Today on the Matt Walsh Show, DEI is on its deathbed and now Democrats are holding funerals for it. I'll explain. Also, the corrupt DA prosecuting Trump in Georgia finds herself embroiled in yet another scandal. Liberals panic as Florida proposes changes to its child labor laws. Apparently the Left thinks that kids are old enough for sex changes but not old enough to work a cash register at Burger King. And a psychology professor writes a lengthy article condemning the "moral panic" over pornography. I will take his argument apart piece by piece.
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Today on The Matt Wall Show, DEI is on its deathbed, and now Democrats are holding actual funerals for it.
I'll explain.
Also, the corrupt DA prosecuting Trump in Georgia finds herself embroiled in yet another scandal.
Liberals panic as Florida proposes changes to its child labor laws.
Apparently, the left thinks that kids are old enough for sex changes, but not old enough to work a cash register at Burger King.
And a psychology professor writes a lengthy article condemning the moral panic, quote-unquote, over pornography.
I will take his argument apart piece by piece.
All of that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
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Some of the few truly entertaining moments you'll find in politics are the times when activists who are extremely ideological, the total fanatic, suddenly have to confront the reality that they are losing.
You'll remember that when Donald Trump, of course, won in 2016.
We saw a lot of that sort of thing.
Maybe we'll get a rehash.
We'll do it again in 2024.
HBO captured footage of Ben Rhodes, the Obama adviser, sitting shell-shocked on a bench for several minutes when he realized that Hillary Clinton wasn't going to be president.
Of course, there's the infamous The now iconic woman screaming and howling as Trump was inaugurated became an instant classic.
These kinds of moments are great because if you are a sane person, it's a win-win.
Your enemies aren't just being defeated, they're also providing some unintended humor along the way.
Well, yesterday in the state of Utah, we were treated to another one of these moments.
The state Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that will dismantle all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the government, as well as in the public education system.
As the Salt Lake Tribune reports, quote, the wide-sweeping proposal requires that diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, offices at the state's eight public colleges and universities specifically, be reframed.
They can no longer be race or gender-based, but instead must cater to all students, as generalized student success and support centers.
The bill additionally banned schools and government employers from asking job applicants for
a statement about their beliefs on diversity or inclusion, and schools and employers could lose
state funding for violating that.
All entities will be required to eliminate any training on discriminatory practices while
replacing that with instruction on free speech from all viewpoints.
So this is by far the most sweeping anti-DEI bill that's ever been proposed in this country,
and just for good measure, the Utah Senate also passed
a separate bill banning men from entering women's restrooms.
The governor has indicated that he's going to sign both of those bills, so in all likelihood, very soon, they'll become law.
Now for DEI race hustlers, this is their Ben Rhodes crazy lady screeching at the inauguration moment.
This doesn't just mark the rollback of their ideology in Utah, it's also virtually certain to inspire similar bills all over the country and create a kind of domino effect.
Already states like Oklahoma, Florida, Texas, Have taken their own steps to end DEI, and now the process looks like it's going to accelerate.
And here's the fun part.
Democrats in Utah, as you might imagine, did not take this news very well.
So they did what any mentally unbalanced crazy person would do in this circumstance.
They all dressed in black and solemnly held a funeral for DEI because, in their words, they are hurting.
Now there was no casket, as far as I could tell, but they did have a eulogy and a strict dress code for the occasion.
Watch.
And that's because we are hurting, and we join our communities, our most marginalized communities and vulnerable communities, through this process, as we just came out of the Senate floor that passed HB 257 and HB 261.
And they're moving really fast to get to the Governor's desk.
and there may be really fast to get to the governor's desk.
I do want to thank everyone, thank my colleagues at 20, Senate and House Democrats,
who stand together as a group and making sure that people know we're here
and we will keep on fighting for good public policy and to stop any attacks on our communities.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
They all wore black, color-coordinated, in mourning.
Can you just imagine the process of arranging something like this?
Like, did they all get on a conference call and say, hey, everyone, it looks like that bill that bans racial discrimination is going to pass, so we're going to hold a funeral for DEI.
Be sure to wear all black.
And then no one thought that that was remotely unusual or weird in any way.
Like all of them apparently thought that by color coordinating they lend some gravity and seriousness to the situation.
But of course they did the opposite.
There's not a single living creature who saw this press conference in Utah and felt anything other than amusement and second-hand embarrassment for everybody involved.
The more you watch this DEI funeral, the more humiliating it gets.
Now, you may have noticed that the Democrats didn't simply coordinate their clothing.
They also coordinated their positions at the press conference.
All the white guys are conspicuously located in the back.
You can barely see them.
The women are up front.
Now the Utah Democrats didn't specifically call attention to that staging like they did with the clothing, but it's not hard to figure out the message.
They're once again highlighting the fact that DEI means that white guys go to the back of the bus.
Even the white guys who are on board with DEI are subjected to this humiliation because they're inferior, I guess, solely by the virtue of their skin color.
This is a fundamental principle of DEI, and they will continue to embrace it, even as the DEI scam collapses all around them, which is what is happening right now.
Now at the same time...
There was one candid, slightly less choreographed moment from the Utah Capitol the other day.
The Salt Lake Tribune captured this image of trans activists storming the Capitol, presumably because they're upset about the other bill, the one that keeps men out of women's restrooms.
And you can see it's a shot of two very angry, at least in one case, heavyset individuals, one of them wearing a mask.
For some reason a couple that looks like a couple masks there and holding signs that say trans joy is power.
But if you look closely at their faces in fact you have to look that close at all.
You can't help but notice that trans joy looks a lot like blind homicidal rage.
I mean, this picture actually deserves to be a new iconic woman screeching at the inauguration moment right there.
Trans joy, and then you just see them full, like just spittle-flecked rage.
That's what trans joy is.
And this is always the case with trans joy.
You know, we hear a lot about it.
We hear a lot, they're always telling us about joy.
We have so much joy.
But nobody has ever seen anything resembling joy from any trans activist.
Have you?
I've never seen it.
So this photo went viral for obvious reasons.
For one thing, it's like a Babylon Bee photo, except in real life.
But the photo also does a great job of capturing the anger and bitterness of deranged activists who know they're losing.
You know, they don't have time for debates or logic or anything like that.
All they can do is rage.
And they know it.
We're seeing a similar phenomenon play out in the journalism industry, or what's left of it anyway, faced with a very public and overwhelming rejection of everything they stand for.
Journalists are not pondering their failures.
They aren't wondering why everyone hates them.
Instead, they're wallowing in self-pity and frustration, just like the trans activists.
This week, for example, as we talked about yesterday, the Los Angeles Times laid off more than 20% of its newsroom.
And this is the paper that, in just the past couple of years, has run headlines like these, quote, Larry Elder is the black face of white supremacy.
You've been warned.
And quote, white drivers are polluting the air breathed by LA's people of color.
That's a real headline.
And quote, mocking anti-vaxxers COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes, but maybe necessary.
And remember, they get mad if we mock them for losing their jobs.
These are the people who actually said that it's a moral necessity to mock people who die.
And yet we're supposed to be sad they lost their jobs.
So we're not talking about principled journalists who are holding the powerful to account.
These are ghoulish, sociopathic activists who want to cause a race war and dance on the graves of their political enemies.
And you could say, well, not everybody in the newsroom may have agreed with those headlines.
But the fact is that none of them condemned any of that.
None of them spoke out or reconsidered the wisdom of working for an organization that would publish garbage like that.
And we all know why that is.
The staff of the LA Times was openly racist and overtly hostile to anyone they disagreed with.
That showed in their journalism, quote-unquote, and most of the public found it to be completely repulsive.
So the paper started losing something like $40 million a year, and now the newsroom has been gutted as a result.
But in the wake of these cuts, there has not been a single LA Times employee, current or former, who has said anything like, hey, you know, maybe we shouldn't have wished for the death of our enemies.
Maybe we did a couple things wrong here.
Not a single one, as far as I can tell.
None of them have said that it was a bad idea to publish an article accusing white people of poisoning people of color in Los Angeles by driving their cars.
In fact, the opposite has been happening.
L.A.
Times employees have been defending their coverage.
One L.A.
Times reporter, Sarah DeWire, insisted the other day that the article about white drivers polluting the air was great journalism.
Quote, ah yes, how dare we inform people about a USC study that found pollution in Los Angeles disproportionately impacts the communities that highways run through, she wrote, in response to someone criticizing the headline.
So, she still doesn't get it.
Or she's pretending she doesn't.
Like she's not even trying to understand.
Even now, after everyone has pointed out to her that white drivers aren't the only ones driving on Los Angeles's highways, Sarah D. Weyer at the Los Angeles Times doesn't see the problem with the headline.
And keep in mind, this is one of the few people who was not fired this week at the LA Times.
So this is like the cream of the crop, I guess, supposedly.
That's how committed this organization is to fomenting race hatred by lying to the public.
Just to be sure I wasn't missing anything, I spent some time looking through the Twitter feeds of current and former L.A.
Times employees, and I wanted to see if any of them were showing any introspection whatsoever.
I wanted to see, for example, if any L.A.
Times reporter expressed regret for predicting that Twitter would implode a year ago, because you have to admit it's pretty ironic that the L.A.
Times imploded and Twitter is still around.
But I didn't find anything like that.
Instead, the more I looked, the worse it got.
As Chris Ruffo noted, the post-layoff statement from the LA Times' various diversity caucuses didn't even attempt to defend their work on the basis of quality or merit or profitability.
Instead, they all invoked various racial grievances.
"The announcement today has devastating implications for Black, Latino, AAPI, and other journalists
of color.
If these layoffs are allowed to go through, the Latino caucus will lose 38% of its members,
the Black caucus will lose 36% of its members, the AAPI and Middle East, North Africa, and
South Asia caucuses will lose 30% of their combined membership."
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Also, presumably, there's a lot of white people that got fired, too, but, you know, who cares?
They don't matter.
So, you know, it's racial bean-counting all the way down to the very end.
And nobody at the LA Times seems to realize how normal people are perceiving all this.
Yesterday, the LA Times' Noah Goldberg tweeted out this photo of an empty LA Times newsroom, apparently to garner sympathy.
You know, he wanted us to look at this and see how empty it is and be filled with mourning and grief.
But, I mean, nobody reacted with sympathy to that photo.
Tim Pool had maybe the best response, which was, quote, this is like taking a picture of a kitchen and lamenting there are no roaches running around, which I think kind of sums it up nicely.
Then after the post was completely dogpiled by thousands of people, Goldberg tweeted, well, I've gone viral apparently among people who think the LA Times is staffed by journalists who advocate for white genocide and are propagandists.
They all believe that the layoffs were good.
Oh yeah, you think so?
You just noticed that?
You just noticed that that is how your publication is perceived rightly by the public?
Well I guess what he just said, you know, that does constitute some accurate reporting from the LA Times at least.
But nobody was allowed to celebrate it.
Goldberg very quickly locked the replies to that tweet.
This is what journalists have to do.
They're hiding from the customers they're supposedly serving, yet somehow they're still in denial about why everyone has so much disdain for them.
Even after so many publications have been conducting layoffs this year, including Sports Illustrated, LA Times, Time, Business Insider, Forbes, Conde Nast, the New York Daily News, these hacks are still convinced that they're irreplaceable.
The remaining workers are even going on strike in many cases, as if that's magically going to generate the money that these businesses need in order to pay them.
But it didn't work for the LA Times, and it's not going to work for the New York Daily News or Forbes either.
That's because, in the end, reality is non-negotiable.
That's true for every industry, whether it's DEI or journalism.
You know, reality is still there.
We're all living in it, whether we want to or not.
You can only sustain a fantasy for so long.
And as journalists and DEI bureaucrats are discovering, sooner or later, Whether you hold a funeral for it or not, the fantasy has to end.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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So I actually want to start here because I find this interesting and there's a lot of outrage over this.
Here's a Forbes article.
Two bills that could loosen child labor laws are moving through the Florida legislature, making it easier for teens to work longer hours in more dangerous jobs as the state battles a labor shortage, which some critics say is made worse by a crackdown on undocumented immigrant workers.
A Florida bill that was passed by a state Senate committee Wednesday could allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work on construction projects in residential areas as long as the projects are lower than six feet, a revision from the original text that sought to allow the teens to work on roofs.
A separate bill called Employment and Curfew of Minors is moving through the State House Legislative Committee, and intends to allow 16- to 17-year-olds to work up to 40 hours a week.
30 is the current law, even when school is in session.
The latter bill, introduced by Republican State Representative Linda Cheney, would force 16- and 17-year-olds to be given the same amount of breaks as adults, a change to the current law, which requires 30-minute breaks every four hours.
So, everybody would get the same amount of breaks in that case.
So, that's kind of the law, and a lot of problems with the way that this is reported.
I mean, we'll kind of get into it, but first of all, force—there's no bill that's forcing any—there's no bill forcing 16 and 17-year-olds to go get jobs.
Like, that's not—it's not forced labor.
But what the bill would do is it would make it a little bit easier for people under the age of 18, for kids to get jobs.
And the media is lamenting that in large part.
I mean, they give the game away right at the top.
They're lamenting it primarily because it will take jobs away from illegal immigrants.
Our kids getting jobs will take jobs away from immigrants.
We can't have that.
That's not fair.
It's not fair if our own children can have jobs because then that means that, you know, some 35-year-old illegal immigrant who's not supposed to be here in the first place won't be able to get one.
Anyway, so here's a clip that went viral of one Republican talking about the need for the bill, and people were upset about what he says here.
I mean, you tell me if this is upsetting.
Let's listen.
We've been weakening our society since before my time.
I started working at like 13 years old, a full-time job.
I wrestled.
I played every sport you can imagine.
So the idea that they can't afford to have these kids do this is an anomaly for me in my mind.
If there's an issue with inflation, we should address that with the federal government, not the state of Florida.
So I appreciate you running this bill.
You guys continue doing the great work and help change the youth out there to have them start working full-time.
Thanks.
Great.
Rep Arrington, you're up.
Okay, so that's supposed to be some kind of outrageous statement from the Florida State Rep.
The left is really mad about it.
In fact, there's been on social media a general leftist panic recently over child labor, quote-unquote child labor, in Florida.
In Florida and elsewhere, and they're very upset that child labor is making a comeback, according to them.
And I put quotes around child labor because that obviously has a certain, like, when they use that phrase, it brings to mind, even though it's technically, if a kid has a job, like a job, even if they're working behind a cash register, the job is labor, and they are kids if they're under the age of 18.
But the phrase child labor is supposed to bring to mind like kids working in mines and on factory assembly lines for 18 hours a day.
That's what that phrase kind of brings to mind.
And that's why they use it.
But anyway, they're saying that child labor is making a comeback.
Very upset about it.
Here's another video in this vein.
So somebody posted this clip of a kid working at a Burger King.
I don't know who took this video.
I mean, the kid's just working there, and somebody comes in and takes a video of him.
And this video got, like, 5 million views.
A lot of people very upset about it, saying, you know, this poor kid.
It's like he's basically a slave.
This is terrible.
And we blurred his face because he's a kid, but here it is.
What are your specials?
We have a two-for-seven on our original chicken sandwiches and a two-for-five on our Waffle Juniors and our BK wraps.
And also, you can get six cookies for $3.50.
Um, may I just have one cheeseburger to go, please?
One cheeseburger?
Is that all for you today?
That would be all.
Alright.
That would be $2.11.
$2.11?
It's $1.99 plus tax, ma'am.
I'm sorry.
Cheeseburgers at McDonald's were used to be $0.69 when I worked there for my first job.
Hello.
Hello.
What?
If you want anything, I can get rid of it.
Wow, how horrifying.
I mean, how terrible.
This kid is better at his job and provides better customer service than like 99% of fast food employees.
That's the only bad thing I see here.
It's that and also that the woman is hassling.
What are you hassling the kid for about the price of the hamburger?
What is he going to do about it?
It's the only thing that's like shocking and appalling about that video is that this kid, this is like his first job, he's probably been working there for, you know, it couldn't have been very long, and he's significantly better than almost everybody you encounter who's working at a fast food place outside of Chick-fil-A.
That's Burger King.
Like, by Burger King standards?
My God, this kid should be the general manager of that store.
That's above average customer service for a Chick-fil-A.
But you put that at Burger King, I mean we've talked about this before, but the customer service at Burger King is, it's aggressively, it's like almost violently angry when you walk in.
You walk in and they start throwing, they throw like shoes at you as soon as you walk in the door, they just, they hate you so much for being there.
The fact that this kid's got a smile on his face and he's interacting by Burger King standards, that is, he's Employee of the Year, globally, already.
So just a few things in general about this.
Child labor laws were enacted back in the early 20th century when you had, as alluded to, you know, you had kids working in coal mines and doing dangerous factory jobs where they were getting fingers and limbs chopped off and that sort of thing.
The idea was to protect kids from that.
And we did.
It's good that we did.
Well, here we are 100 years later, and the kinds of jobs that most kids do, or would do, are very different.
Kids now, if they have a job.
...are standing behind a cash register in a temperature-controlled building for a few hours a day with lunch breaks and breaks and everything else.
It's not the coal mines.
You know, this is not a 12-year-old on the factory assembly line for 16 hours with no break.
So, what exactly is the problem?
What is the problem?
Can someone explain to me?
You watch that video and you say, well, it's terrible.
Why is it terrible?
What is wrong with what's happening there?
You know, I had my first real job, I say real job, like my first W-2 job, when I was 14.
I actually started working when I was 12, I was mowing lawns for cash, but I got an actual job at 14, I had a snowball stand, and it was great.
I made money, I got free snowballs, I learned some basic skills, I got some work experience, I was doing something productive with my time.
What's the downside?
How is that a problem?
Keep something in mind here.
Quote-unquote child labor, which is like kids are doing labor, which is doing some kind of work of some kind.
That's been the rule for human civilization since forever, before the Industrial Age.
So you get these dumb leftists who pretend that, just look at what happens in capitalism.
Meanwhile, over in China, which is not a capitalist system, they've got like, they have seven-year-olds, you know, making iPhones.
But this has been the rule for human civilization since forever.
Before the industrial age, kids would work the farm with their families.
They would do chores around the house, real chores, real work.
And now if they have a job, it's probably working a drive-thru or whatever.
So this is not new.
The only thing that's new is this notion, popular in some corners, that kids should not do any kind of work at all.
Until they are into adulthood, until they graduate college.
Now you do have plenty of scenarios where you've got like a 23-year-old adult who has never done any kind of work ever.
So it's not just like, that's not an outlier.
You've got millions of people in their early 20s who come out of college and they've never done any form of work ever.
That is what is extraordinarily modern and western.
It's very, very new.
And it's obviously totally counterproductive in every conceivable way.
What would you rather have kids do?
Like this kid at Burger King, what's a better use of his time?
Is it better for him to be at home playing video games for seven hours a day?
Is it better if he's sitting on the couch scrolling TikTok?
Like, if you don't want kids to work any kind of job, what would you prefer for them to be doing instead?
It's pretty clear that whatever they'd be doing instead, it wouldn't be as productive or as good for them, as good for the child, as the experience he can get at a job, provided the job is safe and it's not, and you're not, you know, you're not treating the kids like slave labor, provided that's not happening, which it isn't at Burger King, Then, I don't, you know, it's absurd.
Something else to consider, too, is, like, why have kids always historically done some kind of work?
Well, because, yeah, it's good for them.
It helps them gain skill and experience and maturity.
But also, because their families needed it.
So, if you lived on a farm in the year 1752, you needed your children to help.
They had to.
It was a necessity.
It was a survival necessity.
Everyone had to contribute.
You know, and the point is that part of the advantage of a child working is the child is then contributing in a real and valuable way to the family.
So, if we come in and say, no, no kid's allowed to work.
Makes us feel bad to see the poor little guy behind the cash register.
Well, now in many cases, you've just created an additional financial strain on the family.
When a kid is 14, 15, and has a job, You know, make some money, and if you, you know, maybe that new pair of shoes that he wants, he can buy with the money that he's earned, that sort of thing.
Like, this really matters to families.
It's a big help, and we've just got this idea now that it just, it can't be allowed.
You know, you can't have anyone under 18 in a family who's contributing in any way financially to the household.
It's a totally, it's just, it's the kind of thought process people, engage in when they're not thinking. There's actually no
thought process at all. It's just like this instinctive modern reaction to something.
All right.
This is from Free Beacon.
Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis wants to treat her staff to brand new taxpayer-funded cars as she rides out allegations that she misappropriated county funds to enrich her lover.
Willis on Wednesday requested $611,000 from the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to purchase up to 16 pursuit and special service vehicles for law enforcement and administrative purposes.
The board voted overwhelmingly to table the request after several commissioners noted Willis provided no justification for the proposed purchase order.
The board said that it will take up the request after Willis addresses allegations of her affair with Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade.
Wade, a married man Willis appointed in November 2021 to lead her election meddling case against former President Donald Trump, has earned at least $654,000 in legal fees from Willis's office, funds that he then used to finance several vacations for the pair.
Commissioner Bridget Thorne said during a Wednesday meeting, I don't know why she's requesting vehicles now.
I met with the district attorney's office in December.
She said that they had requested $5 million in enhancements last year, but she only needed $4 million because she had already purchased vehicles.
Okay.
And so there's a lot of people that are confused.
They don't know why.
Well, why would she be making these requests?
Especially now, of all things.
Why would she do this?
She's supposed to be prosecuting a case against a former president.
She's at the same time in the middle of a scandal involving an affair with a guy who was married and who she was funneling tax money to and then turned around and used part of that money on lavish vacations with her.
And in the middle of all that, she's asking for over a half a million dollars for new cars?
And then she doesn't even explain why she needs it.
Why would she do that?
You know, it just seems so, it's like, egregious.
You've already got all this heat on you.
You're in the middle of, again, a case against a former president.
You're doing something that, up until this past year, had never been done before in history.
And you've already got a scandal, and now on top of that, without any explanation, you're saying, I need about half a million, I need to buy some new cars.
Well, why would she do it?
Well, it's actually not mysterious.
There's nothing mysterious about it.
She does it because she assumes she can get away with it.
And she's probably right.
She does it because she's a Democrat, and she's a black woman.
Who therefore belongs to the privileged political class, being Democrat, and also multiple victim groups, which is a privileged class.
And so she assumes, probably rightly, that in her position she can do basically anything she wants.
And it's not going to matter.
She does it out of pure, unadulterated hubris.
Although maybe we can't even call it hubris because it's grounded in a correct assumption.
And the assumption is that she can do what she wants.
And she is in her position, and given the demographic boxes that she checks, that she is above criticism.
And again, she's probably right about that.
All right.
So you're not going to understand why I'm telling you about this story, but I'll explain.
I will explain.
Bear with me.
This is from Fox News.
The Atlanta Falcons made a hard turn with their coaching search.
The Falcons, despite interviewing Bill Belichick twice, hired Los Angeles Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris to fill their head coaching vacancy.
The Falcons made the deal official later Thursday.
Arthur Blank, the owner, said this is a historic day for the Atlanta Falcons.
We're thrilled to welcome Raheem Morris back to Atlanta.
Blah, blah, blah.
Okay.
So you may be wondering why I'm wasting your time with NFL coaching news, aside from the fact that we are going to the Conference Championships, the Ravens are my team, on Sunday.
I'm pretty excited about it.
I cannot share my excitement with anybody outside of my own household.
Nobody here cares about football.
This is a Titans town.
None of you people care, you know.
So I don't have nobody I can talk to about it with.
So, anyway.
Well, you should feel a little sorry for me about that.
But that's not the only reason.
There's another reason, too.
Because this coaching news presents some fascinating problems for the left's narrative, and it kind of shows you how the left's narrative works.
And here's why.
Raheem Morris, who just got the head coach gig in Atlanta, he's been around the league for a while.
He's a relatively young guy.
He's like 47, 48 years old.
But he's been around the league for a while, and he got his first head coach job like 15 years ago.
He has a track record, and it's not good.
He has a losing record as a head coach.
Thoroughly.
A thoroughly losing record.
So it's not even close to 500.
He's probably 300 or something.
He's never been to a Super Bowl.
I don't think he has any playoff wins.
He has nothing.
He has failed in his head coaching opportunities in the past.
He has been poor to mediocre.
Mediocre has been kind of his ceiling when really he's been a poor head coach.
And he's also a black man.
Meanwhile, there is another head coach free agent on the market, as referenced in the article, named Bill Belichick, who you've probably heard of.
He has six Super Bowl rings.
He has more wins than any other coach in the history of the game, except for one, and he's within striking distance of having the most wins out of any coach who's ever coached in professional football.
He interviewed for this job twice.
Which is, I don't know if I can quite explain how, uh, what that means.
Like, he took two interviews.
This guy's a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame, and he took two interviews.
He not only interviewed once, like, you would think If I was Bill Belichick, I wouldn't take any interview.
In the first place, I would say, I've got an interview for the job.
Bill Belichick, what do you mean?
I've got an interview for the job.
You know what I can do.
I've got an interview with you.
Much less come back a second time.
It's like if Daniel Day-Lewis Not only came in to audition for your role in your movie, but actually came in for a follow-up audition.
And he was auditioning against just, like, guys who have acted in commercials.
And then he doesn't get the gig.
Like, it's like that.
Now, I'm not saying that Raheem Morris got the job because he's black.
I'm not saying this is a diversity DEI hire situation.
I mean, I'm legitimately not saying that, okay?
I'm not being coy when I say it.
It's like, I don't think that's what happened.
The NFL, now they do have a ridiculous policy, the Rooney Rule, where teams have to interview minority candidates for head coaching gigs, even if they already know who they want.
They have to go through the motions of I'm interviewing minority candidates.
I don't think he got the job because he's black.
I think he got it because one of the quirks of the NFL is that, you know, you've got these guys, these kind of mediocre coaches who've never accomplished anything, who just sort of hang around for decades, and they keep getting jobs.
And this is black and white coaches this happens with.
Mediocrity in the NFL is colorblind.
You've just got, no one quite, it's frustrating and confounding for the fans, no one quite understands, but you've just got these guys, like Jeff Fisher, coach for the Titans, All I'm saying is that the sports media and the left have claimed, and still claim, that the NFL is racist against black coaches.
Which is absurd on its face for a million reasons we talked about before, but if you actually believed that it was true, well, this event Should shake your faith in that theory to its core.
Because if the NFL is racist against black coaches, how in God's name could a black coach with a losing record and no rings get a job over a white coaching legend with six rings who interviewed for the job twice?
It's like impossible.
If you didn't know anything about the NFL and someone told you, the first thing they told you is, look, the first thing you need to know about this league is they're racist against black coaches.
You need to know that.
You would not predict, based on that theory, that there could ever be a scenario where a losing black coach could get a job over a white coach who's been to the Super Bowl and won it six times.
Because it just doesn't make any sense.
Will this event cause the... And by the way, it's not like Raheem Morris is the first black coach with a losing record to get a job.
As I said, it happens many times.
In this case, it's even more noticeable given who he got the job over.
But will this cause the race hustlers, the Jameel Hills of the world, to reconsider or recalibrate?
Will they look at this and say, hmm, okay, well, You know, that's not quite what we would expect, given that the NFL is racist against head coaches, we thought.
Black head coaches?
Okay.
Like, I'm not even saying will they abandon their theory of systemic racism against black coaches in the NFL and in society generally.
Of course they're not going to abandon it, but will they even, like, take it into account?
Will it be a data point that they look at and try to factor into their equation?
Well, no, of course not.
This is why I say systemic racism in every aspect of life, including in the NFL, is an unfalsifiable theory.
There is nothing that can happen that will ever cause the people who believe in this theory and who have postulated this theory, there is nothing that can ever happen that will ever disprove or discredit or even weaken this theory in their minds.
Unfalsifiable.
Which is why it is an illegitimate and false theory in the end.
Let's get to the comment section.
[music]
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Okay, a lot of comments on my monologue yesterday about the psychiatric industry and the medicalization
of normal human emotions and experiences.
Read a few of those.
Elon Musk says, "Interesting."
Just reading that out loud to brag that Elon Musk thought my monologue was interesting.
No other real commentary, but he did leave that comment.
Dr. Michelle says, "Hmm, not sure what you mean by the psychiatric industry, but as a
psychologist, I will tell you that many patients' parents become irritated when I explain that
I don't think they have a disorder diagnosis and suggest talk therapy for working out a
difficult period in their life and/or development."
I've had parents fire me and threaten to report me for not prescribing medication they decided their children need.
For sure, we have problems with the pharmaceutical industry and direct-to-consumer advertising, but there is a cultural problem afoot as well.
Well, I have no doubt about that, Dr. Michelle.
I don't doubt that.
I think you're, of course, 100% right.
And for certain, this problem is driven in part by the patients themselves coming in and demanding a diagnosis and drugs.
That's why I've also been a critic of direct-to-consumer drug advertisements.
I don't think that those should be allowed.
In most countries, they're not allowed.
For exactly this reason.
Because the pharmaceutical industry, what they do is they don't just sell the drug, they sell the disease.
Because if you actually have a disease and there's a drug for it, then you don't need to see an advertisement for it.
It'll be prescribed for you.
That's what doctors are supposed to be for.
But what happens is that, and this happens especially with mental illnesses, that people see the commercials.
And they're convinced by the commercial that they have the disease that's being described.
And then they go to the doctor and say, give me that drug.
That shouldn't be happening.
And parents in particular, I'm well aware that this happens.
Where they go in, this is how a lot of ADHD diagnoses happen.
The parents go in looking for the diagnosis.
And the thing is that If you're a parent and you want your child to have an ADHD diagnosis so you can get drugs for them, you can get it.
Okay?
Like, find me a parent.
Find me one.
Find me a parent who, for years, has been taking their child to the doctor, trying to get a diagnosis of ADHD, and hasn't gotten it.
Can you find me one parent with a story like that?
No, because it's always ridiculous when people say to me, well, you don't know what it's like to have an ADHD child.
What are you talking about?
Of course.
I have six kids.
You don't think I could easily bring any one of my sons to the doctor and describe their symptoms and get a diagnosis for ADHD?
Of course I could.
But I don't do that.
Because I'm not going to try to shortcut.
I'm not looking for a parenting shortcut that involves You know, putting my kids on drugs so that they're, you know, to sedate them.
That's not, I don't do that.
That's not parenting.
Jordan says, that's not true though.
Therapy helps people understand how to process emotions.
It's not all about meds.
Yeah, in its best form, in its effective form, therapy is not about meds, and it does help people process emotions.
I have no doubt that therapy can have that effect.
My point, though, is that there's little evidence in general, society-wide, that therapy is succeeding very much in that regard.
Like, therapy has never been more popular than it is now.
There's never been more people doing it.
It's never been more mainstream, more accepted, more normalized.
And also, at the same time, I would argue, people have never been worse at processing their own emotions.
So, there's a...
A disconnect here.
And also, the way therapy is conducted most of the time, the affirmative model and so forth, makes it so that many patients become even greater slaves to their emotions because of it.
And finally, Matt, you're ignoring the fact that most of these mental illnesses can be found in the brain.
There is chemical activity in the brain that correlates with the diagnosed mental illness.
There's such a thing as a depressed brain.
Okay.
This is an important point, and it's true that for many of the mental illnesses I'm skeptical of, I'm skeptical that they are mental illnesses, not skeptical that the experiences are real and exist, but many of them have, as you say, activity in the brain that can be detected and traced, and like connected to the mental illness.
So, in that sense, yeah, you can find depression and ADHD and anxiety and so on in the brain.
I don't deny that, but Let me make a few points about that.
First of all, the correlation between neurological activity and these mental illnesses is not nearly as strong and clear as people are made to think.
Because if it was, then these supposed mental illnesses would be diagnosed With brain scans, but they're not.
So, you know, we're told that if a child has ADHD, that it'll be present in the brain.
You know, we are assured that ADHD is a problem of the brain and, you know, you can look at kids with, you could take sort of ADHD brains and compare them and you'll find a lot of similarities.
Okay.
Well, you'll notice that curiously, Children are diagnosed with ADHD 100% of the time without anyone looking at the brain.
So this is a disease of the brain, supposedly, and yet the brain is diagnosed without anyone looking at it or doing any tests or any scans or anything.
That's odd, isn't it?
Like, there's never been a time that I'm aware of.
Where you've got a parent and child sitting in the doctor's office, the doctor comes in and says, well, your child's test results came back, ma'am, and sorry to tell you, he tested positive for ADHD.
Like, it doesn't happen.
That's not how this is diagnosed.
That's how actual diseases are diagnosed.
This is diagnosed through a survey, right?
So that's kind of strange.
And second, with that said, again, I have no doubt that if you take a whole bunch of people diagnosed with ADHD or depression or anxiety and you did brain scans and you compared them, you'd find similarities in neurological activity and chemicals and so forth.
You know, I'm sure you would find that.
A depressed person's brain is doing something that correlates with his feelings of depression.
Obviously.
But just because an emotion or thought or experience can be detected in the brain, that doesn't prove that the emotion, thought, or experience is disordered.
That doesn't prove that the emotion, thought, or experience is a disease.
You see, how do I know that?
Well, because literally any emotion, thought, or internal experience is, or at some point with the right technology will be, detectable in the brain.
That's where all these things come from.
Does that mean that all emotions, thoughts, and experiences are diseases?
Like, I'm sure that you could take a whole bunch of people who are happy, and you could do brain scans, and you could compare the scans, and you could say, well, there it is.
There's a happy brain.
That's what causes the happiness, you see, in the brain there.
Does that mean that happiness is a disease?
No.
Even if the emotion is negative, even if it's difficult, even if it's painful, the fact that it correlates with activity in the brain does not make it a disease.
That's just how brains work.
You know, it's how they're supposed to work.
And third, you have the chicken or egg problem.
If a depressed person's brain is doing a certain thing chemically, are they depressed because the brain is doing those things chemically?
Or is it doing those things chemically because they're depressed?
From a neurological standpoint, again going back to happiness, I become happy because of endorphins and dopamine in the brain.
But is it really because of those things?
Did my happiness trigger the endorphins or did the endorphins trigger the happiness?
It would seem to me to be happiness triggering the endorphins rather than the other way around.
The chemical activity in the brain is in response to my conscious state.
So, you know, if I'm at my son's Little League game, he's not in Little League, but if my son was in Little League and he hit a home run, I would be happy.
That would make me happy.
But would it be then accurate to say that, well, his happiness is caused by the dopamine?
Well, no, it's not.
It's caused by what just happened.
And my conscious awareness of it, and the fact that I love my son and I'm proud of him, and something good happened, and so that makes me happy.
So I would say that my conscious awareness of this event, and my, you know, how I perceive it, is what triggers those changes in the brain.
Now, it gets complicated, right?
At some level, you get to a point where it's impossible to quite decipher one from the other.
It's very mysterious.
We get into the problem of consciousness, and how does consciousness relate to the brain exactly, and how does it arise from the brain, and all these different things.
There's the dualist way of looking at it, the materialist way.
But, at the very least, that should give you some appreciation for the fact that this is a, when you're talking about conscious states and how you feel and what you're thinking and what your thought processes are, this is, even if you can't get all the way to my point of view, if you will at least admit that this is much more complicated than you think, and the people that are pretending they have answers about it, they couldn't possibly have all the answers.
They're making you think That they understand things that they don't even really understand.
And when they try to make it sound like, oh, depression's in the brain, we know exactly how that works.
No, they don't.
They can't even solve this chicken or egg problem, really, they can't.
So, even if I can't bring you all the way to my view on this, at least if I can get you a little bit skeptical, asking some questions, then that'll be progress.
America is currently experiencing an unprecedented invasion with millions of illegal immigrants flooding over our border under the Biden administration's watch.
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What he discovered is absolutely shocking and criminal, and it's our duty at The Daily Wire to share the truth that others are unwilling to reveal.
Take a look.
An invasion on the southern border.
Here it is.
America is currently experiencing an invasion.
A lot of people coming in from Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria.
Is there a fair bit of gang affiliation among them?
Always.
These people are just crossing the border illegally, waving their hands in the air at our cameras, saying, hey, here I am, come get me.
We're no longer the Border Patrol.
We're the Welcome Patrol.
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Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
[MUSIC]
So yesterday during this segment, I spent about 20 minutes explaining why,
in my view, the psychology field is in large part, though not in every case,
a scam.
And as it happens, I feel much the same way about the university system.
Not every college is a massively overpriced waste of money, but most are.
Not every college student is getting bilked out of thousands of dollars for an education that isn't worth the paper it's printed on, but most are.
So when you can combine these two things, The psychology field and the college system, that's when you really get into some very questionable territory.
Again, not always, but often.
That brings us to Joshua Grubbs, a psychology professor who just wrote an article for The Hill announcing that the people concerned about the effects of pornography are engaged in a moral panic and should probably just calm down.
Now, I'm going to read a sizable chunk of this and then respond to it.
It's an excellent window into not only the flaws in the pornopologist argument, but also the limitations of the psychology field itself.
Reading now, quote, Many of the concerns about pornography lack grounding in what careful scientific research has taught us about pornography use.
As a psychology professor and addiction researcher, I have made a career out of understanding pornography use and its effects, publishing dozens of scientific studies on the topic.
Across that work, the most consistent finding is that simple narratives like porn is bad or porn is good are flawed.
Such assertions and the arguments that underpin them always miss key information or are almost always wrong.
Those who foment panic about pornography often claim that pornography leads to addiction and mental health problems, damages the brain, results in violence against women, and drives epidemics of sexual dysfunction.
The science does not currently support these claims.
Now notice how this is being framed.
He says that the statement, porn is bad, is flawed.
It's a false narrative.
He says that we know it's flawed and false because of the science.
So, he's entirely ignoring the fact that when most people say porn is bad, they don't mean it in a scientific sense.
Good and bad are concepts that extend beyond the scientific realm.
There is no Science of good and bad.
Science can tell us a lot about, you know, things in the physical world, but it cannot tell us whether those things are good or bad.
That is a qualitative and moral judgment.
It's not a scientific one, but we'll return to that in a moment.
Continuing, claims that pornography is inherently addictive are without basis.
Some people do become out of control in their use of pornography, but the same can be said of exercise, shopping, or even working.
Yet there is no rush to label most of those things as addictive because not every habitual behavior is an addiction.
And just because some people develop real problems with pornography does not mean that pornography is inherently likely to lead to those types of problems for most users.
The scientific and psychiatric communities do not currently consider excessive pornography use to be an addictive disorder.
Dozens of studies have demonstrated that most people who view pornography do not feel addicted or out of control.
Among people who do say they feel addicted, the reasons for those feelings range from real concerns about how much they view pornography to simple feelings of shame about their sexual behaviors.
Okay, let's break this down.
I actually agree that pornography is not addictive, but that's because I take a much, much, much more conservative view of addiction than most people, and certainly most psychologists.
To my mind, the word addiction only makes sense and is only useful when we're talking about the physical chemical dependencies experienced by, you know, fentanyl addicts and crackheads and people like that.
Everything outside of chemical dependency is less an addiction and more a compulsion or a very strong habit.
In my opinion.
But that's a different argument than what Professor Grubbs is presenting.
Instead, he links to studies that he says show that most people who view pornography don't feel addicted.
Now, the problems here are numerous and obvious.
First of all, he employs a common method all throughout this article of linking to one study after another without taking the time to actually explain what these studies say exactly and how they were conducted and what their methodologies and findings were, etc.
Instead, he simply provides a link to the studies, knowing, of course, that almost nobody's going to follow the links and actually read the many walls of text on the other end.
Now, of course, I'm one of the weird people who will read a study when somebody claims it proves their case, except here I discovered that in some cases the studies he links to are paywalled and you have to give your credit card information to get the full text, and that's where I draw the line personally.
The studies that I could read were extremely weak at best, and you could tell they're weak just from the way he describes them.
Most porn users don't feel addicted.
Is that really the bar we're setting?
In order for it to be concerned, most have to be addicted?
Do we apply that to anything else?
I mean, most alcohol drinkers are not alcoholics.
In fact, only around 8% of men who drink alcohol are alcoholics.
Yet, I'm pretty sure that Professor Grubbs would say that alcoholism is a major problem.
You know, if I tried to dismiss concerns about alcoholism by saying, well, well, most people who drink alcohol aren't alcoholics, I'd be laughed out of the room, as I should be.
It's like, most?
It has to be most in order for it to be an issue?
8% is a high enough number to qualify as a significant issue for alcohol, which is strange because one of his studies that he links to, and assumes we won't read, says that 11% of male porn users reported that they are addicted.
Now sure, 11% isn't most, but given the number of people who watch porn, it's extremely high.
We're talking about millions of people here.
Yet, this is all sort of irrelevant because it's all based on self-reported data from porn users who are telling us whether they personally feel addicted or not.
Is this psychology professor really so clueless about human psychology that he doesn't understand that many times addicts don't feel addicted and won't tell you that they are addicted, even if everybody else in their lives can clearly see that they are?
Does he truly not understand that?
Like, I've encountered many alcoholics in my day who certainly would not describe themselves as alcoholics on a survey.
That doesn't mean they're not alcoholics.
Just as I'm quite sure that there are plenty of men who watch porn for hours a day and it's destroying their lives and destroying their marriages, yet if you ask them, they'll tell you that they're fine and their porn use is not a problem.
This is called denial, which again is something that a guy who teaches psychology should be able to grasp.
Moving on, quote, Similarly, although pornography can be associated with mental health concerns, most evidence suggests that links between its use and things like depression, anxiety, and stress are not causal in nature.
Several studies have found no direct links between how often people use pornography and their likelihood of experiencing mental health problems in the future.
People experiencing depression and anxiety might use pornography more, but there's no conclusive evidence that the pornography is the cause rather than the effect.
Now, once again, we get the link to the studies that supposedly makes the case, but he doesn't tell us anything about the studies specifically.
You'll notice that the professor so far has not actually made a single complete argument.
Instead, he just assures us that other people have made these arguments and we can trust what they said.
Whoever they are exactly and whatever it is they actually said.
One of the studies he provides required me to pay $17.95 for a PDF and the other demanded $40 for access to the PDF.
If you aren't willing to invest that money, and I'm not, Then all you can do is read the abstract, and here's what I can glean from those.
One of them apparently found that there is, in fact, a link between psychological distress and pornography use, except it determined, the study determined, that the real cause of the psychological distress is the fact that the porn users perceived themselves to be addicted.
Even though we were just told that there's not really a problem with people perceiving themselves to be addicted.
So, whatever.
So, they're saying it's the perception of the addiction that causes distress, not the porn itself.
The study claims.
Now, the idea that a study based on self-reported data could somehow discern that psychological distress is rooted in a perception of porn addiction rather than the porn itself is just frankly stupid.
I mean, here we have the researchers taking these subjective reports of the participants and using their subjective reports to arrive at their own subjective analysis of the root cause of the participants' distress.
In other words, this is totally useless.
This is not science.
And yet the upshot is that this study, no matter how it tries to frame it, Now, the other study is even worse for the professor's case.
This one uses a sample of 775 female and 514 male Croatian high school students who were surveyed six times over the course of a few years.
Here's what the study found.
Quote, we observed no significant correspondence between growth in pornography use and changes in the two indicators of psychological well-being over time in either female or male participants.
Okay, what does that mean?
Well, it means that as the participants used more pornography, they did not report feeling any worse about themselves over the years.
Now, if you're a critical thinker, you might note that polling high school students about how they feel is not even close to an accurate way of measuring their actual well-being.
And, more importantly, you might also note that this only is measuring changes in their psychological state from the baseline, and the baseline is whatever their psychological state was at the start of the study.
But what if these kids started using porn before high school, as many of them surely did, And negative psychological effects had already been suffered before the study started.
In other words, what if their psychological baseline itself had been negatively impacted by porn use?
Isn't that possible?
Well, yes.
It's not just possible.
In fact, this study, the very study the professor cited as proof that porn doesn't negatively impact mental health, Actually showed that it probably did negatively impact mental health.
Reading now, it says quote, however, a significant negative association was found between female adolescent pornography use and psychological well-being at baseline.
This study's findings do not corroborate the notion that pornography use in middle to late adolescence contributes to adverse psychological well-being but do not rule out such a link during an earlier developmental phase.
So this is what happens when you read the studies.
You quite often discover that people who cite studies are full of crap.
And from there, the professor assures us that despite claims to the contrary, porn is not stunting neural development or changing people's brains.
For this, he provides no links, no citations, no evidence, not even any studies, nothing.
He just asserts it.
And as for whether there's an association between porn and sexual violence, he tells us this, quote,
"While associations between sexual violence and violent pornography have been found in some research,
these links are not present in all studies."
Oh, so, there are multiple studies finding a link between porn and
sexual violence?
That's the headline here.
But he says that's okay, because not every study has shown that.
So, not every study shows a link between porn and sexual violence, and not everyone is addicted to porn, and so therefore, it's okay.
If you're keeping track at home, in this article that's supposed to be defending porn, we have been told that some studies have found a link between psychological distress and porn use, and between sexual violence and porn use.
This again is in an article claiming that there's a moral panic around porn.
Yet somehow I come away from this article hating porn even more than I did before I read it.
And after utterly failing to make his case, the professor concludes this way, quote, Ultimately, pornography is one form of media in a world that is more saturated than ever with media of all forms.
Pornography has flourished in the internet era, so too have podcasts, streaming television, and digitized music.
It is natural for parents, educators, and policymakers to be concerned about children's exposure to sexual media.
It's also normal for people to worry about how new forms of media are affecting people of all ages.
But moral panics based on fear and pseudoscience So that's the argument in closing.
Drawing a moral equivalence between podcasts and pornography.
That's how he wraps things up.
support for science seeking to understand how all media is affecting people and a willingness
to understand the science before making regulatory and policy changes.
So that's the argument in closing.
Drawing a moral equivalence between podcasts and pornography.
That's how he wraps things up.
That's the science, apparently.
Except the problem, aside from the fact that the science as we've seen is mostly bogus
and doesn't even say what he's saying it says, the problem is that this is not a scientific
question.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Porn is indeed bad, and it is bad because it dehumanizes and degrades and debases everybody involved.
Porn turns people into objects.
And it is bad for people to be made into objects.
It is bad for them to be treated as objects and to see others as objects.
Now, what does the science say about the degradation and objectification of the human person?
Nothing!
You cannot quantify moral degradation and objectification in a scientific study.
Science can't tell us whether someone has been degraded or whether degradation is a good or bad or neutral thing.
Just like science can't tell you that it's morally wrong to gossip, or lie, or steal.
You know, if I steal from you, and you confront me about it, and you tell me that you're angry that I stole, it would make no sense for me to respond, oh yeah?
Well show me the study that says I shouldn't have stolen from you.
Stealing is wrong because it's stealing.
Because you're taking a thing that doesn't belong to you.
I don't know that because of the science.
I just know because it's true.
Because I'm a human being with a conscious mind.
People get upset about stealing.
You know, there's a lot of stealing and looting and shoplifting happening right now across the country.
People are rightly angry about it.
That's not a moral panic.
And even if it was, science wouldn't be able to tell us that.
Science can't tell us about moral panics one way or another because science doesn't know what moral is and isn't.
Professor Grubb set out to prove that the concerns over porn are a moral panic and then proceeded to write a lengthy article that says nothing at all about the subject the article is supposed to be about.
Like, if you want to say that it's a moral panic over pornography, you need to make a moral argument.
Tell me why.
So it's a moral panic.
Moral panic means that people are reacting to something and seeing it as a moral crisis when it's not, right?
So explain why it's not a moral crisis.
Explain why it's not a moral problem.
He makes no argument.
It's not one sentence that even comes close to making that kind of argument.
All he has are studies, which are really not all that scientific, and which don't even say what he claims they say, but even if they were, and they did, they still would never be able to tell us whether porn is morally bad or not.
But it is morally bad.
Profoundly so.
Because again, it degrades and lessens both the performer and viewer alike.
You don't need a study to tell you that.
That's what your soul is for.
And we all have souls.
Even psychology professors, believe it or not.
And this particular psychology professor is, today, cancer.
