Ep. 1254 - The Left Admits Defeat In Their Latest Hit Piece Against Me
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a left wing media outlet published a lengthy hit piece on me, accusing me of single handedly destroying the trans agenda in Tennessee. I'm undeserving of such high praise, but I'll take it. Also, a prominent medical organization is now redefining the word "infertility" to include gay couples. Schools in Florida have started to ban cell phones. Which raises the question: why aren't cell phones already banned in every school? And a list has gone viral which supposedly details all of the places that women don't want to be taken on a first date. I will give the definitive answer on what this list gets wrong, and what it gets right.
Ep.1254
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, a left-wing media outlet published a lengthy hit piece on me, accusing me of single-handedly destroying the trans agenda in Tennessee.
I'm undeserving of such high praise, but I'll take it.
Also, a prominent medical organization is now redefining the word infertility to include gay couples.
Schools in Florida have started to ban cell phones, which raises the question, why aren't cell phones already banned in every school in the country?
And a list has gone viral which supposedly details all the places that women don't want to be taken on a first date.
I will give the definitive answer on what this list gets wrong and what it gets right.
All of that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
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You know, it used to be that if you wanted someone to publish an over-the-top, flattering portrayal of your life's work, you had to pay for it.
Unless it's your obituary, you had one choice, which was to hire an ad agency to create some marketing materials, or get a publicist to send some emails, or something like that.
I'm not sure exactly how the process works, but anyway, none of that is true anymore.
Because now, if you're looking for unfettered, fawning adulation on the cheap, there is another option.
You can always wait for a left-wing digital media outlet to write a hit piece about you.
Now, years ago, when the slightest hint of nonconformity got people fired, these hit pieces were maybe a little bit more effective.
Now they read more like press releases from the person being targeted.
This has been true for a while, but yesterday the trend officially hit what I think is its apex at something called HuffPost, formerly known as the Huffington Post.
Without charging me a dime, believe it or not, HuffPost has just published probably the most complimentary profile anyone has ever written about me.
Not a high bar to get over, granted, given that there has never been an intentionally complimentary profile written about me by anyone.
But still, this one is pretty great.
That was not their intent, as far as I can tell.
They obviously spent a lot of time on this thing.
They interviewed a bunch of people to put together this lengthy diatribe.
In an apparent attempt to make me seem mean and bad and scary but in the end they produce an article that essentially accuses me of single-handedly shutting down quote-unquote gender-affirming care in Tennessee while chasing trans activists out of the state altogether.
So they were trying to embarrass me but in the process they made me out to be some sort of superhero.
Now to be clear I will admit that I don't deserve nearly as much credit as they give me, but I appreciate the thought, and of course, it's the thought that counts.
And it's worth talking about this article in some detail, because it reveals something significant, which is that the left is losing on this issue, and they know it.
Even the writers at HuffPost, and the few people who still read HuffPost, understand this very well.
This is probably the best confirmation on this point that we've seen yet, and I'll show you why.
The piece I'm talking about is entitled, This State Tried to Pass Anti-Trans Laws for Years, Then a Right-Wing Media Star Got Involved.
The subheadline reads, The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh has set his sights on banning gender-affirming care for trans youth, and an attack on Vanderbilt's transgender health clinic shows he's succeeding.
Well, all I have to say to that is, damn right, and amen.
Now, the writer of this profile is a former BuzzFeed reporter who goes by the name Lil Kalish and uses they-them pronouns, so you know you're in for something good here.
You also know, of course, that Lil Kalish, they-them, is going into this investigation with all of the conclusions already drawn.
There's not even a pretense of objectivity.
And that's journalism for you.
Lil Kalish begins the article by describing an interview with Riley, who's supposedly a healthcare worker at Vanderbilt, and who also uses they-them pronouns, apparently.
The article makes clear that Riley is a pseudonym, so right away we have a hit piece written by an author with a fake name, talking to somebody with a fake name, and both of them are using third-person pronouns to describe themselves.
Already, the credibility is just off the charts.
Now, according to Riley, one day in September, the idyllic serenity of the Vanderbilt Gender Clinic was shattered when I posted my investigation into Vanderbilt on Twitter.
As Riley put it, people at the clinic, quote, whispered about the social media post by right-wing blogger Matt Walsh, which had gone viral the day before, for claiming that doctors at Vanderbilt's Transgender Health Clinic castrate and sterilize children.
Now I do need to pause for a second to note one of the many ironies of this piece, which is that it accuses me of spreading disinformation while constantly getting basic facts wrong.
So throughout the piece, I'm called a right-wing blogger, even though I haven't blogged in roughly 10 years.
Which is a small detail, admittedly, but it stands out in a piece that's supposed to be accusing me of spreading misinformation.
Our friend Lil Kalish dedicated a 5,000 word hit piece to me, but apparently never even bothered to Google me beforehand, which you would think would be like the first step.
But to Lil Kalish's credit, the article does offer a somewhat accurate portrayal of what I wrote on social media last year.
Here's the HuffPost summary, quote, Walsh posted a video of one Vanderbilt doctor,
Dr. Shane Taylor, who founded the clinic in 2018, discussing how gender-affirming surgeries
like double mastectomies and general surgeries could bring in a lot of money for the medical center.
And indeed, that's exactly what I posted because it's true.
The article goes on to correctly characterize some of my other tweets, quote, In another video, Walsh posted, a different doctor cautions that employees who don't want to treat transgender patients on the grounds of religious objections probably shouldn't work at Vanderbilt.
At the end of the thread, Walsh wrote that the clinic's peer support group, Trans Buddy Program, was in fact a gang of trans activists acting as surveillance in order to force compliance.
Now, what's the problem with any of this, you might ask?
Eventually, Little Kalish gets around to making something of a point.
"Puberty blockers, which stop the body from making sex hormones, help slow unwanted secondary sex characteristics.
They do not, as Walsh suggested, sterilize or castrate children,
though the medication could pose some risk to fertility if they are administered too early in puberty."
Now this is what's called a self-refuting sentence.
Lil Kalish begins by saying it's wrong to suggest that puberty blockers castrate kids,
and then proceeds to admit that these drugs castrate kids.
You should know that the definition of chemical castration, according to the Webster Dictionary, is the use of a drug to block the production of sex hormones.
That's what chemical castration is.
So, HuffPost is claiming that puberty blockers don't castrate, they only block the production of sex hormones.
Which is to say that they don't block the production of sex hormones, they only block the production of sex hormones.
Just as you might argue that, you know, the object over there isn't a square, it's only a geometric shape with four equal straight sides and four right angles.
If it feels like you're having a stroke while you listen to this line of logic, well that makes two of us.
As for sterility, the data have been clear on this for a long time.
Here's a direct quote from the peer-reviewed Journal of translational andrology and urology from back in 2019
And it says quote transgender individuals who undergo gender-affirming medical or surgical therapies are at risk
for infertility Suppression of puberty and the pediatric transgender
patient can cause the maturation of germ cells and thus affect fertility potential
now by the way Not that facts matter here at all, of course, but in my
tweet thread. I wasn't just talking about puberty blockers And you'll notice that most of the time when you're having this debate about so-called gender-affirming care, quote-unquote, with a leftist, all they want to do is talk about puberty blockers.
That's the only thing they want to talk about.
And they don't really want to talk about puberty blockers either because they won't admit what puberty blockers are, and they are chemical castration by definition.
But they certainly don't want to go on to talk about cross-sex hormones.
And in that tweet thread, I was mainly talking about cross-sex hormones, which have a well-documented sterilizing effect on children.
Vanderbilt admitted to giving those to children as young as 13.
Let's just go back and listen to that clip again just to refresh our memories.
Here it is.
We can provide gender-affirming hormones on an individual who is on a pubertal blocker, depending on whatever kind of blocker they've chosen or we have discussed with them.
Or they can present to us at a later stage of puberty, and then we provide the gender-affirming hormones.
Previously, the Endocrine Society recommended to start these at age 16, but we all know that would be delayed puberty, right?
16-year-olds don't start puberty.
So more recently, they did update that to say as early as 14.
For compelling reasons.
So we have some individuals who have started gender-affirming hormones at 13 or 14 to be more like their peers.
Again, fertility preservation and consent are very important to discuss prior to any initiation.
Okay, now, so there it is.
That's just, it's not me claiming this.
This is them talking about what they provide.
And they're talking about gender-affirming hormones, cross-sex hormones, for kids as young as 13.
That's what they say.
Now, to be clear, the drugs they're talking about don't simply reduce fertility.
In many cases, they eliminate it entirely and permanently.
It is simply an indisputable fact that cross-sex hormones, which Vanderbilt did give to gender-confused children, and which are given to gender-confused children all over the country, can and very often do sterilize.
That's not my theory or my assumption.
It is a fact.
That's why many hospitals engaging in this so-called gender-affirming care tell patients to store their eggs in sperm.
UCSF, for example, advises that its gender doctors will quote, "oversee services for people with testicles
including sperm storage and specialized techniques to produce and retrieve sperm in those with a history of
hormone use."
So HuffPost caught me saying something true, which they're pretending is false.
But let's just move on because it gets even worse.
Lil Kalish also takes issue with my reporting that Vanderbilt was performing double mastectomies on minors.
Quote, Vanderbilt performed fewer than a dozen top surgeries, or double mastectomies, each year for transmasculine patients in their late teens, according to Riley.
Such surgeries require patients to undergo months of therapy beforehand, and a study published this summer showed that top surgery patients had little to no regret decades after the operation.
Both Riley and a Vanderbilt executive, C. Wright Pinson, said the hospital never performed genital procedures on minors.
Okay.
There are at least three significant problems with this paragraph.
Actually, four problems.
The first is that this whole article is based on some person named Riley.
Some anonymous person with a fake name and fake pronouns is the source of all this.
And there's just supposed to be what they say is the gospel truth.
Don't question it.
You might ask, like, why should we care what this Riley person says?
Why do we trust them?
But beyond that, the first issue is that it uses the term late teens, which is obviously ambiguous.
A 19-year-old adult woman is in her late teens.
Someone who's 17 years old could also be considered in their late teens.
A 16-year-old might qualify as late teens, if by late teens you just mean somebody on the back half of their teenage years.
And they're relying on this ambiguity because, in fact, Vanderbilt did perform double mastectomies on patients under the age of 18.
And that's what we're talking about here.
They've admitted that.
This is why they suspended so-called gender-affirming surgeries for patients under the age of 18 after my reporting.
It's kind of hard to suspend something you weren't doing in the first place.
But they were, which is why they suspended it.
Another problem with that paragraph is that it implies Vanderbilt did not act unethically because they only performed fewer than a dozen top surgeries each year on teenagers.
So, you know, they only mutilated a few kids.
What's the big deal?
Imagine being one of the young girls who no longer has her breasts because of these charlatans and then reading that paragraph.
Well, there's only a few dozen of you.
What's the big deal?
Enraging doesn't begin to describe it.
In fact, if you're a person with a brain and a soul, you will hear that they mutilated a dozen kids a year and be shocked by how high that number is.
A dozen a year?
A dozen girls a year had their body parts removed for no valid medical reason?
I mean, that is shocking and horrifying.
It's shocking and horrifying if they did it to one kid.
But even by their own estimation, which we can assume is generous to them, which we can assume is a conservative estimate, even by their own estimation, a dozen a year?
To those of us with a conscience, that is That is absolutely atrocious.
And you notice how they've moved the goalposts, right?
They went from saying, we don't mutilate kids at all, don't be ridiculous, to now they say, we only mutilate kids every once in a while, don't overreact.
Well, that's a very different argument, isn't it?
The third issue here is the study that they cite.
They claim that a study published this summer showed that top surgery patients had little to no regret decades after the operation.
Now, if you have common sense, You'll already find that this claim is highly dubious, given that almost all surgeries have regret rates at least over zero.
Okay, that's human nature.
No matter what the surgery is, you're going to find people who regret doing it.
Even if it's a good surgery.
Even if it's a life-saving surgery.
You're probably going to be able to find at least some people who regret it.
Because that's just humanity.
That's how people work.
The idea that nobody ever regrets a cosmetic double mastectomy is ludicrous on its face.
You already know that it's not true.
Because it doesn't make any sense.
And that's why I did what HuffPost hopes you won't do, and I clicked the link that they provide.
And it took me to a report that I've actually already debunked on this show that begins with this quote
Question what is the rate of regret and satisfaction with the decision after two years or more following gender-affirming
mastectomies?
Okay, so They're not following uh tracking results from decades
after the surgery at least not in every case Two years suffices, apparently.
So HuffPost says, well, it's decades later.
And then the actual study says, two years or more.
That's not decades, last I checked.
And then I looked at the response rate, quote, a total of 235 patients were deemed eligible for the study and 139 responded.
So right there, you have a useless study.
If nearly half of the patients don't respond, In a study like this, now there might be other studies where a response rate, you know, around half is fine, but in a study like this, it really invalidates the study, because you have to ask, well, why didn't they respond?
Maybe because they're depressed, unhappy, maybe they're dead, I mean, who knows?
And in that case, you really have no business citing the very small number of people who responded, fewer than 140 in this case, as evidence of anything.
We see this kind of statistical manipulation constantly in this field.
This is yet another instance of it.
We should also note that the median age at the time of surgery for those who did respond was 27.
Okay, so this was not a study that focused on minors who had top surgery.
In other words, it's a totally irrelevant study because it's not even attempting to measure the thing that we're actually talking about.
Finally, a number of respondents actually did report high levels of dissatisfaction, but their answers were thrown out because the researchers judged the answers to be contradictory or confusing.
That's interesting, isn't it?
Every single answer that happened to say that they do regret it also just so happened to be confusing.
And so the researchers said, well, that's confusing.
Well, that doesn't count.
This is just a brief list of the problems with this absolutely ridiculous and scientifically illegitimate study, which HuffPost is citing uncritically and without acknowledging any of its myriad limitations.
Now I could go on here, but the result of the piece is an extended attack, the rest of the piece I should say, becomes an extended attack on Vanderbilt, believe it or not, for daring to comply with the Tennessee Attorney General's investigation into this barbarism.
They also suggest that it's improper for Tennessee officials to act on my concerns, even though this is precisely how democracy is supposed to work.
Citizens bring an issue to the attention of their government and the government responds.
That's like how it's supposed to work.
The upshot is that this writer repeatedly insists that I misinformed the public about Vanderbilt's trans program and about gender-affirming care generally, but, quote-unquote, gender-affirming care, but there's no explanation as to what part I was wrong about or how exactly I was wrong.
What little this writer does say is clearly wrong or misleading, and this is what passes for a fact check.
This is how a hit piece works in the year 2023.
Now, as gratifying as it was for me to read this, there's a bigger point to be made here.
Ultimately, the article is really a lamentation over a battle that the left knows it is losing.
The child gender transition racket has suffered one defeat after another in state legislatures, and now the courts have followed.
And most importantly, it has lost completely on a cultural level.
And just as a microcosmist, look at the comments on this HuffPost hit piece.
The most popular comments on this extremely left-wing website all support my point of view.
As of right now, the top comment on the article reads, "Why is this being made into a left-right issue by the
media?
It's not. I'm liberal. Everyone I know is liberal.
No one I know supports trans treatments for children."
The next highest-rated comment reads, "They keep telling us that no surgical procedures
are being done on minors, yet here it seems to be occurring."
Right below that is this comment, "I just can't understand how any adult
would be okay with this in their children,"
and on and on.
The public sees gender-affirming butchery for what it is, and once they've seen it,
the genie can't go back in the bottle.
The voices of sanity are winning.
They're winning with laws against child castration, which are being passed all over the country.
They're winning in the courts, especially after the ruling from the Sixth Circuit just a few weeks ago, upholding the ban on quote-unquote gender-affirming butchery in Tennessee.
And now with this desperate, overwritten, and incoherent hit piece, the left has admitted their defeat as clearly as they possibly can.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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We begin with this headline from the National Review.
It says, Major Medical Group Issues More Inclusive Infertility Definition.
Now, first of all, several weeks ago on the show, we talked about a case in the UK where it was, I believe, a lesbian couple that was fighting Successfully fighting to be counted as infertile under the official medical definition so they could get tax-funded fertility treatment.
And you may now be thinking that this is a bit odd given that the lesbian couples are by their nature infertile, sterile, because two women cannot get pregnant.
And you're right.
It is odd, to put it mildly.
And now something similar is happening here in the United States.
Predictably, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Practice Committee issued a more inclusive definition of infertility to accommodate same-sex couples and promote equitable access to infertility treatment and care.
The organization said in a news announcement on October 15, This new and inclusive definition is driven by the clinical needs of patients who come from different places and with different treatment needs.
According to the ASRM, infertility is a disease, condition, or status that can be characterized by, quote, the inability to achieve a successful pregnancy based on a patient's medical, sexual, and reproductive history, age, physical findings, diagnostic testing, or any combination of those factors.
The ASRM further defines infertility as the need for medical intervention, including but not limited to, the use of donor gametes or donor embryos in order to achieve a successful pregnancy either as an individual or with a partner.
Nothing in this definition shall be used to deny or delay treatment to any individual regardless of relationship status or sexual orientation.
This revised definition reflects that all persons, regardless of marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity, deserve equal access to reproductive medicine, according to the ASRM CEO, Jared Robbins.
This inclusive definition helps ensure that anyone seeking to build a family has equitable access to infertility treatment and care.
First of all, anytime you hear the term inclusive definition, you know that something is wrong, because definitions, by definition, are not meant to be inclusive.
They're meant to be exclusive.
A definition should exclude all of the things that it isn't.
And so the definition of an apple should definitely exclude everything that is not an apple.
And if it doesn't, if you have a definition of apple that would include a bunch of things that aren't apples, well now you no longer have a definition of apple.
So, definitions are supposed to be exclusive.
And of course, this isn't just about classifying gay couples as medically infertile, which is bad enough.
It's also going to be used, we can assume, for trans people.
You know, we can assume right off the bat that now a man who identifies as a woman can be classified as an infertile woman because he can't conceive a child, even though he's not supposed to be able to conceive a child because he's a man.
So that's the idea.
Now, is this all semantics?
Okay, does it really matter?
Well, yes to the second question, no to the first.
This is not semantics at all.
There is obviously a difference, a major difference, a definitional difference between a heterosexual couple struggling to conceive and a lesbian or gay couple that can't conceive, or a man in a dress who can't conceive.
The difference is that only that first combination, the man and woman, heterosexual couple, should be able to conceive.
Okay, in the case of the first couple, assuming that the woman is of childbearing age, if they can't conceive, then we know that something is wrong.
There is some kind of defect, disease, condition on either the man or woman's part, or both.
Nature has gone wrong, okay?
If a man and woman can't conceive, nature has gone wrong.
Something is not right here.
And so that's where it makes, if you can get some kind of treatment, if you could take a medicine that will correct what has gone wrong.
But if a woman and a woman can't conceive, well, in that case, nature is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.
Nature is functioning as it is meant to.
So what should happen when a woman and a woman, when a lesbian couple goes to the doctors and says, Doc, we can't conceive, then the doctor should look at them and say, yep, everything's functioning exactly as it should.
See you later.
End of conversation.
There is no disease.
There is no condition.
The reason why the woman-woman couple can't conceive has to do with the fundamental nature of that coupling.
It is a fundamentally sterile coupling.
It is an inherently infertile relationship.
The man-woman coupling is fundamentally, by its nature, fruitful.
The woman-woman couple is fundamentally, by its nature, sterile.
Only the man-woman couple is made to be life-giving.
Only the man-woman couple is meant to be life-giving.
Only the man-woman couple can ever really be life-giving.
And if you are in a same-sex coupling of some kind and you find that fact to be upsetting or disappointing or depressing, well, I don't know what to tell you.
It's just a fact.
Doesn't really matter how you feel about it.
Fact is a fact.
There is only one kind of relationship in existence That can be life-giving, that is fundamentally inherently by its nature life-giving, and that is the man-woman relationship.
No other arrangement can be that, or is meant to be that, or will ever be that.
Period.
But that's what this is all about.
That's why they want to change the definition of infertility so as to take that special, absolutely pivotal distinction away from heterosexual couples.
And it also makes gay couples into victims.
Yet again, their infertility is now not simply a natural product of their fundamentally infertile, sterile arrangement.
Instead, they are suffering from infertility.
Which perhaps is true in a certain way.
I mean, the same way that we might say that I am suffering from my lack of wings or my inability to breathe underwater.
I wish I could fly.
I wish I could breathe underwater, that would be kind of cool, but my inability to do those things is not a sign of any kind of illness, nor should I receive medical treatment to help me do those things.
I'm not supposed to be able to do those things, just as a gay couple is not supposed to be able to conceive, and can't, and never will.
And the real reason, or the most important reason, you know, the reason why they want to deny this point, Is that word supposed?
Supposed.
Like, gay couples can't conceive because they're not supposed to be able to.
That's not how it's set up.
That's not how they're made.
That's not how that relation, that's not how nature, that's not how human beings are made.
And that's just, it's an undeniable fact.
And what follows from that fact is that gay couples should not have kids, should not adopt kids, should not do surrogacy and all of that.
And the reason why they should not is because children are supposed to have a mom and a dad.
And we know that.
Okay, so the fact that only a man and a woman can conceive a child.
That's a fact.
And it follows from that fact That every child in existence has a mother and a father, and it follows from that that every child in existence is supposed to have a mother and a father.
That's how it's supposed to work.
That is what is natural.
That is what children need.
And this all follows from the fundamental sterility of the gay relationship as compared to the fundamental life-giving fertility of the heterosexual relationship.
And that's why they want to deny it.
It is all about, you know, this war that is being waged on the natural order of things.
That's what it's always about.
All right.
Here's an interesting story from the New York Times.
One afternoon in late September, hundreds of students at Timber Creek High School in Orlando poured into the campus's sprawling central courtyard to hang out and eat lunch.
For members of an extremely online generation, their activities were decidedly analog.
Dozens sat in small groups, animatedly talking with one another.
Others played pickleball on makeshift lunchtime courts.
There was not a cell phone in sight, and that was no accident.
In May, Florida passed a law requiring public school districts to impose rules barring student cell phone use during the class time.
This fall, Orange County Public Schools, which includes Timber Creek High, went even further, barring students from using cell phones during the entire day.
In interviews, a dozen Orange County parents and students all said they supported the no-phone rules during class, but they objected to their district's stricter day-long ban.
Parents said their children should be able to contact them directly during free periods while students describe the all-day ban as unfair and infantilizing.
Sophia Ferrara, a 12th grader at Timber Creek, Who needs to use mobile devices during free periods to take
online college classes says they expect us to take responsibility for their own choices for our own choices
But then they are taking away the ability for us to make a choice and to learn responsibility and then there were
other protests and so on
Continues as other students said school seemed more prison like without their phones to call their parents
They noted students must now go to the front office and ask permission to use the phone
Surveillance has also intensified to enforce the ban.
Lyle Lake, a Timber Creek security officer, now patrols lunch period on a golf cart, nabbing students violating the ban and driving them to the front office, where they must place their phones in a locked cabinet for the rest of the day.
Orange County students described the ban as regressive, noting that they could no longer use their phones to check their class schedules during school, take photos of their projects in art class, find their friends at lunch, or even add the phone numbers of their new classmates to their contact lists.
Catalina, an 8th grader at a local middle school, said, Okay.
Imagine that the device you use on a daily basis to communicate with other people is
completely gone.
It feels completely isolating.
Okay.
The only thing, well, I'm not going to say it's surprising, but the only thing notable
about something like this is that this is not already the policy in every school in
the country.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
You know, it is insane, in fact, that a school completely banning cell phones in school entirely, that this is such a notable exception that it gets an entire New York Times article about it.
That's how notable it is.
Which I guess shows how naive I am, because I gotta say, I am actually surprised by that.
I sort of, as you know, my kids don't go to public school.
I guess I figured that most schools already had a policy that you can't have phones in school at all, and then a lot of kids ignore it.
That's what I figured.
I figured the kids that are on the phone at school, and I know that many are, but I figured they were breaking the rules in doing that.
Come to find out that apparently it's extremely rare for a school to say, you cannot have phones here at all during school hours.
Which is, again, it's just crazy.
And it creates an impossible situation.
Is it any surprise that we have so many kids who are graduating without having learned anything?
You know, we played the video several days ago of the teacher, I think it was a 7th grade teacher, talking about how kids are so far behind, they're delayed, you know, he's got kids in his class who are on a 3rd grade reading level, and many different factors are blamed on that.
People talk about the lockdowns, the COVID lockdowns, that had something to do with it.
And there are many factors that go into it.
But this right here is like the main factor, okay?
If you want to know why there are so many kids who are not learning at school, it's because they all have phones and they're on their phones the whole time.
They are totally distracted the entire time while they're at school through, for many of them, their entire experience in grade school.
And it's just, it's not possible to teach them.
You know that I can be plenty critical of public school teachers, and for good reason, but I also sympathize with them for many reasons as well, and here is one.
What are you supposed to do as a public school teacher if the school has not banned phones?
You're competing?
You can't compete!
Now you're competing constantly for the kids.
It's hard.
Back in the dark old days when cell phones didn't exist, at least smartphones didn't exist, and which is most of my time in public school that was the case.
And back then it was hard enough for the teachers to get the kids' attention because there are many other things you can be distracted by.
But at least everybody was present in the room with you.
Like, everyone's sitting in the room, physically, and yeah, they might be distracted because they're writing notes, passing notes along, or they're goofing off with their friends or something.
But everything is like, all the distractions, at least, are located in the room with you.
And now these teachers are competing with the whole world outside.
Because these kids have their eyes glued to this portal that takes them out Into the digital world.
And so the teachers are competing with the entire universe to get the kids' attention.
And it's impossible.
It is impossible.
It's not overstating the case.
Unless we ban cell phones in every school for the entire school day, kids are not going to learn.
We're just going to see a total collapse.
of the educational progress of kids entirely.
This does not work.
And we're seeing.
This is the great experiment that is being run right now because really Gen Z just now getting out of high school age, they're really the first generation that had cell phones through their entire childhood.
And let's take a look at them and see how it's working out.
Is it working out?
Are we happy with the progress?
Do we feel like they graduated high school and they're intelligent, well-rounded, knowledgeable people in the way that we want them to be?
By and large, does anyone feel that way?
No.
It's a total disaster.
And unless we take what I guess seems like drastic measures, unless we do that, there's just, there's no hope for these kids.
Of course you have to ban that.
And the fact that you've got kids, and I don't blame any of the kids interviewed in the article.
I don't blame them for being completely attached to their phones, it's how they were raised.
But when you have an 8th grader saying that it's totally isolating, I mean think about that for a second.
She feels completely isolated if she doesn't have her phone with her, even though She's in a classroom.
She's in a school with, like, hundreds of other kids.
She's in a physical environment surrounded by people, including her peers, and yet she feels isolated if she doesn't have her phone with her.
Now, again, that's not to criticize her.
That's to criticize the parents who allowed her to develop that kind of dependency on the phone.
That without it, it's like a limb.
It's a part of them.
And you take it away, they don't know what to do.
It feels like prison to not have their phone for a few hours.
Which is all the more evidence that they need to not have their phone for a few hours.
In fact, they shouldn't have their phones at all.
And I just can't believe some of these parents that also object to taking their phones away.
Well, how am I going to get in touch with my kid?
Do you need to call them five times a day?
In fact, you can get in touch with them.
You can call.
What do you think happened?
For the entire history of school, up until the last few years, what do you think parents did?
Okay, I went to school.
We didn't have phones.
Most of the time, my parents didn't need to get in touch with me during this.
It's a very rare thing that your parent actually needs to get in touch with you during the school day.
But if they needed to, they could call the front office.
That happens sometimes.
They could drive to the school where I am.
I mean, there are ways to do it.
It's not that hard.
And if you really feel, parents, that your kids need, they need to have a phone on them so that you can get in touch with them at any moment, Because they can't walk out of your sight for a second without you being able to immediately speak to them.
If you really feel that way, well then you can get your kid a dumb phone.
You can get your kid a flip phone that, you know, and you can set it up so that they can only call three numbers and they can only text three numbers and it's you and dad and whoever and a sibling.
And you can do that.
Those kinds of phones exist.
They're pretty cheap.
There's no reason, and that solves that problem completely.
And yet most of these parents aren't doing that.
They give their kids smartphones with full internet access, they send them to school with those phones, and then they claim that they're only doing it so that, well, I need to be able to get, just in case my kid gets kidnapped, I need to be able to call them.
Well, we know that's not the reason, because as I said, there's a solution to that.
You can get them a kind of phone that doesn't have internet access, can't call and text, but it can at least call and text you, and that's it.
You can do that.
Every parent, unless you're an idiot, you know that you can do that.
You choose not to.
You have chosen to give your kid this massive distraction.
You have chosen to make sure that your kid goes to school and is distracted every second of every day.
It's insane.
It is crazy.
And I know you've heard me say it a million times, but I do just have to remind you, you know, if you think that it's impossible for a kid to function without a phone, I'm here to tell you it's not.
My kids do.
None of my kids have phones.
I do this for a living.
I work in media.
We have to be very plugged in and aware of what's going on in the world.
It's not like we're living off in the woods.
It's not like we're living a 17th century lifestyle as much as I maybe would enjoy that if we were.
But we're not.
And yet, we manage to have kids that don't have smartphones.
It is possible.
It's very possible.
Alright.
Finally, The Atlantic has a report on a topic that I think we've discussed briefly here and there, but never in any depth.
And the headline is, Self-Checkout is a Failed Experiment.
Reading now says, When self-checkout kiosks began to pop up in American grocery stores, the sales pitch to shoppers was impressive.
Scan your stuff, plunk it in a bag, and you're done.
Long checkout lines would disappear.
Waits would dwindle.
Small talk with cashiers would be a thing of the past.
Need help?
Store associates, freed from the drudgery of scanning barcodes, would be close at hand to answer your questions.
You know how this process actually goes by now, though.
You still have to wait in line, check out kiosk, bleat and flash
when you fail to set a purchase down in the right spot.
Scanning those items is sometimes a crapshoot, wave a barcode too vigorously
in front of an uncooperative machine, and suddenly you've scanned it two or three times.
Then you need to locate the unusually lone employee charged with supervising all of the finicky kiosks,
who will radiate exasperation at you while scanning her ID badge
and tapping the kiosk touch screen from pure muscle memory.
If you want to buy something that even might carry some kind of arbitrary purchase restriction,
well, maybe don't do that.
All is not rosy in the world of self-checkout, and some companies seem to realize it.
Okay, and then it goes on to explain how, um...
[BLANK_AUDIO]
The great self-checkout experiment of the last few years is failing, and companies are turning back from it.
And that brings up the question of the self-checkout, and is it a net positive or a net negative?
And there are kind of two schools of thought on the self-checkout question.
And one school of thought says, listen.
I'm not an employee at this Kroger.
I don't have a name tag and a uniform.
Nobody's paying me $11 an hour to operate one of these machines.
You can't expect me to do this job.
I want a cashier to handle this, just like they did in the old days.
Self-checkout is demeaning, you could argue.
It's also unpaid labor.
Why should I have to do that?
And I understand that argument.
In fact, I worked the cash register at a grocery store for myself for like two weeks when I was 14 years old.
And quickly, they decided to kick me out to the parking lot to put shopping carts away when they realized I was not the kind of person they wanted to have interacting with customers that closely on a day-to-day basis.
But I remember that brief experience with the cash register, and there's a part of me that every time I'm in self-checkout, I say, like, what the hell?
Why am I back to doing this again?
So, that I get, but on the other hand, the other school of thought says, hey, self-checkout is, it's a godsend, it's quicker, it's easier, I don't have to interact with anybody, I don't have to talk to anyone, I can pay for my stuff and I can go.
And I understand that argument too.
So, and this is what, this is why it's such an interesting dilemma, because for me, it kind of pits my laziness against my anti-socialness.
And those two things are in conflict, and usually those two things work together, lazy and antisocial.
You know, that can guide you in one direction or another, not always the best direction, but it will guide you.
And in this case, they're pulling against each other, and it's very interesting.
Ultimately, though, I think antisocial should win by all rights, and self-checkout is still preferable.
The problem, though, as always, and this is the case with most things in life, The problem is everybody else in the grocery store.
I do like self-checkout because it's fast and easy and convenient, but These days everyone uses self-checkout also so you end up waiting in line behind a row of people who all have like a hundred items in their cart and they for some reason take a minute per item to scan it, another 15 minutes to put it in a bag.
You got people, I was waiting in line behind someone the other day that was like they were putting each item in its own bag.
And I'm not much of an environmentalist, by the way, but even I'm sitting there like, this is a lot of plastic that we're wasting here.
This is not good.
I mean, even I was starting to feel bad for the sea turtles or whatever.
And you end up waiting there while this whole line of people buys enough food to feed a stadium, and they're all totally perplexed by the machine.
So everyone uses the machine now, but most people anyway are still perplexed by it.
They don't know how to use it.
And then, you know, it takes 45 minutes.
And they get to, like, the green pepper, and they have to actually, you know, now that it's like a produce, you have to type it in, and then this is very, very confusing for people when they end up with the produce and the green pepper.
They don't know what to do with it, and that takes them an hour to figure out.
So the whole self-checkout thing, I think, starts to fall apart because of the general stupidity and incompetence of everyone who is not me.
And so here's what I propose, then.
So this is finally my solution.
I think If we had a special self-checkout lane at every store, like a pre-check system for self-checkout, for those who have proved that they can scan, let's say, 20 items.
If you can scan and pay for 20 items in less than 3 minutes, then you get to go to a special lane, and that's going to be the fastest lane of all.
That's my solution.
Maybe you get a, um, how do you know who gets in that lane?
Maybe you get a special badge that says that.
Maybe you get a name tag.
Maybe you get a uniform.
I mean, really, you're just an employee now, so I guess we're back to that, but that's my solution.
I don't know.
Doing my best.
Let's get to, uh, was Walsh wrong?
Okay, a few comments here.
These are oldies but goodies.
Well, they're new comments, but old at the same time.
Merman says, Matt, trans people have existed since the beginning of time and they'll exist until the end of time.
Nothing you say or do will change that.
You have zero power over genetics.
As much as you hate God's design, it's not going to change it.
Lucy says, please tell us how trans people existing is in any way a threat to you and or your family.
Surely they must be harming you in some way for you to hate them so much.
Or do you pretend to hate trans people because you make your living as a professional bigot?
Marcy says, kind of the same idea, says no trans person has ever harmed you.
Your obsession is concerning.
Okay, let's respond very briefly to all those.
First of all, no trans person has ever harmed me.
True in a direct sense.
Now, plenty of them have threatened to.
Plenty of them have threatened to kill me and my entire family, in fact.
None of them have ever followed through on it, but certainly there's been a threat.
Not for lack of wanting, at least, and maybe even lack of trying.
I don't know.
But I always think this argument is interesting because if we were to take it literally, it's really an argument for selfishness.
So really, you're accusing me of not being selfish.
You're saying, well, if you're not personally harmed by this, then why do you care?
Would we apply that to anything else?
What if I said that about you passed by a homeless guy on the street?
The fact that he's homeless and starving, that doesn't hurt you.
Why do you care about his plight?
It doesn't affect you.
So normally we recognize that even if you're not personally affected by something, it's good to care about it.
Like, only caring about things that personally affect you, usually we recognize that as being selfish.
Usually we recognize that as a character flaw, okay?
When you only care about things that directly affect you.
And in this case, yes, most of the direct harm that is done by the trans agenda, and there is a lot of it, Like children who are being mutilated and butchered just to begin with, most of that harm is not happening to me directly, but I still care.
Because, I don't know what to tell you, I care about what happens to other people.
I care about what happens to innocent kids, especially.
And also, as I'm always having to remind people, I do in fact, it is in fact true that this is a society that we live in, and I live in it too.
And so any harm to the culture and to society does ultimately affect me as well.
And finally, trans people have always existed and will always exist until the end of time.
That, of course, we know is not true.
Well, what will happen in the future, I guess we can't exactly predict that.
Will there be trans-identified people, you know, a hundred years from now?
That I'm not exactly sure.
But did they exist 200 years ago?
Well, the answer to that is no.
Although, I'm still waiting.
You know, I've put out this challenge a million times, and anyone is free to prove me wrong.
All you have to do is provide, and there should be, you know, if quote-unquote trans people have existed in numbers similar to what they exist today, trans-identified people, if they existed in history in the same numbers, then there should be a lot of historical documentation of their existence going back centuries.
And so, just give me that example.
Find me one trans-identified person in, let's just say, the 1600s.
Just pull one historical era, one century at random.
And so, I'll give you the whole century of the 1600s, anywhere in the world.
And this was certainly a time, this is part of documented history, very much so.
And so, can you find me an example of one trans-identified person in the 1600s?
And just to clarify, that is not a cross-dressing person.
That is a person of one sex who claimed to actually be the opposite sex.
Just find me that.
And then you can really prove me wrong.
But you won't.
Because I'm not.
Faith Moore, Andrew Klavan's talented daughter, has written a new rendition of the age-old Christmas classic, A Christmas Carol, except this time, Carol is spelled with a K. It's a modern twist on the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, but with a female protagonist in a world where boss babes are champion at the expense of family.
Faith is making the case that having what matters is far better than having it all.
A Christmas Carol, now available to pre-order.
Order yours on Amazon or wherever you get your books today.
Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
[MUSIC]
If you spend too much time on social media, then you're probably aware of the list that has been circulating for
over a week now, the list of legend, the mythical list of unknown origins.
Nobody's certain where this list came from or who exactly was polled in order to compile it, or if it represents anything but the opinion of some random Twitter user.
It's most likely that last option.
But even so, the list has, as they say, sparked a debate and given rise to a plethora of hot takes.
It's also been the subject of many news articles and news reports like this one.
Watch.
Unacceptable places to take a woman on a first date going viral on the social media platform X, formerly known, of course, as Twitter.
Yeah, it's leaving men stumped on where else they should take the woman.
The first six places are popular restaurant franchise chains like Applebee's, Chili's.
I want my baby back.
Olive Garden and the Cheesecake Factory.
Okay, first of all, Olive Garden.
Yeah.
All-you-can-eat breadsticks, salad soup.
I mean, that's a value, Megan.
By the way, Producer Fawaz, who made this list?
Is this just going viral?
Is it like on Reddit or something?
Women weighed in.
Okay, so women weighed in.
Okay, so includes, you know, Cheesecake Factory, all those.
Any fast food chain also?
Okay, Buffalo Wild Wings.
A big no.
That's a good time if there's a good game on.
Other places mentioned include movies, the gym, a bar for drinks, coffee or ice cream dates and sporting events.
Pretty much these women listed everything there is to do.
Clubs and hookah lounges also made the list.
It got many men up in arms.
Okay, so that's the story.
Someone somewhere pulled some women somewhere and came up with a list that these women say they do not want to be taken on for a first date.
And that list is topped by the Cheesecake Factory.
It also includes Applebee's, Chili's, Chipotle, Olive Garden, the movies, Buffalo Wild Wings, Red Lobster, Waffle House, fast food, the gym, bowling, buffets, nightclubs, hookah bars, sporting events, coffee shops.
Basically, you should not take a woman to any known location on Earth on a first date.
That's what was decided by whoever decided it.
And we'll move past the fact that this list is meaningless so that we can participate in this conversation.
Or I should say not participate in it, but deliver the definitive answer to it so that everyone can officially move on.
And let's begin with What the list gets right, because it does get some things right, and I think we should acknowledge that.
And it's important for young men especially to know this.
You know, in the dating scene, and they're planning a first date, there are a few items on that list that you should probably, that's true, you don't want to take your date to one of those places.
So it's true that fast food places are probably a little too far on the casual side for a first date.
They're also, at this point, incredibly depressing dining experiences.
Like I actually went, and this is true, I went inside a Wendy's somewhat recently
because the drive-thru was too long.
And this was the first time I've even seen one car in a Wendy's drive-thru in at least 25 years.
And, but there was more than one.
There was like three.
And I said, this is crazy.
And so I went inside and as soon as I walked in the building,
I just, I lost my appetite and then my will to live.
It dreary, dirty, depressing, the employees scowling at you.
Like, they're shocked that you came in also.
Like, you don't know why you're walking into a Wendy's, they don't know why you're here, and they don't want you there.
People are sitting by themselves at tables and corners, like unlit corners, eating stale fries and weeping quietly to themselves.
It was horrendous.
Now, I still ordered my food and ate all of it, but I wasn't happy about it.
And the point is that you don't want to bring a date into that kind of environment until you know that your relationship is strong enough to stare into the bowels of total hopelessness and despair and survive.
And you don't want to do that on a first date.
A similar issue with Waffle House, which isn't a great first date location unless you're sure that your date loves both waffles and bare-knuckle street fights.
And if she does, then it's basically dinner and a show.
The whole thing costs less than 25 bucks.
That's a good deal.
I'm also going to rule out Chipotle for a first date because first impressions are extremely important, and you don't want her first impression of you or yours of her to include explosive diarrhea.
And speaking of first impressions, I'll agree that buffets actually may be problematic on a first date, only because It's too early in the relationship for her to witness you just like crush six full plates at Golden Corral.
My wife, and I remember this distinctly, my wife did not see me get to work on a buffet until at least like a few months into our relationship.
And I annihilated that buffet, and she was gobsmacked.
But by that point, she already knew that I was a gluttonous slob, so I was kind of, you know, I was in a safe space.
I was safe to let loose.
Most of the rest of the places on that list, though, don't deserve to be on the list at all.
They make excellent choices for first dates.
Coffee shops and ice cream places, these are classic options.
Bowling is always fun.
Bowling is the kind of thing that everyone has an absolute blast doing once every three years.
And the great thing about bowling, or something like mini golf as well, is that it gives you a fun activity to do.
but still enables you to talk to each other while helping to smooth over any otherwise awkward pauses in conversation.
It also allows the man to show off his skills a little bit.
And I know you think that I'm joking about that, "Well, why does a woman care if you're good at bowling?"
But it's just being good at something is attractive to even bowling.
Now, the only caveat is that, and this is kind of tricky with bowling,
You don't want to be too good at bowling.
So the sweet spot is to bowl somewhere around a 160, 170 on the upper range of it.
You don't want to get over the 200 mark because you want to look like you're naturally talented at things, but you don't want to look like you're so good at bowling because you actually take it seriously and go bowling once a week.
As for chain restaurants, there should be no hesitation there at all.
Yet for some reason, chain restaurants have been catching strays all over the place recently.
So just two weeks ago, there was a viral video of a woman refusing to get out of the car on a first date because she was so offended that the man had taken her to the Cheesecake Factory.
Watch.
Let me just get the door for you.
Okay.
He got me at the Cheesecake Factory y'all.
I need to get out this car.
Mm-mm.
Mm-mm.
[car door opens]
[car starts]
Yes.
Uh, would you want me to open the door for you?
Are you recording me?
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is the Cheesecake Factory.
This is the Cheesecake Factory, y'all.
What's the problem with that?
This is a chain restaurant.
Who takes someone that looks like this to a chain restaurant?
Now, first of all, the Cheesecake Factory is perfectly respectable.
It's also expensive for a chain restaurant.
Two entrees, an appetizer, and a couple of drinks will easily set you back $80 or $90 before tip.
And that is a sizable financial investment in a date with someone you hardly know.
You know, the Cheesecake Factory, I kind of look at it as the economy plus of chain restaurants.
I'm not saying it's first class, but it's not a middle seat in coach either.
I spent all of my childhood and a good portion of my adult life thinking of the Cheesecake Factory as a nice, fancy type place.
It's the type of place you go if you want to splurge a bit.
The first time I ever went to the Cheesecake Factory, I never even went when I was a kid, because when I was a kid, the Cheesecake Factory was way outside of where we were ever going to go if we were going out to eat as a family.
And that was like, if I had suggested that, my parents would have laughed at me.
A Cheesecake Factory?
What do you think, we're millionaires?
So the first time I ever went, I was an adult.
And I wore khakis to the Cheesecake Factory because I thought this is a fancy place.
Now, the second time I wore jeans because I realized it's not worth all that, but still, the point is that no woman should be turning up her nose at a place like that.
I know it's trendy to hate on chain restaurants these days, but these are affordable and accessible establishments.
And if, as a woman, you expect a man to take you somewhere less accessible and less affordable when he doesn't even know you yet, that tells me that your priorities are wildly out of balance.
It tells me that your priority is to have your ego fed, which means that you are not the kind of woman a man should be taking out in the first place.
As I've said before, if you expect a man to pay for you on a first date and, you know, treat you on a first date, that's fine.
I paid for my wife on our first date, even though when we met way back then, she was actually making more money than me.
But I paid on the first date, because I believe in chivalry, and I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy.
But those expectations on your part as the woman...
Come with expectations of their own.
So if you want the man to abide by traditional codes of chivalry, then you must abide by traditional codes of womanhood.
You must be a sweet, feminine, conservative woman.
You certainly must not describe yourself as a feminist.
You cannot dip your toe in gender roles only when you think you'll get a free meal out of it.
That makes you a hypocrite and a panhandler.
If you want to be an old-fashioned lady, when the check comes, you better be an old-fashioned lady the rest of the time.
But even if you are playing your part, you cannot demand that a man spend top dollar on you before he even knows you.
It's not reasonable to expect a man to invest a day's pay or more into a restaurant tab for the sake of a woman who, for all he knows, because he doesn't know you yet, could be low quality and low character.
And ironically, a woman who expects that kind of money to be spent on her by some man she doesn't know has only revealed herself to be exactly the kind of woman who is undeserving of it.
Now, I will admit, That I did not exactly practice what I preach in this regard.
For the first date with my wife back centuries ago, I spent multiple days pay on tickets to a fancy dinner theater.
But she didn't know how much the tickets cost or how little I could afford them and would have furiously objected had she known.
But here's the other thing.
It was also a risky strategy on my part.
Because there's another reason why I wouldn't recommend it normally, even though it worked out great for me.
But I could not come close to maintaining at that level for the rest of our dating relationship.
Like, that was the best date we would ever go on until we got married, because I couldn't possibly afford to do that more than once.
And from then on, it was Applebee's.
And Applebee's was about as high class as it got.
And she was fine with that.
She's still fine with Applebee's.
So, you know, I ended up with the best of both worlds, which is what you want.
A woman who knows how to carry herself in a five-star fine dining establishment, but who's perfectly happy and at home in an Applebee's.
And in fact, these days, if there's any Applebee's slander happening in our house, it's usually coming from me, I'm ashamed to admit.
In any case, the point is that a first date is about beginning the process of getting to know each other, or figuring each other out.
You don't need to spend a lot of money to do that.
A bowling alley's a great place to start that process, or a Chili's.
If the night gets really wild, maybe you do both.
There are enough hurdles that stand in your way as a single person in the modern dating scene.
There's no reason to add more and unnecessary obstacles by being snobby and high-maintenance.
And that is why the women responsible for this list, if those women even exist, are today cancelled.
