The Matt Walsh Show - Am I the A**hole? Matt Walsh Decides Who's To Blame
Aired: 2021-10-29
Duration: 11:46


=== Kids at the Table (05:58) ===

[00:00:00]  So one of my primary roles, as far as I'm concerned, is to give advice.
[00:00:04]  But the problem is that nobody ever asks for my advice, which means that I have to give it unsolicited.
[00:00:08]  So today, um, we're going to go to Reddit's Am I the Asshole Forum, heretofore known as the Am I the A-hole Forum, where people post their, uh, their personal dilemmas and, uh, they wanting to know if they or someone else in the dilemma is, uh, the A-hole.
[00:00:26]  I can identify an a-hole from a mile away, so this should be easy, and we'll start here.
[00:00:31]  Am I the a-hole for leaving a family gathering because my family made me sit at the kid table?
[00:00:36]  For context, I haven't seen my full family together in quite some time, so they set up a get-together at a park today.
[00:00:42]  The family gathering includes me, my brother, my sister, her husband, and their two kids, my dad, my stepmom, and her kids, aunt, uncle, my two cousins, grandma, and grandpa.
[00:00:52]  Uh, and he's a 22-year-old male.
[00:00:54]  I get there with, uh, not, the grandpa's not a 22-year-old male, but, but, uh, the person running the system.
[00:00:58]  I get there with some picnic items.
[00:01:00]  I brought a quiche and the cups.
[00:01:03]  And I see a few members setting up.
[00:01:05]  I say hi and help set up the tables and set the food out.
[00:01:08]  One problem I'm running into already with the am I the a**hole thing is it's like way too much information.
[00:01:13]  Just get right to the point.
[00:01:14]  I don't need to know what you all had for your picnic.
[00:01:16]  What does that have to do with anything?
[00:01:18]  Anyway, so I sit next to my dad and I get a weird look from my aunt as she says to me, this is the adults table.
[00:01:24]  To which I reply, I'm an adult.
[00:01:26]  She says that the first and second generations are considered adults.
[00:01:30]  And the third and fourth generation should sit at the kids' table.
[00:01:33]  I tell her that I can drink, that I drove here, and that I pay rent and have a job, so how am I still considered a child?
[00:01:37]  She says that until I have kids of my own, I'll have to sit at the kids' table.
[00:01:41]  According to my aunt, there are eight children, ages 6 to 22, and eight adults, ages 25 to 75.
[00:01:46]  So I should just sit at the kids' table.
[00:01:48]  And then he proceeds to storm out, and he takes his quiche with him, and he leaves.
[00:01:53]  And he wants to know if he's the asshole.
[00:01:55]  Yes, you are.
[00:01:58]  Number one because you brought a quiche, okay?
[00:02:00]  You're going to a picnic.
[00:02:02]  What kind of man brings a quiche to a picnic in the first place?
[00:02:06]  I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that correctly.
[00:02:09]  You bring chips, you bring beer, okay?
[00:02:12]  Or something along those lines.
[00:02:15]  And also you're childish and ridiculous for storming out.
[00:02:18]  Proving by your behavior, ironically, that you are worthy of the children's table at best.
[00:02:23]  In fact, you should be a step down.
[00:02:25]  There should be like a third table just for you, because my kids are at the kids' table, and I would not allow them to act like this.
[00:02:33]  And besides, here's the thing that you need to understand as a man.
[00:02:36]  And your aunt, who brought this up, I think is correct.
[00:02:39]  You aren't going to be fully accepted as a grown man until you get married and have kids.
[00:02:43]  That's just the way it is.
[00:02:45]  I'm not saying it should be that way.
[00:02:48]  Well, I mean, I am saying it should be that way, but that's not the main point.
[00:02:51]  That is how people see it.
[00:02:53]  And so if you want to graduate to the adult table, then you have to have kids of your own.
[00:02:59]  You supply your own replacement for the kids' table.
[00:03:04]  Once you have your own kid, they sit there, you get to graduate to the adult table.
[00:03:08]  Alright, um, am I the a**hole for assigning my family homework and not visiting until it's done?
[00:03:14]  I recently quit my PhD program to get a job because I realized academia was not what I wanted and I was better off just using my master's to get a job.
[00:03:21]  Everyone I know from school or has experience with grad school agreed I'm doing the right thing because I've only done one year of PhD classes, so it's a good time to quit.
[00:03:28]  I've had to tell people that this and that and so on and so forth.
[00:03:32]  My family were not understanding.
[00:03:34]  None of them have ever been to grad school, but they believe that I was very far along and quitting at the last minute.
[00:03:39]  I've told them one year of classes is nothing, but they don't realize how hard the exam and dissertation are.
[00:03:44]  Okay, where does the homework come in?
[00:03:46]  I figured if they wouldn't listen to me, they might listen to someone else.
[00:03:49]  I found an article by a college professor that describes what it's like to get a PhD in my field.
[00:03:54]  I told them I would not visit until they read the article and wrote a few paragraphs summarizing the article and discussing why someone may choose not to get a PhD.
[00:04:04]  It's not meant to be a long and difficult project.
[00:04:06]  I just want them to understand my point of view.
[00:04:08]  My boyfriend and my siblings did their essays and apologized.
[00:04:13]  And my boyfriend went above and beyond by including other sources besides the article.
[00:04:17]  So I think her boyfriend is the guy that brought the quiche to the picnic.
[00:04:21]  So this is all the same universe where this is happening.
[00:04:25]  My parents still haven't done their essays and haven't apologized.
[00:04:29]  And still complain that I'm throwing away all the work I did.
[00:04:31]  Okay.
[00:04:32]  You're the a**hole.
[00:04:33]  You're like double, triple, a-hole material here.
[00:04:36]  You're just an a**hole.
[00:04:37]  First, you enrolled in a PhD program for no reason at all, and then you quit.
[00:04:42]  You're the one who didn't do your homework.
[00:04:44]  Maybe you should have read that article before you signed up for the PhD program and sunk all this money into it for a year.
[00:04:52]  Here's the thing about PhD programs, like master's degrees also, in like 98% of cases are giant scams.
[00:05:00]  And that's where you find this weird kind of disconnect, because you think of people that have all these letters next to their names as a sign of intelligence.
[00:05:07]  No, oftentimes it's a sign of stupidity, that you were too dumb to realize what a waste of time this was, and you did it anyway.
[00:05:14]  So, you're the a-hole for that reason.
[00:05:17]  And then you try to give a homework assignment to your family members, and your boyfriend is also an a-hole for actually completing the assignment.
[00:05:25]  And so are your siblings.
[00:05:26]  I have five siblings.
[00:05:29]  If I were to tell them, here's the assignment, and I need you all to write me a three-paragraph essay and apologize, they would laugh in my face.
[00:05:36]  So, everyone in your family, including you, they're all a-holes, except for your parents.
[00:05:41]  They're the only ones who come out looking okay here, except that they raised you, which makes them a-holes too.

=== Clock Wars (04:35) ===

[00:05:47]  So, this is just an a-hole bonanza.
[00:05:50]  What else we got here?
[00:05:51]  Am I the a-hole for not wanting the clock in the car to be five minutes fast?
[00:05:55]  My wife has always kept the clock in her car five minutes fast ahead of the actual time.
[00:05:59]  I tried this technique in the past but found it wouldn't work for me.
[00:06:02]  We each have our own car along with a shared car that the whole family uses.
[00:06:05]  It was driving me nuts that I'd look at the clock, remember it's not right, then I have to check my watch to see the actual time, and then it goes on for another 50 paragraphs, but that's basically the thing.
[00:06:14]  Should they have the clock set ahead in their car?
[00:06:17]  No, you're not the a-hole for not wanting the clock set ahead.
[00:06:19]  The setting the clocks ahead thing is absurd because when you do that, you just end up doing the math in your head anyway.
[00:06:27]  So, I don't understand the strategy.
[00:06:29]  You're not actually fooling yourself into thinking the time is different than it actually is.
[00:06:32]  So, you're giving yourself a math assignment every time you get in the car.
[00:06:36]  So, no, you're not the a-hole for that.
[00:06:38]  Am I the a-hole for forcing my son to call me mom?
[00:06:43]  Oh, here's a good one.
[00:06:43]  Okay.
[00:06:44]  This is a meaty one.
[00:06:46]  When my husband and I wanted a child, we decided to pursue surrogacy instead of a traditional pregnancy.
[00:06:51]  It was a hard decision that took a lot of late night talks and fighting because he wanted to be involved in the pregnancy and everything, but I was terrified of PPD, postpartum depression, the postpartum body, and all the morning sickness that came with it.
[00:07:03]  Finally, we went through an agency to find a suitable gestational carrier, otherwise known as a human being.
[00:07:09]  I'd like to think we were pretty involved throughout the pregnancy process and we somewhat befriended the carrier.
[00:07:14]  Befriended the carrier.
[00:07:16]  Nowadays, we're not close by any means, but we send each other birthday and holiday wishes and such.
[00:07:22]  Tuesday, my son found out about the surrogacy.
[00:07:24]  It wasn't really a secret by any means, but the topic just never came up.
[00:07:27]  He was talking about how he learned about it in biology and how he thought it was weird.
[00:07:31]  I told him, no, it's completely normal, and that he came from a surrogate.
[00:07:35]  I didn't think it would be that big of a deal, but for the next few days he started pestering me about the details of who the surrogate was and why I went through with it.
[00:07:42]  Well, I told him my reasons and he took from the conversation that I was too lazy to have him myself.
[00:07:47]  Yes.
[00:07:48]  He's now insisting that I'm not his mom.
[00:07:51]  My husband told me that it's just a phase, it's probably because our son's a little raw from an unrelated argument we had earlier this month.
[00:07:56]  However, I'm honestly really hurt and disrespected that he doesn't think of me as his mom.
[00:08:00]  When I tried to have a discussion about it, he escalated after, and now only calls me by my real name instead of mom.
[00:08:06]  His argument is that it's his choice to decide who he wants to call his parents.
[00:08:11]  I kinda like this kid, I gotta be honest with you.
[00:08:14]  No, I mean, you're not an a-hole for forcing your son to call you mom.
[00:08:20]  But you are the a-hole for choosing surrogacy in the first place, so that's where you went wrong.
[00:08:24]  But you're an a**hole!
[00:08:25]  You rented out a womb like you're renting a room.
[00:08:29]  You know, you treated another person's body like an Airbnb.
[00:08:34]  And yeah, they volunteered for it.
[00:08:36]  I mean, they like sold their body to you, literally.
[00:08:40]  I mean, they sold their womb to you because you didn't want to deal with the physical changes that come with motherhood.
[00:08:46]  You're right.
[00:08:47]  Your son was exactly correct, in fact.
[00:08:48]  He shouldn't talk to his mom that way.
[00:08:51]  But he's right that you were just too lazy to carry the child yourself.
[00:08:55]  Now you're reaping some of the consequences of that.
[00:08:56]  Your child doesn't feel connected to you in the same way because he's not.
[00:09:01]  Now this is different from something like adoption, where you're giving up comfort for the sake of the child.
[00:09:06]  You're bringing the child into your family.
[00:09:07]  But surrogacy is the opposite.
[00:09:10]  Because rather than being born from sacrifice, it comes from an unwillingness to make a sacrifice.
[00:09:16]  So I think it's a horrific practice, honestly.
[00:09:21]  And dehumanizing.
[00:09:22]  Even the way you refer to this person.
[00:09:24]  The carrier.
[00:09:25]  We befriended the carrier.
[00:09:28]  It's terrible and you're they-hole.
[00:09:29]  Okay.
[00:09:30]  Let's see.
[00:09:31]  We'll do one more.
[00:09:31]  I was in a higher-end apartment store today.
[00:09:35]  Rhymes with looming tales and happened to end up next to two teenage girls while shopping.
[00:09:40]  One of the girls had picked out a pair of very expensive boots.
[00:09:44]  They were both fawning over them.
[00:09:46]  The second girl must have looked at the price tag and asked the girl if she was really going to spend that much of the boots.
[00:09:50]  The girl with the boots says something along the lines of, it's fine.
[00:09:53]  I have my dad's credit card.
[00:09:54]  I'm not paying, which instantly caught my attention because that's not her card.
[00:09:57]  I've told my son multiple times he's never allowed to use my card.
[00:10:00]  So I'm interested to see how this girl thinks she's going to get away with fraud.

=== Parenting Strife (01:42) ===

[00:10:04]  But I'd split up from the girls at this point because they had found something else.
[00:10:08]  We end up at the same register, me behind, and I see her total hit well over four digits.
[00:10:12]  The girl's about to swipe her card when I decide that I can't let her get away with something like that, and someone has to parent this child if no one else will.
[00:10:19]  I tell the cashier that isn't her card, but her father's, and I'm not sure if she has permission.
[00:10:23]  The girl and the friend turn and glare and give me the dirtiest look I've ever seen.
[00:10:26]  I swear this girl was going to throw a temper tantrum right there.
[00:10:30]  The girl tells the cashier her father gave her the card to shop with, but the cashier says you can't use it.
[00:10:35]  And then they storm away, and they're very, very mad.
[00:10:37]  And then she tells her husband what happened, and the husband takes the side of the girls and says that she was in the wrong.
[00:10:42]  Okay.
[00:10:43]  I can see where your husband is coming from.
[00:10:45]  This is like something my wife might do.
[00:10:48]  And, um...
[00:10:49]  And I would probably be in your house, especially if I was with her and she was planning on it.
[00:10:54]  I would be in your husband's shoes saying, no, just stay out of it.
[00:10:56]  You know, that's her dad's problem.
[00:10:57]  It's not our problem.
[00:10:58]  We got enough problems.
[00:10:59]  OK, we don't need to add more to the plate.
[00:11:01]  Just whatever.
[00:11:02]  It's not our problem.
[00:11:04]  So I would be with with with your husband, except that what would propel me to not want to get involved is is really indifference.
[00:11:12]  It's not actually any sort of ethical position.
[00:11:13]  So ultimately, while you're moderately an asshole for this, it's a justified I think so.
[00:11:42]  That's a nuance that's missing from the am I the a-hole dilemma.