entire US Army has crawled up in a corner crying, but how the enemy is misgendering them.
It's safe to say that we are completely doomed.
Yeah, well, that assumes that when whatever superpower comes to invade us and conquer us, that we would actually fight back at all, which I'm not sure that that would happen at this point.
OJH says, I'm in the break room at work listening to coworkers talk about how they disagree with the new order that vaccinated people shouldn't wear masks.
They're saying, what about flu season?
And I'm afraid to not wear one.
No joke.
We knew this would happen, though.
Yeah, we did.
A lot of people, you heard Rachel Maddow say, and she's actually right about that, that people's brains have been rewired in this way, that for a lot of people, it gives them anxiety now.
Think about how deeply someone has to have been affected, that now to simply see another person's face causes them real anxiety.
That's what Rachel Maddow was saying.
She is anxious and afraid and angry when she sees another person's bare face and she starts to make all these assumptions about them.
She's admitting that, but she doesn't really see a problem with it.
It's a huge problem.
Christian says, Matt sounded so white reading Tory's tweets, the way he said, F'd around and found out was hilarious.
Well, I don't consider sounding white to be an insult.
I mean, I am white, so whatever.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean.
I think I did sound intimidating.
Gosh dang it, you big goofball.
You're going to F around and find out, mister.
You're telling me that's not intimidating?
Come on.
Uh, J A says, I hit the like button because I appreciate a man who takes charge and tells me what to do.
Tomato Joe says, I wasn't going to like, but then Matt started yelling and I panicked.
I may not like it, but it's effective.
Yeah.
You know what?
I started doing this new strategy instead of begging people to hit like demanding it.
And I got to say over the last two shows, you can go and check yourself on YouTube.
If you want the like ratio is way up.
It's like doubled.
I think I've cracked the code.
You don't ask people to hit like, you demand.
Hit like!
Like now!
Do it!
We'll see.
We'll see if we can keep this going.
Imagine someone coming in just at that moment, with no context, and how insane I would sound and look.
But then again, even with the context, I sound and look insane.
Just in general, I suppose.
And finally, Chris Schwartz says, Hey Matt, I'm a youth football coach.
I've honestly never seen a kid get a concussion.
You would be surprised what kind of hits they can take.
But in saying that, I would also take that as an extremely good coaching opportunity.
I've always coached my kids, head has got to stay up.
In fact, a kid lowers his head on my team, he's running laps.
I preach that head up all times, proper tackling.
If I was coaching them kids, that smaller kid would definitely have been able to tackle him and he would have had the right form.
Both of them had their heads up.
If not, they both would have been running laps.
The problem with youth football is the coaching.
Yeah, we played the clip from some sort of youth football league, I think here locally, in Tennessee at least, of a tackling drill among really young kids and the coach is filming it and laughing while the one kid who's way outmatched and doesn't have proper form gets blown up, helmet to helmet contact, smacks his head on the ground, you know, brain injury written all over a hit like that.
I looked it up after the show and apparently Apparently this is from a year ago, and I don't know why the clip is making the rounds now, but it's from a year ago, and the coach did get fired after that.
So, I am always hesitant to say that people should lose their jobs, but something like that, yeah, you are amused by possible head trauma to very young children.
Yeah, I would say you don't belong in coaching football.
You really don't belong around kids at all, I would say.
You know, if there's one thing that authoritarians don't know, it's that they're being authoritarian.
Perhaps.
They see virtue while we see it for what it really is, a bunch of delusional elites determined to strip us of our freedoms.
And unless we want to live under their identity-obsessed mob rule, it's important that we know how to stop them.
That's why Ben Shapiro wrote his new book, The Authoritarian Moment.
In it, he gives some background on how we got here and tips on how to fight back.
So if you want to preserve your individual rights and protect the ones you love from mob rule, The Authoritarian Moment is now available for pre-order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any other major bookseller.
Also, if you're a fan of watching Candace drop some truth bombs, now is your chance to see her in action.
Tickets to join Candace's live show, live studio audience.
I've actually been asked about this many times.
How do you get in to watch the show?
Well, here it is.
So you can stop bugging me, dammit!
You can go.
They're available only to All Access members and limited to her Monday tapings throughout the month of June.
Plus, you'll get 20% off an All Access membership right now by using code ALLACCESS at checkout.
Just head to dailywire.com slash tickets to secure your spot.
Hurry, though.
Seating is limited and Candace's show is in high demand, so spots will go fast.
Again, just head to dailywire.com slash tickets to be a part of an experience so beautiful it'll bring a tear to a leftist's eye.
All right, let's get now to our daily cancellation.
So today we consider another case of somebody getting cancelled after things they posted on the internet a long time ago resurface.
As always, the term resurface is an intentionally but dishonestly passive way of phrasing, and it makes it sound like the thing was locked in a chest under the sea and happened to lodge itself loose and, you know, bubble to the surface.
Sort of like in the movie The Mask.
For any aficionados of 90s Jim Carrey films.
In any case, the point is that this is not a passive or accidental process.
Actual humans have to go looking for this stuff, and then they have to find it, and they have to spread it around, all for the express purpose of destroying the life of another human.
And this time, the target was American Idol contestant Caleb Kennedy.
I must admit that I never heard of Caleb Kennedy before, and honestly, I didn't know that American Idol was still on the air.
I thought it went off the air years ago, but apparently it is on the air, and Caleb Kennedy was on the air until now.
The New York Post has a story, quote, American Idol top five finalist Caleb Kennedy has left the show after a video surfaced showing him next to someone wearing what appears to be a Ku Klux Klan hood.
A representative for the show confirmed to The Post that Kennedy will no longer be moving forward in the competition.
The singer, 16, posted a statement about his departure on Instagram on Wednesday.
He said, "Hey y'all, this is going to be a bit of a surprise, but I'm no longer going
to be on American Idol.
There was a video that surfaced on the internet and it displays actions that were not meant
to be taken in that way.
I was younger and did not think about the actions, but that's not an excuse.
I want to say sorry to all my fans and everyone who I've let down.
I'll be taking a little time off social media to better myself, but saying that, I know this has hurt and disappointed a lot of people and made less people lose respect for me.
I'm so sorry.
I pray that I can one day regain your trust in who I am and have your respect.
Thank you for supporting me.
Now, Kennedy's mother has come out and clarified that the video doesn't depict a Klan hood.
Kennedy is with a friend who's wearing a costume inspired by a movie they've both seen, a movie called The Strangers Pray at Night.
And sure enough, you can go look it up, you'll find, if you do, that the main bad guy wears a white hood, and not a Klan hood, just a white scary hood.
And it also came out at around the time that the video was taken.
So the story seems to line up.
Speaking of which, Caleb Kennedy is currently 16 years old.
That movie came out four years ago.
The video was taken then when he was 12.
12 years old.
He had to leave the show because of a video from when he was 12.
Think about that for a moment.
If there's going to be any controversy stemming from that video, it should really be that his mom shouldn't have let him watch a rated-R slasher film at the age of 12.
But aside from that, there's nothing here.
In fact, let's pretend for a moment that Caleb really was sitting next to a friend who really was joking around and pretending to wear a Klan hood.
He wasn't, but what if he was?
So?
They were 12.
I repeat again, 12 years old.
It is the height of both absurdity and cruelty to hold someone responsible for a joke they made at the age of 12.
Insult to injury in this case is that very clearly the joke had nothing to do with the KKK.
Caleb Kennedy had not a thing to apologize for.
He hasn't disappointed anyone, let anyone down.
He hasn't hurt anyone's feelings.
And if he has hurt anyone's feelings, screw them, who cares?
Their feelings are irrelevant.
I'm glad their feelings are, I hope their feelings are more hurt.
It is everyone else who owes him an apology.
You know, for doing this to a kid, for putting him in this position.
And normally my policy, as you know, is to not defend any canceled person who apologizes, but I make an exception here because even now the kid is only 16.
I can no more hold him responsible for mishandling a PR crisis at 16 than I can for a supposedly but not really offensive joke he made at 12.
There are things that we should hold kids accountable for, things like, for example, carjacking and murdering someone, as those two teen girls in DC did, though the court system in that case is just giving them a slap on the wrist.
Yet a sane society would not hold kids accountable at all, in any serious or public way at least, for jokes they make or opinions they express.
We, however, are not a sane society.
Or maybe that's letting us off the hook.
Because I oftentimes, as a kind of verbal shorthand, will call things crazy or insane.
I feel like this is the most common words you hear on this show.
But really, oftentimes the things that I'm calling crazy or insane are neither of those things in reality.
Much of this is considered an intentional cruelty.
For many in the cancel mob, they get a thrill out of tearing somebody down and watching them crash and burn.
Even a kid.
There are many in this country who are failures in their own lives.
And they're lonely and they're miserable.
And they've achieved nothing of note.
They have no talents, they have no skills, they have no ambitions.
They have no plans for the future.
They do nothing with their life.
They sit around watching TV and on the internet.
That's all they do.
Staring at screens.
They live pointless, empty, despairing, awful lives of their own making.
They feel powerless and forgotten and nearly non-existent because they're losers and the world doesn't pay attention to them and shouldn't pay attention to them because they have nothing interesting to say or anything valuable to offer.
And so for these miserable, wretched nothings, the only way that they can feel an approximation of joy is to destroy someone else's joy.
The only way they can feel power is to cut someone else down.
A kid on American Idol, top 5, living his dream, achieving remarkable things at the age of 16, hasn't hurt anybody.
And these people hate him for it.
And were eager for any chance to cut him down to size.
Nothing personal, really.
When the cancel mob comes for you, it's not because of you.
It's because of them.
You're a blade of grass that poked its head a little too far above the rest, and these other withered little blades down in the dirt want to make themselves feel taller by bringing you down closer to them.
That's what drives much of the cancel culture.
Envy, misery, resentment.
A tale as old as time.
But there's also plenty of cowardice driving it, too.
Institutions have to bend to the whims of these losers.
American Idol could have easily stuck by their guy, told the mob to get lost, and say, hey, listen, shut up.
He was a kid.
Just stop.
But that would require some tiny semblance of moral courage.
And that's too much to ask for.
And completing the picture, there's also ideology and politics feeding into it.
Caleb Kennedy is a white male.
Anytime a white male can be painted as a racist, it's considered a win by the left.
Whether the white male actually is racist is, of course, irrelevant.
So all of these factors converge and together they create the unholy concoction that we know as cancel culture.
And for that reason, perhaps somewhat ironically, all of those involved in this are certainly cancelled.
And we will leave it there for the day and the week.
I hope you have a great weekend.
I'll talk to you on Monday.
Godspeed.
Also, tell your friends to subscribe as well.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, Michael Knowles Show, The Andrew Klavan Show.
Thanks for listening.
The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer Jeremy Boring, Our supervising producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
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Production manager Pavel Vodovsky.
The show is edited by Sasha Tolmachev.
Our audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
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The Matt Wall Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2021.
Hey everybody, this is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
You know, some people are depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon's turned to blood.
But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.
