Ep. 750 - Won't Someone Please Think Of The Ivy League Grad Students?
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, as the student debt crisis continues to spiral out of control, the Wall Street Journal publishes an article asking us to feel sympathy for Ivy League grad students who are drowning in six figure debt after discovering that their masters degrees aren’t leading to lucrative jobs. For some reason, I struggle to feel any sympathy for these people. Also Five Headlines including former media darling Michael Avenatti gets his prison sentence, Rand Paul looks to revoke the federal mask mandate on airplanes, and we’ll discuss the latest alleged racism controversy over at ESPN. In our Daily Cancellation, we will cancel Scarlett Johansson for complaining in a recent interview that she is “under appreciated” and “underpaid.”
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, as the student debt crisis continues to spiral out of control, the Wall Street Journal publishes an article asking us to feel sympathy for Ivy League grad students who are drowning in six-figure debt after discovering that their master's degrees aren't leading to lucrative jobs.
Who would have thought?
For some reason, I struggle to feel any sympathy for these people.
We'll talk about that.
Also, five headlines including Former media darling Michael Avenatti gets his prison sentence, Rand Paul looks to revoke the federal mask mandate on airplanes, and we'll discuss the latest alleged racism controversy over at ESPN.
And our daily cancellation will cancel Scarlett Johansson for complaining in a recent interview that she is underappreciated and also underpaid.
She makes like 50 million dollars a year though.
We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
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There are a lot of villains in the story of the student debt crisis.
It takes more than one bad guy to get us to a point where there is now, at last count, $1.7 trillion in total outstanding student loan debt.
$1.7 trillion, by the way, is more money than currently exists in circulation in the United States.
Now, most people aren't paying off their student debt in cash, obviously, but this is just a way of gaining perspective.
There is more student debt than there is physical currency in the entire country, collectively.
How did we get here?
Who are the villains, exactly?
Well, the universities would have to be at the top of the list.
They're the ones charging exorbitant tuition fees for an education that is rarely worth the cost.
And even when it is worth the cost, there is still no reason why it should cost that much.
Also, we should blame, in equal turns, the government, the banks, the public school system for pushing kids into the university system to begin with.
Many parents, too, must take their share of the blame for pushing their own kids into this.
And what about the employers who fuel this madness by requiring degrees from entry-level applicants who will be performing jobs that do not actually necessitate having a degree?
We talk about all the jobs that need degrees, and most of the time, the need is artificial.
There's no reason, there's no real reason why a person without a degree can't do the job.
It's just that the employers have put that requirement there, artificially.
The vast majority of jobs are learned by doing.
So most jobs are learned, in other words, on the job.
There's no reason why that expensive piece of paper should be necessary, and yet employers often require it out of pure laziness because it's an easy way to whittle down the applicant pool without having to put in much effort.
So all of these parties deserve blame.
Then what about the students themselves who take out these loans?
Personally, I would much prefer to blame the powerful and corrupt institutions I already listed and the adults who should know better instead of kids just out of high school who are too dumb and naive to understand what they're getting themselves into.
I mean, everybody is stupid at 18.
I certainly was.
And that's a good reason why 18-year-olds shouldn't be granted six-figure loans in the first place.
It's also a good reason why they shouldn't have the right to vote, by the way.
So I'm sympathetic to the idea that many of the people saddled with this debt are victims.
They were exploited.
I don't know what else you can say about saddling kids fresh out of high school with this kind of crippling debt.
Does that mean that I think the taxpayers should have to pick up the tab and foot the bill for student debt forgiveness?
Absolutely not.
You cannot undo the exploitation of one group through the exploitation of another.
If you want to grant some kind of student debt forgiveness for some people by seizing the endowments from these universities, then maybe we can talk.
But the only thing more unfair and immoral than handing out massive loans to ignorant 18-year-olds is forcing taxpayers who didn't take out the loans to pay them back.
And the college graduates who demand that such a system be put in place for their sake immediately lose all sympathy from me.
You have all this debt.
I'm sympathetic.
But the moment you point to me and say to the government, no, force him to pay it back.
No more sympathy.
You're no longer a victim the moment you try to right the wrong done to you by committing a wrong against someone else.
Someone steals your car, I feel bad for you.
You steal my car in exchange, and now you're just a damned thief, like the guy who took yours.
That's how that works.
But there are some supposed victims of the student debt crisis who ought to engender no sympathy at all from anyone in the first place.
The Wall Street Journal just published a piece yesterday which highlights this group.
The headline, alongside a photograph of a man in his 30s looking sad and dejected,
reads, quote, "Financially hobbled for life. The elite master's degrees that don't pay off.
Columbia and other top universities push master's programs that fail to generate
enough income for graduates to keep up with the six-figure federal loans."
This is an article all about the pathetic saps who took out massive loans to pay for graduate
school, Ivy League graduate school, and now are, as the headline suggests, financially hobbled for
life.
Now, something to keep in mind as I read some of this to you, and this is very important.
The average age of a grad student is 33.
And that means that a great many of the people currently in grad school are my age or older.
So these are not kids.
These are grown adults.
So here's what the article says, quote, recent film program graduates of Columbia University who took out federal student loans had a median debt of $181,000.
Yet two years after earning their master's degrees, half of the borrowers were making less than $30,000 a year.
I'm sorry, it's not funny, but it kind of is.
$30,000 a year, that's minimum wage.
And you took out $181,000 in debt to go to an Ivy League and get a master's degree, and you're making a minimum wage.
Anyway, Continuing, the Columbia program offers the most extreme example of how elite universities in recent years have awarded thousands of master's degrees that don't provide graduates enough early career earnings to begin paying down their federal student loans.
Recent Columbia Film alumni had the highest debt compared with earnings among graduates of any major university master's program in the U.S., the journal found.
The New York City University is among the world's most prestigious schools, and its $11.3 billion endowment ranks it the nation's eighth wealthiest private school.
Okay.
Pausing for a moment.
A master's degree in film.
For what purpose?
You're going to get out of grad school at the age of 36, or whatever, 35, broke, paralyzed by debt, and then yadda yadda, you're a famous film director.
Is that the plan?
You can't yadda yadda through that.
What exactly?
Fill in the blanks there.
The problem is that nobody is going to see a film simply because the director has a master's degree.
Here's a conversation that has never occurred on planet Earth one time.
Okay, this has never... I'll be the first person to say this.
Hey man, let me tell you about this movie I saw.
It's really worth watching.
It's great.
You should see it.
First of all, the director has a master's degree in film studies.
Nobody cares about that.
Nobody cares about most master's degrees.
There are a few useful ones.
But for the most part, grad school is essentially a glorified Ponzi scheme.
So, back to the article.
It says, at New York University, graduates with a master's degree in publishing borrowed a median $116,000 and had an annual median income of $42,000 two years after the program.
The data on recent borrowers show.
At Northwestern University, half of those who earned degrees in speech-language pathology borrowed $148,000 or more, and the graduates had a median income of $60,000 two years later.
Graduates of the University of Southern California's Marriage and Family Counseling Program borrowed a median $124,000 and half earned $50,000 or less over the same period.
Then the article starts getting into the specific sob stories of some of these pathetic rubes who mortgaged their financial future just so they could brag about having a master's degree.
I'm not going to subject you to very much of this portion, but here's a taste.
Um, quote, there's always those 2 a.m.
panic attacks where you're thinking, how the hell am I ever going to pay this off, said 29-year-old Zach Morrison of New Jersey, who earned a Master's of Fine Art in Film from Columbia in 2018 and praised the quality of the program.
His graduate school loan balance now stands at nearly $300,000, including accrued interest.
He has been earning between $30,000 and $50,000 a year from work as a Hollywood assistant and such side gigs as commercial video production and photography.
Matt Black graduated from Columbia in 2015 with an MFA in film and $233,000 in federal loans.
He signed up for an income-based repayment plan that in leaner years requires no remittance from him.
With interest, his balance stands at $331,000.
Mr. Black, a 36-year-old writer and producer in Los Angeles, said he grew up in a lower-middle-class family in Oklahoma, He earned $60,000 in a good year and less than half of that in dry stretches.
The faculty at Columbia was stellar, he said, but he blamed the school for his calamitous financial situation.
He said, quote, we were told by the establishment our whole lives this was the way to jump social classes.
Instead, he feels such goals as marriage, children, and owning a home are now out of reach.
Okay.
Certainly, Columbia is partly to blame for his calamitous financial situation.
They're the ones offering this utterly worthless product.
A master's of fine arts in film.
Worthless.
No value.
And they offer it, and they make enormous profits off of it.
If they were in any other industry running a scheme like this, they'd be sent to prison.
What these colleges are doing is criminal.
They are selling things for enormous amounts of money, knowing that they are plunging their students into a lifetime of debt, and they also know that what they're selling has no value.
Any other industry, you go to jail for that.
But not for universities.
So yeah, I blame them all day long, but do you know who else is to blame for Matt Black's calamitous financial situation?
Matt Black.
I mean, he said it himself, as an adult, a grown adult, he took out $233,000 in loans simply because he'd been told that it's a good way to, quote, jump social classes.
He did it because he wanted to feel smarter and better than you, and now he's broker than you, and I bet he feels dumber too.
This is vanity, materialism, greed.
Not just on the part of the university, but on the part of these adults who are buying what they can't afford, hoping it'll be a shortcut to elite status.
The whole thing is a mess.
From the undergrad level to the grad student working towards his PhD in finger painting, it is all, to borrow a term, calamitous.
And it's only going to get worse.
There is no real remedy.
As long as we keep pretending that the best path for everyone is to spend the first 35 years of their lives sitting in classrooms and accumulating pieces of paper and letters that they can put next to their names.
The answer is everyone's talking about, well, how do we make it cheaper?
How do we make it more affordable?
How do we make it so more people get it?
No, no, no, no, no.
That's not the answer.
The answer isn't to make sure more people can do this really stupid, calamitous thing.
The answer is to abandon this path, or at least to let people know that there are many other paths aside from this one.
You may have been told that you need to whittle away the first third of your life in classrooms, but the people who told you that were lying.
They were literally selling you something.
You don't need to.
And most likely, you shouldn't.
There are some exceptions, but for most people, you shouldn't.
Figure out what you want to do with your life, and then go and simply do it.
You want to be in the film industry?
Then just go and try to do it.
There's a really good chance you'll fail, but there's also a really good chance you'll fail with a master's degree, so you'll have more debt at the end of that failure.
Failure is part of life.
You want to do anything worth doing, there's a really good chance of failure.
So just go and do it.
You might need some college, depending on what you want to do, or some kind of formal education outside of high school in order to fully achieve your goals, whatever they are, but there is a very good chance you don't.
There's a good chance you don't need any of that.
And it's almost certain that you don't need any kind of grad school.
That's the truth.
And if we really want to solve this problem, we need to start telling it.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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All right.
Well, not a headline, but I just I think it's we should acknowledge it was a reporter's birthday yesterday.
In the White House press pool, some reporter's birthday, and Jen Psaki made sure to acknowledge it.
Now you, I'll play this for you and just ask yourself, is this the kind of relationship that you want the media to have with those in power?
If democracy dies in darkness, as the Washington Post says, well then what's happening here exactly?
Let's watch.
Happy Thursday!
Is it Thursday?
I said happy Thursday.
Well, I was going to say, I did hear it was Steve Holland's 29th birthday.
So happy 29th birthday.
I'm a terrible singer, but I am willing to lead a song here if you are all game.
It may be.
It may be.
Who's with me?
Someone here has a good voice.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday dear Steve.
Happy birthday to you.
I will also note, Brian Karam, excellent voice.
I don't know what you do with that, but that's one thing I learned today.
Isn't that sweet?
One big happy family.
Isn't that nice and cute to see that?
Media and government getting along so well, not disturbing at all.
How do you go from that to... She's giving the press briefing.
How do you go from that to holding her feet to the fire and trying to get to the truth?
Well, you don't.
There's no way to transition that, but they have no plans of doing that in the first place.
Also, the other thing that comes to mind when I listen to that is, first of all, she really does have a terrible voice.
She makes me sound like Pavarotti with my singing voice.
But also, the Happy Birthday song is just a terrible song.
It really is.
We need a different... Can we, as a people, come together and come up with a better song?
It's a bad song.
Then again, I'm anti-birthdays.
I will say, speaking of birthdays, And usually I'm a curmudgeon about birthdays and I don't like the birthday song or anything.
But I was recently, just a couple weeks ago, there are times when I think celebrating a birthday is okay.
And there are few occasions when even I can appreciate the birthday song.
So I was at a restaurant with my wife like two weeks ago.
And this guy starts clanging on his glass to get everyone's attention.
And then he lets us know that his mom, who's sitting right next to him, was celebrating her 100th birthday that day.
And then he led the entire restaurant in singing happy birthday for his mom.
And I thought, I even sang.
Can you believe it?
I didn't really sing, but I lip synced, which is more than I'll usually do.
Because I thought, you know what?
100 years?
Yeah, you earned yourself that.
And then we looked over in the booth couple down from there.
We noticed there was an old couple.
Had to be in their 80s.
And they were sitting there and they were holding hands and looking deeply into each other's eyes.
In their 80s.
My wife's looking at that and we've got the 100 year birthday.
And my wife is saying how cute everything is and how nice.
And I appreciate it and I said to her, and these were my exact words, I said, There's a lot of wholesome shit happening here tonight.
It's just to prove that I have a romantic side, too.
I can appreciate these moments.
All right, I can appreciate this moment too from the Daily Wire reports, quote,
"A New York judge sentenced disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti to 30 months in prison for attempting to extort Nike
of up to $25 million.
The case is one of several Avenatti is currently involved in.
While he was addressing the court prior to the judge's sentence, Avenatti reportedly cried.
Judge Paul Gardefi of the Southern District of New York ripped the lawyer during his sentencing,
saying that his conduct was outrageous.
He, uh, so on and so forth.
And now he's looking at 30 months in prison.
Personally, he committed a crime.
He's going to jail.
He deserves it.
That's fine.
The fact that he tried to extort Nike, I don't really care about that.
Nike is probably the least sympathetic company on earth.
Uh, and the great thing is whether you're on the right or the left, you've got plenty of reasons to hate Nike.
So I don't really care that he did that.
What I do care about though, are he's, he's actually got, he's, he's facing criminal charges.
He's got two or three other cases where he's facing criminal charges and the more serious things he still has not gone to trial for, including, I think in California, he's accused of defrauding many of his clients.
And these are just normal people.
This isn't Nike.
And he's accused of stealing money from them.
You could read the details of that.
If you want to know what a scumbag this guy is.
Trying to extort Nike, that just makes you really, really stupid.
Makes you dishonest, but also incredibly stupid.
You're not going to get away with that.
Defrauding his clients the way that he has, that makes you stupid also, but an incredible scumbag.
And now he's going to prison, and so it's, I think, a good time to go back, a little trip down memory lane, and see how the media treated this guy, not all that long ago.
We're not going back 15 years.
It's a couple of years ago.
This is put together, I believe, by the Washington Examiner, a nice little montage of the media and their treatment of Michael Avenatti, who now is going to prison for extortion and is going to be getting more prison time for fraud and everything else.
But here's what the media was saying about him just a couple of years ago.
He's Donald Trump's worst nightmare, Michael Avenatti!
Joining us once again is Michael Avenatti.
Let's bring in Michael Avenatti.
Michael Avenatti.
Michael Avenatti.
Michael Avenatti, thank you very much.
He's out there saving the country.
Don Meacham says he may be the savior of the republic.
You are something of a folk hero now.
I owe Michael Avenatti an apology.
I've been saying enough already, Michael.
I've seen you everywhere.
What do you have left to say?
I was wrong, brother.
You have a lot to say.
I am just dying to hear what you think.
These people all like you.
I'm the only person right here Donald Trump fears more than Robert Miller.
We think you guys are the tip of the spear that's going to take down Donald Trump.
Michael Avenatti's a beast.
Okay, that's true.
He's a beast.
He's a beast.
I hand it to her, and I hand it to Michael Avenatti.
But he has a bigger calling here, that being a lawyer is minimal compared to what he's doing.
No one has talked tougher directly to Donald Trump on TV than Michael Avenatti, and Donald Trump is afraid to mention his name.
Okay, so you get the idea.
It goes on for like another minute.
That was the Washington Free Beacon, by the way.
I put that together.
I mean, if they were capable of shame, they would feel it, but they aren't, so it almost feels pointless to even bring this up.
They don't care.
And it's not like anyone was blindsided by this.
No intelligent person is shocked when you find out that Michael Avenatti has committed extortion, has accused of fraud, No one is going, Michael Avenatti did that?
I can't believe it.
Of course.
It was clear from day one.
The first time I laid eyes on the guy and heard him speak, it was like, okay, this guy's a scumbag.
This guy's a rat.
That's very clear.
Then we have the worst one.
I do want to play this.
This is the worst one of all from The View.
So what you just heard there is hero worship of Michael Avenatti.
And now we get into full-on deification.
Listen to this.
Lately, to me, you're like the Holy Spirit.
You are all places at all times.
I mean, I do.
I see you all over cable news.
I see you.
You know, there is a seat available if you want to be a co-host at The View.
There's people here you can pitch.
There's Anna Navarro.
Like the Holy Spirit.
That is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.
That is literally the unforgivable sin that she committed.
But again, doesn't care.
No shame.
No embarrassment.
And Michael Avenatti going to prison.
Okay, number two also from the Daily Wire.
It says, Senator Rand Paul is planning to introduce legislation to revoke a federal mask mandate for travelers on airplanes.
The TSA has continued to mandate that all travelers wear masks on airplanes with limited exceptions as many state governments have rolled back COVID-19 restrictions.
The current TSA mandate is in place until at least September 13th.
And Paul tweeted on Thursday, when the Senate returns to session, I'll be introducing an immediate repeal of the mask mandate on planes.
Enough time to stop this farce and let people travel in peace.
There is... There's no reason.
There's never been a good reason for it, in my opinion.
Especially now.
That's the absurdity of it.
Living here in Nashville, and I've done a lot of flying recently, in particular, and you walk around all day, no one's wearing a mask anywhere, but then you go into an airport and magically now we all need to wear a mask.
There's no reason to do it whatsoever.
It's, they may as well, to anyone who says, yeah, well, there might be no reason, but it's, it's, it's not a big deal.
It's not, it's not, it doesn't cause any real problems.
Well, first of all, it does.
We, I talked a few weeks ago about the incredible skyrocketing rise in violent incidents on airplanes.
I don't remember the exact number, but usually it's something like there's a hundred or something a year across the entire country where there's some sort of unruly incident among passengers, people get kicked off.
We're at like over a thousand incidents and we're not even close to through the year yet.
And almost all of that is being driven by the mask thing.
So it is causing problems.
It's making people unsafe when you have these incidents happening.
But also, imagine if they may as well decree that when you're in an airport, you have to hop on one leg.
That's what you have to do.
When you're in the airport, hop on one leg.
Just because.
And if you don't, you get kicked out.
Would you go along with that and say, well, all you're doing is hopping on one leg, it's not a big deal?
It's utterly arbitrary.
That's why it's a big deal.
There's no reason for us to be doing this, yet we're told to do it.
And there are significant consequences if we don't.
So, at least Rand Paul's on top of that.
And I'll be interested to hear what the arguments are from all the people, especially the Democrats, who will oppose this move.
Because you know they're going to.
Next, from The Hill, it says, job openings held at a record high of 9.2 million in May, while resignations dropped slightly from a historic peak.
The number of open jobs on the final business day of May changed little from the peak set in April.
Quits fell to 3.6 million from a record high of 3.9 million in April, but remained well above levels seen earlier in the year.
And so this is the same story that we've seen, and it continues.
Record numbers of open jobs.
We've got companies that are begging people to come work for them.
I'm sure you've seen the same thing.
I see these signs all the time now, even in fast food places.
Begging for employees.
Offering signing bonuses.
I don't remember ever seeing that at a McDonald's before.
But now I see it all the time.
And with all the traveling I've been doing, I've been in way too many McDonald's, I have to say.
And many of them have that.
Offering a signing bonus.
Like it's the NFL or something to McDonald's employees, but they can't find employees because the government has made it profitable to just stay home.
And you can't, you can't have a functioning society that way.
We're doing nothing is an option, doing nothing at all.
When you make that an option for people, you just cannot function as there is.
There is no society that has worked that way.
We're gonna have millions of people choosing to do nothing.
It's not like they're dropping out of the business world because they're working on the farm.
You go back 200 years ago, most people didn't have quote-unquote jobs, but they were still working every day to live.
Now try having a society where people aren't in a job, but they aren't doing any other kind of work, and they're just sitting at home.
Next, speaking of businesses, here's a tweet from Matt Jones, who is, according to his bio, an award-winning entrepreneur.
And this is not an award-winning idea, in my mind.
He says, he tweeted, now everyone's coming back to the office.
We've upgraded our lanyards so we all know where we're comfortable.
And then you see there are three lanyards that I guess the employees, I don't know what kind of company this is, but the employees of this company, they could choose between three different lanyards.
There's a green, an orange, and a red.
And the green signifies that you're okay with hugs and high fives.
Orange signifies okay with talking, but not touching.
And the red says, hi, I'm keeping my distance.
And all the employees are supposed to wear one of those to signal to each other where their comfort level is in this post-COVID world.
Is there a lanyard for adults who don't need to communicate through lanyards?
That's one I would choose.
Also, another question, what about colorblind people?
Some people can't tell the difference between red and green if you're colorblind, so they're going to be charging in there trying to bear hug the red lanyard people, which actually is pretty great, come to think of it.
Although, I mean, who is hugging at work anyway?
Sounds like it's a literal invitation for sexual harassment complaints.
Okay with hugs at work?
Maybe there should be another lanyard, a dark green, which says, I want to hold my coworkers in an erotic embrace and whisper my sensual fantasies into their ears.
I mean, if we're hugging, we might as well go all the way around the bases, I guess.
You know, the thing is, if I had to choose one of these, really, if I had to choose one, I would go with red.
I would go with the, stay the hell away from me, you freaks, lanyard.
But not because of COVID.
Just because I'm an antisocial hermit.
And frankly, as an antisocial hermit, this is one of the things that has really bothered me over the last year, is to see my culture and my way of life being appropriated by the COVID people.
And so when I just operate the way that I always have, keeping my distance from people, now it's assumed that I'm worried about COVID.
Well, no, that's not it at all.
I had this experience on an elevator a couple weeks ago.
I was on the elevator and then someone comes running down the hall, this guy, and he's like, oh, hold that, hold that.
And of course, I'm not holding the elevator for you.
I just stood there and it closed.
You can catch the next one.
It'll take 20 seconds for the next one to come.
And then I felt bad, not because I didn't hold the elevator for him, but because I realized he probably thought I was afraid of COVID, and that's why I didn't want him on the elevator.
No, it's not that at all.
I just don't like human interaction.
That's it.
Not COVID-related.
All right, finally, I've been meaning to talk about this for a few days.
Rachel Nichols over at ESPN, she's an ESPN personality, And she was accidentally, I'm still not sure exactly how this is supposed to have happened, but she was having a private conversation with someone and she was accidentally, quote unquote, recorded on someone's cell phone in this private conversation, complaining that ESPN had given her NBA hosting gig to a black female personality at the channel.
And she was saying that she'd been given that job for diversity reasons.
And then this recording was circulated around ESPN.
This happened a year ago, and people knew about it at ESPN.
It kind of made the rounds.
It never went public.
And now suddenly it is public.
And first of all, this is from the New York Times.
They released it.
Here is Rachel Nichols talking about this issue.
Here it is.
So they said to me, hey, instead of hosting the NBA Finals, why don't you do Doris' silent reporter job for the NBA Finals?
Because guess what that will clear the way for?
For Maria to do the hosting for them.
So, I have declined.
I don't know what their next move is, but they are feeling pressure because of all of that.
And I'm trying to figure out like how to just, you know, my thing is like, I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world.
She covers football, she covers basketball.
If you need to give her more things to do because you're feeling pressure about your crappy, long-time record on diversity, which, by the way, I myself know personally from the female side of it, go for it.
Just find it somewhere else.
You're not going to find it with me.
Then take my thing away.
So that's Rachel Nichols.
She's the white woman, and she was replaced by... That was a conversation from last July.
And Maria Taylor is the woman that she was replaced by for hosting the NBA finals.
And as it happens, another big coincidence here, that Maria Taylor, who got the hosting gig, And remember, this audio has been circulating around the company internally.
Everyone knew about it.
Maria Taylor's contract was, she was up for a contract extension.
She was negotiating a contract, and that's going to be happening in the next week or two.
And so right when this contract negotiation is happening, that's when this audio goes public.
What a big coincidence.
And now, Rachel Nichols had, so she had been taken off of the hosting gig, and it had been given to Maria Taylor, that's what she was complaining about.
Now that this has gone public, she was removed also as a sideline reporter, which is what she had been demoted to, and she was replaced by a woman by the name of Malika Andrews, who is also a black woman.
So she was complaining, you know, that she had been replaced by a black woman for diversity purposes.
And because of that complaint, rather because the complaint went public, ESPN punished her by replacing her again.
Maria Taylor, though, by the way, she finally spoke out about this issue.
She had been kind of quiet about it and she finally tweeted yesterday.
She said, During the dark times, I always remember that I am in this position to open doors and light the path that others walk down.
I've taken some punches, but that just means I'm still in the fight.
Remember to lift as you climb and always keep rising.
Okay, so she's the, you know, she's the hero and also the victim in this situation.
Clear from her tweet here.
It doesn't even make... Why... I don't watch ESPN and I also don't watch the NBA.
And I don't care who hosts it.
But it certainly seems very plausible that Rachel Nichols is correct in her original assessment.
If she had had this job and she was good at it, if that's the case, and then she was suddenly taken off of the job right when the BLM stuff was happening last summer, Replaced by a black woman.
Really good chance that it was done for political and quote, diversity reasons.
But why would ESPN shy away from that?
Are they supposed to be open about that?
They're trying to give an opportunity to, uh, you know, trying to diversify and give an opportunity to an underrepresented person.
Meanwhile, Rachel Nichols is woke and leftist herself.
At this point, you couldn't possibly work at ESPN if you're not.
And, you know, she supports BLM and all that kind of stuff.
And this is what she gets for her trouble.
That's the way it always goes.
But these people will never learn.
I said that was the final thing, but I can't forget about this.
There is one thing more important than anything else we've talked about so far today.
You know, we've heard a lot of, there's been a lot of effort to get people vaccinated, all the holdouts.
Joe Biden is going to be going door to door.
But a big part of the effort has been all these songs that we've heard.
And the rapper Juvenile, back from the 90s, you may remember him if you're a 90s kid, he did a remix of his Back That Ass Up, or rather Back That Thing Up, the radio edit, and only now it's Vax That Thing Up.
And I just thought we should play that for you because it's pretty great.
here's a look at the new chad.
I'm used to handsome young brother, won't you vax that thing up?
Datin' real life, you need to vax that thing up Feelin' freak out all night, you need to vax that thing up Girl, you look good, won't you vax that thing?
I'm used to have some young brother, won't you vax that thing up
Ain't no real like you, need to vax that thing up Feeling freaky all night, you need to vax that thing up
I know you can't stand it, no holding hands chick But when we get the shot, we gon' be romancing
Girl, you could be the queen, after quarantine We could meet up at the spot and we could do the thing
Internet date chat, I'm your mate chat Download the app, shorty, you ain't gotta wait chat
I love it when you hold me, ink plant emoji You could be the young hottie, think I'd be the OG
Girl, you look good, won't you vax that thing up I'm used to have some young brother, won't you vax that
thing up I think we got the point here
I think we basically get the idea Use a handsome young brother, why don't you vax that thing
up?
That's not creepy at all.
I'm just wondering, is there anyone who wasn't convinced so far about vaccinations, but will be convinced by this?
Who are we even trying to convince at this point with these sorts of things?
Who is the person?
At this point, the vaccine's been out for months, readily available for months.
Everyone knows that it's there.
They know where they can get it.
They know the whole spiel.
And yet there are plenty of people who, for one reason or another, said, I don't want it.
Not interested.
Thank you.
Thanks, but no thanks.
So is there anyone who has held that position for months now and is now going to say, well, after seeing that, they're going to say, well, you know, he raises a good point.
Perhaps I should indeed vax that thing up.
I don't know who that person is.
Maybe he calls his wife up.
Hey, honey, I know we said we weren't doing the vaccine, but listen, I just heard this song and he was bringing up the point that we need to vax that thing up.
And I'm starting to think maybe we really should.
Somehow I doubt that that conversation is happening, but I could be wrong.
Let's go down to reading the YouTube comments.
Dylan says, Matt, do you know what kind of car Ben drives?
I've always imagined him in something classy like a BMW.
Oh, and please spare me.
I already know that you drive a minivan, aka the dad wagon.
I don't know what kind of car Ben drives, but please don't stereotype me.
I don't drive a minivan, in fact.
I have nothing against minivans.
This is the struggle that everyone goes through when they get into like middle age and they're having kids.
And once you get to like three or four kids, you start to realize that you got to make the minivan move.
But a lot of people don't want to do that.
They have some prejudice against minivans that I don't understand.
My wife is in that category.
She absolutely refuses.
We have four kids.
And we cram them into SUVs.
She refuses to get a minivan.
I don't understand why.
They're practical.
They're handsome vehicles.
What's the problem?
Ashley says, pre-K is unnecessary, and kindergarten probably is as well.
Then if you homeschool, you can move through the grades quicker and get your GED at a younger age.
Honestly, 12 years is too much.
Yeah, we're expanding public education to 14 years, 16 years.
We got to get the kids in younger and younger.
Really, it should be less, and that's true.
And this is something that people, when they start homeschooling, I hear this all the time from homeschool parents, that they're shocked by, especially if they went to public school themselves, or if they had their kids in public school and they pulled them out, they're shocked when they realize just how much time is wasted in public school.
Because you have your curriculum, and especially when your kids are younger, you know, they're in first, second grade and that, elementary school age, you can give them a full day of education in a couple of hours.
You can give them the same amount of education that they will get if they were in a public school building, or more, only you could do it in two hours, or less, as opposed to seven.
And why is that?
Because there's just so much time wasted in these classrooms on subjects that are irrelevant, they're watching movies, they gotta go from classroom to classroom in the hallways, they got lunch, they got gym, they got this and that.
Just a lot of busy work.
You cut all that out, and you realize that right now, kids are in school for longer than they need to be.
A lot longer.
And yeah, pre-K is just daycare.
A three or four-year-old kid, there's no kind of formal sit-down education that you're going to give to a four-year-old.
At that age, you know how kids learn?
They learn through playing.
Education is through just being kids and playing games.
That's how they learn.
And no, you don't need to be in a classroom setting in order to do that.
T-Loco says, Matt, gotta say, I lost a ton of respect for you with your comments on the peacock story.
Killing a bird because it's doing what it naturally does is no reason to kill it.
Would you want to live next to neighbors like that?
Hope they hang the bastards who killed it and paid for the contract.
Really?
Really, T-Loco?
The person who killed a peacock, you want to hang them?
You think they should be killed?
Eye for eye here?
Blood for blood?
A peacock for a human life?
That's what you think?
Yeah, I got a lot of backlash for my position on the peacock story.
There was a peacock that had been terrorizing, if you didn't watch the show yesterday, there was a peacock that had been terrorizing this neighborhood.
And peacocks, yeah, they have pretty beautiful feathers, but they also make a really loud, annoying sound and they don't shut up.
And so this peacock had been visiting this neighborhood for six years, tormenting people at all hours of the day.
And finally, someone put an ad out on Craigslist and said, hey, you know, I'm looking for someone who could just kill this peacock, hired a peacock assassin.
And next thing you know, the peacock was taken care of.
And I fully support that.
I support your right to kill annoying peacocks.
I do.
And listen, T-Loco, like I said yesterday, I know damn well, and so do you, that if this was a vulture or a crow, you know, if there was some crow that had been going through people's garbage or even a wild turkey, Some ugly animal that doesn't have the pretty feathers?
You wouldn't care that anyone shot it.
You would say, oh, that's a pest.
We have some animals that are pests and some animals that are not.
And if you kill the pests, it's okay, but if you kill the animals that aren't pests, it's bad.
How do we determine the pest from the non-pest?
Mostly it's just whichever one we think is cute.
So a lot of backlash for that.
I am unwavering though in my stance on this and my support for murdering peacocks.
Only the annoying ones.
I'm not saying if someone has a peacock farm, I'm not saying you just you can go there and just start firing away.
I'm just saying.
The ones who are pests, I support that.
And then, um, in fact, uh, our producers, McKenna and Sean put a, so I thought that I was in the minority, but they put a poll up under the comments there.
And I guess what was it?
Was it was a 25 to 21 in favor of killing the peacock.
That's what I was told.
Okay.
25 to 21.
So I'm not fully in the minority.
Like I thought it was.
Um, and then finally, Aaron says, my siblings have used peacock calls to get each other's attention for years.
Very distinct sound.
Wait.
My siblings have used peacock calls to get each other's attention?
Are your siblings peacocks?
Are they humans?
Why not just use each other's names?
What?
How do you put that in the comments like it's a normal thing?
With no explanation?
No context?
Oh yeah, my siblings always use peacock calls.
What?
Are they adults?
So you're at Thanksgiving dinner and you're using peacock calls to each other across the table?
Do you have names?
What kind of bizarre thing is that?
All right, well, thanks for watching anyway, Aaron.
Oh, one other thing.
I also wanted to mention this.
This is pretty exciting.
So this was presented to me yesterday.
You know that we recently decided if you're a fan of this show, you are a member of the Sweet Baby Gang.
That's the name, whether you like it or not, if you're in the audience, you're part of the Sweet Baby Gang.
How did we come up with that name?
You have to be there.
It's an inside joke.
I'm not going to get into it.
I don't even remember where this came from, but it's the Sweet Baby Gang.
That's what we are.
And there have been people in the comments for weeks now begging for Sweet Baby Gang merchandise.
And this was presented to me yesterday, and we finally have it, sort of.
I guess I'll show... Here's the bicep cam, and I think maybe you could probably see better.
So that's the Sweet Baby Gang shirt.
It says Sweet Baby Gang, and then... I was shown this shirt, and it's a beautiful shirt, and it's also viscerally deeply disturbing at the same time.
Because there is me, with a diaper on, crawling on the ground.
So I'm disturbed by it, I'm horrified, Um, but I also like it at the same time.
So now this is not for sale though.
This is just for me.
We haven't actually put these on sale.
So this is merchandise just for me.
If, but if you want sweet baby gang, if you want that shirt, then you have to just, you have to let us know, cry out for it in the comments.
And, uh, maybe I can convince them to actually put this.
I don't know if the, if the company would be too embarrassed to sell this or it's just too weird.
I'm not sure, but we'll, uh, we'll see.
You know, if you're the do-it-yourselfer type, especially when it comes to cars, then you might find yourself needing auto parts.
Where do you get them?
What most people do is they just get in the car and they go to an auto parts store.
But the problem, as I'm always telling you, is that you go there, you're wasting time, you're wasting money, because the stuff's going to be more expensive than it otherwise should be.
And they're also probably not going to have what you need in stock.
They're not going to have the kind of selection that they do at rockauto.com, which you can access Anytime, just on your phone, on your laptop, it's as easy as that.
Just go to rockauto.com.
They always offer the lowest prices possible.
If you find it at rockauto.com, you don't need to keep window shopping because you know that you found the best price possible.
They're also a family business.
They've been serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.
You can go to rockauto.com to shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.
The catalog is unique.
It's very easy for anyone to navigate and you can quickly see Everything you could be looking for, all the parts available, and you can specify based on the brand, the specifications, the prices you prefer.
You can narrow it down that way, so it's very easy to do.
So, go to rockauto.com right now, see all the parts available for your car or truck, write Walsh in their How Did You Hear About Us box, so they know that we sent you.
Here's something else you could do after you go to rockauto.com.
Pick up Michael Knowles' new book, which you may have heard him mention a time or two.
It's now out, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.
And this is all about, you know, we hear about political correctness.
Most people say that they're against it, but with Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, if you haven't picked up a copy, now's the time to do it.
The book takes you through the origins of political correctness and why it's absolutely essential that we stand up and fight its insidious spread into every public institution in America.
Because if we don't, the consequences are waiting for us and our children in the not-too-distant future.
If you don't know where to start, Don't worry, because in the book, Michael Knowles gives you the tools you need to understand and spot political correctness in order to stop it.
It's a great book, a lot of great insight.
And so, pick up a copy now.
Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available everywhere right now.
If you don't want to make a trip to the bookstore, you can always pick it up on Amazon in hardcover and Kindle edition right now.
Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
Today we cancel Scarlett Johansson.
She's doing the media rounds to promote her new superhero movie, which is, I believe, the 94th film in the Marvel Extended Universe.
Interestingly enough, even though it has produced so many movies, it turns out that this universe is quite small because all of the movies are exactly the same.
They all have the same basic plot and action sequences and message.
Not to spoil anything, but the message for all of these movies To summarize is, bad guy is bad.
Punch bad guy.
Kick bad guy.
Good guy win.
The end.
Now buy the merchandise.
That's basically the message and the point of all these movies.
Now, I may be selling Marvel a little short here because sometimes the movies do have a deeper message, which brings us to Scarlett Johansson and her interview with Glamour magazine.
She was asked about the deeper themes and messages of her new film, Black Widow, which is a movie about an attractive woman in a leather jumpsuit kicking people.
At least that's what it's about on the surface.
But what is the film really saying?
What is it truly trying to convey about the nature of kicking and jumpsuits?
And hot blonde chicks.
Here's Johansson trying to explain.
Well, I do think the film is inherently female, partly because of Kate Shortland directing it.
It definitely has... You know, it sheds light on... It sheds light on a...
You know, on an imbalance, I think that women feel, like, inherently, because of how our society has been forever, thousands and thousands of years.
And, you know, the movie is about the subjugation of women and, you know, the trauma that we have to help one another out of.
Oh.
Okay.
Now, to be fair to Scarlett here, the actual question she was asked, verbatim, this was the question, how important is it to push the conversation around gendered superheroes?
That question doesn't mean anything.
She was apparently being interviewed by a random progressive buzzword generator, so she did her best to take the discussion to someplace that was moderately intelligible.
But she was hobbled again by the fact that the movie she's promoting is incredibly bad and stupid and exists almost entirely as a vehicle to sell toys and promote the brand.
That's all Marvel movies are made by algorithms, not people.
I would respect her if she just said that, but she can't.
So instead she reaches for some kind of socially conscious message.
And she kept reaching in response to the next question, which was again, verbatim.
What have you been your own?
When have you been your own ally the most?
That was the question.
When have you been your own ally the most?
So once again, the question makes no sense, but here's what she said.
Oh my gosh, yeah, I think you have to be all the- as a woman, you have to be all the time.
You know, because we are underminded and underserved and underappreciated and underpaid and you have to be your own ally.
You know, my mom instilled that in me from when I was really, really young.
Because, of course, she'd experienced it even more severely than I did.
And, you know, equal pay is a huge part of that fight.
Even when I was a teenager in the industry, or a young woman, I should say, my mom, you know, would have those conversations, like, why is she not getting... You know, it had never had anything to do... There was always these...
I might have to start another GoFundMe, I'm thinking.
She can barely make ends meet.
She's on the verge of starvation.
Nobody appreciates her, or serves her, or pays her.
This is a real problem.
I saw Scarlett Johansson out on a street corner just the other day, huddled under a blanket with a jar full of coins.
I think it was Scarlett Johansson.
Might have been just a drunk guy.
I don't know, but consider this, and get ready to burst into tears when you hear this.
Scarlett Johansson only makes About $50 million a year.
At least that's what she earned in 2019.
Only $50 million.
This is a real-life Handmaid's Tale.
This is the patriarchy, plain as day.
We are living in a country where a woman can only make $50 million in a calendar year.
Now, you might say that $50 million is quite a lot of money.
You might say that Scarlett Johansson, rich, beautiful, famous, beloved, not beloved by me especially, but by other people, you might say that she should simply be happy and grateful because life has granted her all of the material blessings a person can ever hope to be given.
But the problem for Johansson is that although she has so much, still other people have more.
Yes, she makes a ton of money off of her Marvel films, but male action heroes, male action stars, make two tons of money.
They make even more.
And it must be because of sexism, she says.
Yes, it must.
Or, maybe women in Hollywood generally get paid less, still a lot, but less, because the movies that make all the money are action movies, especially superhero movies.
And those kinds of movies are more successful, that is, more people watch them, they sell more tickets, they get more downloads on streaming, when they star men.
In other words, male stars get paid more because they're worth more in terms of pure dollars and cents.
The Daily Wire article reporting on this story gives the example of the two most recent films starring new superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther and Captain Marvel.
The former earned $700 million domestically, while the latter earned $427 million.
The former was led by a man, the latter by a woman.
And that's generally how these things go.
Why?
Well, I think it's because audiences, in general, mostly prefer to see men in these kinds of roles.
Most members of the audience would never say that, because they can't say that, but the box office speaks for itself.
Generally, that's what the audience wants.
The studios and Hollywood, that's not what they want us to want as an audience, but it is what the audience wants.
Part of that is because the studios... Why are the female action movies and superhero movies less popular?
Part of that is because the studios can't help but inject a bunch of cringey girl power stuff into the female action movies, and so audiences are turned off by that, while the male action movies will just be action movies.
But also, part of it is that men, most of the time, from the audience's perspective, make more compelling and convincing action heroes.
Perhaps it's mentally exhausting for the audience to watch a 112-pound blonde woman in this kind of role because you have to strain a bit to take the movie seriously when she's beating up, like, 14 armed thugs at once.
You don't have to strain quite as much watching, like, The Rock do the same.
Even though it's fiction in both cases.
I'm just speculating here.
Whatever the reason, the fact is that these sorts of movies, when there is a man in the starring role, tend to perform better.
Audiences tend to be more interested.
So those stars get paid a little more.
It's not sexism, it's economics.
And that's why I must say to Scarlett Johansson, not because she's a woman, but just because she's a whiny, entitled narcissist, you are cancelled.
Scarlett Johansson is cancelled.
Grad students are cancelled.
But you know who is not cancelled?
The Sweet Baby Gang.
Thanks for watching, as always.
Thanks for listening.
Have a great day.
Godspeed.
Don't forget to subscribe, and if you want to help spread the word, please give us a
five-star review.
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.
Our technical director is Austin Stevens.
Production manager Pavel Vodovsky.
The show is edited by Sasha Tolmachev.
Our audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
Hair and makeup is done by Nika Geneva.
And our production coordinator is McKenna Waters.
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.
