Ep. 1328 - The Children's Entertainment Industry Is Infested With Groomers And Pedophiles
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a new documentary exposes the behind the scenes grooming, exploitation, and abuse that was rampant at Nickelodeon during its heyday. Also, Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson worries that the First Amendment may be "hamstringing" the government. Of course, that's the whole point of the First Amendment. A new study finds that woke people tend to be anxious and miserable. No surprise there. And in our Daily Cancellation, the campaign to "destigmatize" cannibalism is finally underway.
Ep.1328
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Today on The Matt Walsh Show, a new documentary exposes the behind-the-scenes grooming, exploitation, and abuse that was rampant at Nickelodeon during its heyday.
Also, Justice Khadonji Brown Jackson worries that the First Amendment may be hamstringing the government.
Of course, that's the whole point of the First Amendment.
A new study finds that woke people tend to be anxious and miserable.
No surprise there.
In our daily cancellation, the campaign to destigmatize cannibalism is finally underway.
We'll talk about all that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show.
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You can always tell that somebody has real power when they do something that's obviously wrong, maybe even illegal, for a very long time, and yet they make no effort to hide it whatsoever.
In the entertainment industry, Harvey Weinstein is, of course, one of the most prominent examples of that.
His behavior was an open secret in Hollywood for three decades, to the point that I know they were making jokes about it during the Oscars, but nothing was done about it until just a few years ago.
And unfortunately, the process of taking down Harvey Weinstein involved a much larger, extraordinarily destructive movement called Me Too, which did far more harm than good.
I'm not going to recount all the problems of that particular movement.
I've discussed all of that before.
Many times, but one major issue with Me Too is coming to light very plainly right now, which is that the movement conspicuously left pedophiles pretty much unscathed.
And you know that because to this day, you still aren't allowed to talk about the pedophilia that's rampant in elite circles.
You know, you can complain about so-called toxic masculinity, quote-unquote, and misogyny all you want, but if you bring up the topic of pedophilia, the left treats you as a QAnon conspiracy theorist.
Using words like groomer is prohibited on many social media platforms.
How dare you suggest that pedophiles have infested Hollywood, the education system, the media, etc.
You must be crazy.
That's hate speech.
But make that claim despite the fact that the sexualization and mistreatment of children has been on display for decades in mainstream children's entertainment.
And now it's getting a lot of new exposure.
The first episodes of a new documentary series exposing the inner workings of Nickelodeon Which of course is the children's network that most people my age grew up watching in the 90s and early 2000s called Quiet on the Set, the dark side of kids' TV, just premiered.
It's worth watching because it's one of the few well-researched, effectively produced looks into how the entertainment industry abuses children.
In a moment, I'll show you some of the new clips from this documentary, the ones that involve behind-the-scenes insights and interviews.
But the incredible thing is that Nickelodeon wasn't really hiding what they were doing.
Some of the most perverse parts of this documentary are scenes that Nickelodeon aired publicly or uploaded to the internet many years ago.
For example, take a look at these sequences from a show called Victorious featuring a young Ariana Grande.
It's a teen sitcom created by former Nickelodeon bigwig Dan Schneider that premiered more than a decade ago on Nickelodeon.
And the videos received a lot of attention when they resurfaced in 2019, but it's important to see them again to understand the new accusations against Schneider, who also created many other hit shows like iCarly.
But these are incredibly disturbing.
And once again, this is stuff that was put on the air, put on the internet for the public to see at the time.
Let's watch some of this.
Have you ever tried to get your whole big toe in your mouth?
Check this out!
Sometimes I wonder if you can get juice from a potato.
*slurps* *gags*
*vomits* Is it possible for a teenage girl to drink water upside down?
Mmm!
I'm thirsty!
It's not possible!
This has been me in a video!
Come on!
[Groans]
[Screams]
Come on! Give up the juice!
[Groans]
Okay, so to be clear, these videos were posted
online by Nickelodeon, which has a core audience
of young children, and apparently they were posted online
with little objection from anyone until years later.
later.
And they created this content to promote their show on the internet, and these videos are unambiguously, deliberately intended to be as suggestive as possible.
They're well past any pretense of plausible deniability.
That's how...
Brazen this operation was, but even after the uproar a few years ago, there still wasn't a whole lot of in-depth reporting about what exactly Dan Schneider was doing in Nickelodeon.
One of Grande's co-stars, Jeanette McCurdy, wrote a memoir describing her abuse of Nickelodeon, but generally speaking, Schneider himself escaped in-depth scrutiny.
That was a big oversight because anyone who's willing to produce this kind of content for young children is obviously someone who needs to be investigated very thoroughly.
Firing him should not have been the end of it, but for a while it was.
Now, though, we have a better idea of what was going on, and one of the sequences that Quiet on the set has highlighted is this behind-the-scenes footage from 2002, in which Schneider sits in a jacuzzi with Amanda Bynes, who was 16 years old at the time.
In the footage, Schneider is fully clothed while Bynes is in a bathing suit.
Let's watch a bit of this.
Excuse me.
Today my special guest is the executive producer of the Amanda Show, Dan Schneider.
Hi.
Dan, you're the producer of the show.
Yes, I'm the executive producer and the head writer.
We actually wrote the words for saying to each other right now.
Right now?
Yes, I actually wrote this whole conversation that we're having right now.
I'm staring at the executive producer.
Come here, I see you.
Have you ever IC'd before sent to the executive producer?
IC'd?
Now sent to the executive producer.
IC'd now sent to the executive producer.
Hi!
Welcome to my exclusive!
Today my special guest is...
It continues, and eventually they start eating spaghetti in the jacuzzi for some reason.
But this was what Dan Schneider wanted to do.
He said to this 16-year-old girl to put on a bathing suit and get in the jacuzzi, and he got in there with her, and they filmed this little whatever it was.
As they talk about in the documentary at some length, this is a very twisted kind of power play.
There's no legitimate reason for the executive producer of this show to be in a jacuzzi with an underage actress, having her explain to the camera that he controls everything she says.
There's certainly no reason for him to eat spaghetti with her, even if he does happen to be morbidly obese.
But as you watch the documentary, it becomes clear that this kind of behavior was open and notorious on Nickelodeon sets.
There are extensive interviews with cast members and staff of shows like All That and The Amanda Show, which go into extensive details about how pervasive this problem was.
At one point in the film, or the documentary series, former Nickelodeon employees describe how Schneider thought it would be funny to have a young actress use the name Taint on air.
Watch.
Hello, citizens!
So Penelope Taint is a character that Dan created.
He came up with the name Penelope Taint.
The taint is the part of the body that's between the penis and the anus.
It's that skin there, that's the taint.
And Dan had said to us in the writer's room, don't tell what this word really means.
He wanted us to keep that a secret.
I remember someone from Nickelodeon sitting with us and saying, like, oh, does this mean, you know, this dirty thing?
And Dan was like, no.
Why would you think that's, like, tainted, like you've tainted something?
And they were like, OK.
Man, that is power.
That is power, that you can just say you want something, and it's done.
That's what I thought.
So I got on the show and it's one of those things where it's like, oh, you know, like, yeah, it's a young girl.
Yeah, one of those things.
It always amazes me when you see these kinds of documentaries.
Well, yeah, you have the disgusting pervert who's being exposed and whose behavior is sort of the story, but also just the incredible cowardice of everybody around this person.
Just the amount of cowardice that's required to have somebody doing this sort of thing that nobody would speak up and say, you know what?
No, we're not going to do that.
We're not going to give We're not going to give a young girl actress the name Taint because you want to make some disgusting perverted joke, you pervert.
We're not doing it.
Nobody said that.
Instead, they're all like, okay, well, if you want to.
And then after the fact, they can be in the documentary as like the good guys.
Well, he wanted to and I didn't know what to do.
Speak up, you freaking cowards.
What is he going to do, shoot you?
What are you afraid is going to happen?
But this is Schneider's MO.
If you watch just the first episode of this documentary series, that would become very clear.
For example, employees also discuss how he instructed his subordinates to describe themselves in demeaning terms, including as sluts, for his personal amusement.
Watch.
It was clear that there was a permissibility around these sexualized jokes with children.
It was par for the course.
Like, strange things amused Dan, and that was just one of the things he thought was funny.
He liked to play pranks and jokes, which at first seemed fun.
In the beginning, I would see, you know, instant message pop up.
Dan would send a message for you to say out loud, scream hammers, and you scream it.
And then it would be, you know, more degrading, like, scream, I'm an idiot, or slut.
And if you didn't, he would send you the message again, caps, exclamation points.
He would scream out, say it, until you did.
Once again, my question is like, why didn't you refuse?
Why didn't you say something?
You know, that's interesting, but they don't really explain that part of it.
As the segment goes on, the employees claim that Schneider would often offer money to induce his subordinates to do degrading tasks like gorging themselves on gallons of ice cream, only to refuse payment when they tried to collect.
For his part, not surprisingly, Schneider denies all these accusations.
He hasn't been charged or convicted of any crime as of yet.
Even so, there's clear evidence that serious child abuse did occur at the company.
The documentary covers all of that as well.
For example, in later episodes of the documentary, former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell comes forward on camera to say that he was sexually assaulted when he was 15 years old by Brian Peck, also known as Pickle Boy, who worked on the Amanda Show, the same show as the Jacuzzi scene.
Peck was arrested back in 2003 on 11 charges relating to this abuse, including Sodomy and committing a lewd act upon a child aged 14 or 15
by a person 10 years older There was also a charge for oral copulation by anesthesia
or controlled substance Peck pleaded no contest to the charges was sentenced to
only 16 months in prison at the time I'll say that again. He spent less than two years in prison
for child sexual abuse Bell's name was concealed during the trial, but now many
years later. He's come forward to identify himself and And in the second episode of the documentary, Brian Peck is described as doing something similar to what Schneider did, trying to get profane jokes on air at the expense of children.
Watch.
Pickleboy was this, like, character that returned again and again and again throughout the seasons of all that.
This pickle boy appeared in every episode and he's often interacting with a celebrity.
Hello?
Anyone?
I gotta get something to eat!
A pickle!
We just went with it.
Pickles?
Look, this is the mind of Dan Schneider.
You gotta ask him.
There was this referencing to like, oh yeah, Dan just has a weird sense of humor.
That was like, the pickles don't look like penises to you?
No!
This is a children's television show.
Wait, why is this in the show?
What is the joke here exactly?
There's this weird element of, like, they all were able to, like, pull a fast one and get away with it.
So, and that's another one where, you know, of course the kids, these are kids on the show, and they don't know what's going on any more than those of us who were kids watching all that at the time.
I can remember I watched every episode of that show, like any kid in the 90s did.
I didn't pick up on any of that.
And the kids that were on the show also didn't know what was going on.
However, there are a lot of adults running the show, writing the show.
They would have known exactly what that was all about, and apparently none of them spoke up.
So, this is what's required for this sort of thing to go on.
It's not just one or two perverts who make this all happen.
It's the perverts along with, again, the incredible cowardice of all the other adults involved.
Now, the final episodes of the documentary aren't available yet, so we don't have the full details of what Peck did.
Don't have the interview with his alleged victim yet, but it is suggested in the episode that after Peck was arrested, Nickelodeon higher-ups, not including Schneider himself apparently, called a meeting with the child actors.
They didn't let their parents participate in this meeting.
They had the children alone and told them that Peck wasn't going to be around anymore.
They asked if anyone had anything to say, almost as if they wanted to get the jump on any misconduct allegations.
And there was reason for those executives to be worried because Peck wasn't the only sexual abuser at Nickelodeon during this period.
The documentary also goes into some detail about the disturbing case of Jason Handy, who worked as a production assistant on both The Amanda Show and All That.
Handy allegedly sent a picture of himself masturbating to an 11-year-old girl he was working with, who was working on The Amanda Show at the time.
Handy, like Peck, was arrested in 2003.
Watch.
Law enforcement had been tipped off about Jason Handy's inappropriate behavior towards children.
So in 2003, they searched his home.
They find this enormous trove of child pornography.
over 10,000 images of children, including 1,768 images of young girls in erotic poses,
238 images of young girls in sexually explicit poses, and two images of girls engaged in bondage
activity. One of the CDs included seven video files of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
One of the most disturbing things that law enforcement found when they searched Jason Handy's home was Handy's own journals, where he spells out how he feels about these young children.
Quote, I really have been giving in to my desire for little girls these past few weeks.
And I even struggle on a day-to-day basis of how I can find a victim to rape if I have to.
Now these are accusations that are far more serious than what Dan Schneider is even accused of, but they're part of the same general pattern of behavior that involves demeaning and sexualizing and abusing children.
This is what was going on internally at the most popular children's channel on the planet.
And it's still an extremely popular network, although its popularity has declined precipitously in the intervening years.
But that leaves reasonable people to wonder whether sexual perverts are still trying to pollute the minds of children over Nickelodeon.
Previously, I've covered Nickelodeon's Paw Patrol spinoff, which recently hired a radical leftist writer who likes to teach children about abortions, among other things.
And maybe in 20 years, we'll learn the inside story as to why exactly that woman was hired.
But really, we don't need to wait that long.
Simply put, there's no way a man like Dan Schneider could operate so openly for so long if he wasn't part of a much larger systemic problem as we've been discussing.
This is a problem that can't be solved by arresting a couple of production assistants and firing Dan Schneider, although that's a good place to start.
The only way to really solve it is to do what the parents of these child actors should have done a long time ago, which is to keep your children as far away from corporate children's programming as possible.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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Okay, NPR has this.
In a major case testing the role of First Amendment in the internet age, the U.S.
Supreme Court on Monday hears arguments focused on the federal government's ability to combat what it sees as false, misleading, or dangerous information online.
Last September, the U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, the most conservative federal appeals court in the U.S., issued a broad ruling that barred key government officials From contacts with social media companies.
Among the personnel targeted in the order were officials of the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Office of the Surgeon General, the FBI, and an important cybersecurity agency.
The appeals court said that individuals at those agencies likely violated the First Amendment by seeking to coerce social media platforms into moderating or changing their content about COVID-19, foreign interference in elections, and even Hunter Biden's laptop.
The Supreme Court has put that ruling on hold while it examines the tricky issues in the case.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are two states, Missouri and Louisiana, and five individuals, including vaccine opponents who either were banned from some internet platforms at the height of COVID-19, Uh, or whose posts, they say, were not prominently featured on social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and X, formerly known as Twitter, um, not prominently featured, otherwise known as, uh, as, you know, the, uh, they were, the algorithm was suppressing, these content was being suppressed by the algorithms.
The Biden administration notes that under established First Amendment precedent, the government itself is entitled to express its views and to try to persuade others.
As the government says in its brief, Quote, a central dimension of presidential power is the use of the office bully pulpit to seek to persuade Americans and American companies to act in a way that would advance the public interest.
Now, first of all, despite what the Biden administration is claiming, you know, nobody is saying that the government itself can't try to persuade people of its own position.
So if they want to put out a PSA or whatever about the dangers of quote-unquote misinformation, they can do that.
No one is saying they can't.
I haven't heard anyone say that.
But the thing about a PSA or an argument presented in any other form is that we are free to disagree with it or ignore it entirely.
Which is why the Biden administration is not satisfied to express its view and try to persuade others.
That's not what this is about at all.
Again, if that's all they wanted to do, then this would not be an issue and it wouldn't be at the Supreme Court.
Because no one is suggesting that President Biden can't come out and say, you know, here's what I think misinformation is, and I'm opposed to it, and you shouldn't share it.
He can say that if he wants to say it.
And again, we are perfectly free to just ignore what he's saying completely, which is what I would do.
But instead, of course, the Biden administration wants to use social media platforms as censorship proxies to shut down the speech that they don't like, and ban and de-platform the purveyors of what they claim is quote-unquote misinformation.
And that's the problem.
Their way of persuading the public is by ensuring that the public only hears their side of the story.
That's the persuasion technique that they want to use, which is a blatant violation of the First Amendment, and that's the entire issue.
And it all centers around this idea of misinformation, which is just not something that the government should be in the business of combating, at least beyond issuing PSAs if they want to, and trying to persuade people.
If it's simply making arguments, that's one thing.
But beyond that, it has no role.
Because information in this context is simply the substance of what is conveyed through methods of communication.
All of the stuff online is information.
And there's billions of bits of information flying every which way at the speed of light every second.
And some of the information reflects reality.
Some of the information reflects what someone wishes was the reality.
Some of the information is good.
Some of it is bad.
Some of it is useless.
Much of it is useless.
Much of it is distracting.
Much of it is unimportant.
This is the age we live in.
And it's almost certainly a net negative in the grand scheme of things.
All of this information, it's too much.
We're exposed to far too much of it.
We can't process most of it.
And most people lack the discernment to effectively distinguish between what is real and what is fantasy, and what is important and what isn't, and so on and so on.
So, yeah, I think it's a net negative.
It'd be better if we were not all surrounded by all this information all the time, but this is the reality of the world we live in.
And even if it has its pitfalls, Massive, gaping pitfalls.
We cannot fill those holes in or make anything better by giving the government the power to act as a giant filter deciding which pieces of information are good or bad, and which pieces we should see and which we shouldn't see.
And all the rest of it.
That's not how we can solve this problem.
We live in the information age regardless, which means it's an age dominated and driven by information.
To give the government that kind of power to be the filter is then to give them essentially absolute power over our lives and our minds.
And we cannot do that.
And we especially can't do it With an administration like this one, how can we give them the power to determine what counts as misinformation when we already know that they believe, or at least pretend to believe, many things that are wildly untrue and which do not reflect reality and which contradict the facts in an extreme way?
I mean, certainly anyone who believes that men can get pregnant, for example, is unqualified to be the judge and jury ruling over the flow of information.
Um, but really no one is qualified for that position, and that's the point.
Although it's a point that not all of the justices seem to understand.
So, for example, here is Kentonji Brown Jackson revealing some very fundamental confusion about the Constitution and the government and what their exact role is.
She can't define what a woman is, we already know that.
And now she also has revealed that she doesn't know what the Constitution is.
Although she's revealed that many times in the past, but this is a pretty stark example.
Let's watch.
Justice Jackson?
So my biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods.
I mean, what would you have the government do?
I've heard you say a couple times that the government can post its own speech, but in my hypothetical, you know, kids, this is not safe, don't do it, is not going to get it done.
And so I guess some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country.
And you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information.
So, can you help me?
Because I'm really worried about that.
Because you've got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government's perspective, and you're saying that the government can't interact with the source of those problems.
So she's worried that the First Amendment may hamstring the government.
That's what she's worried will happen.
And yes, Contagi, it will.
I mean, it does.
It should.
That's the point.
That is literally, quite literally, the whole point of the First Amendment.
That's the whole point of the Bill of Rights, in fact, is to hamstring the government.
To limit the scope of the government's authority.
To say, these things are off limits, you cannot touch these things.
And to prevent it from infringing on our basic human rights, that's why the First Amendment exists.
And this is a Supreme Court justice who is not clear on that fact.
In fact, is worried.
She's very worried.
She's worried that the First Amendment might do what it's supposed to do.
That's what she's worried about.
And she's a Supreme Court justice.
And, but she's part, you know, she's really part of the whole regime, part of the whole system that only proves why these people, like if anybody was equipped to be the filter of information, to decide what information people should see and shouldn't see, to decide what is misinformation and what isn't, if there's anybody equipped to do that, and I don't think anybody is, but if there was anybody, it's not these people.
They don't know what a woman is.
They've got Supreme Court justices that don't even know what the Constitution is or what it's supposed to do.
Just deeply confused, or at least presenting themselves as deeply confused, which really it's the same thing.
So they're deeply confused about the most basic fundamental facts.
And these are the exact same people who want to decide what counts as misinformation and what doesn't.
And that just cannot be allowed.
I wanted to mention this.
This is an interesting story.
The New York Post has this.
This is the headline.
Woke people are more likely to be unhappy, anxious, and depressed, a new study suggests.
The article says, Psychological researchers in Finland have created an assessment to help measure an individual's commitment to principles of social justice and have made some surprising findings across the Finnish population, including a negative correlation between progressive ideals and levels of happiness.
Their findings published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology suggest other Western nations may see similar
patterns among their socially conscious citizens.
Study author Askari Latinen, a senior researcher at Inves Research Flagship Center at the University of Turku,
remarked that the woke discourse has since worked its way into Finnish discourse, so on and so forth.
We don't really care about that.
However, the most concerning finding was the relationship between mental health and agreement with woke ideals.
Specifically, researchers found a high prevalence of anxiety and depression in people who believe the statement,
"If white people have on average a higher income than black people, it is because of racism."
More broadly, they found that those who identified as less left-wing were most likely to report lower mental well-being.
Now, so this is interesting.
There's sort of an obvious chicken or egg dilemma here, which others have pointed to.
And so you have to ask yourself, is it that people become unhappy because they're woke, or is it that they become woke because they're unhappy?
That's a fascinating question that would impact our analysis of the findings.
But even without having that sorted out, I think we can say a few things here.
Because really, the answer is both.
It's both the chicken and the egg.
Wokeness attracts unhappy people, and it also makes people unhappy.
And then it also makes unhappy people unhappier.
So that's the way the cycle works.
And with that in mind, why does it do this?
And there are myriad reasons.
We're told there's a lot of depression and anxiety in people who agree with the statement that white people have a higher income on average because of racism.
Well, why would that be the case?
Well, because these ideas destroy agency.
They take away your willpower, your free will, your ability to choose your own path in life.
Everything is predetermined by the structures of oppression and racism according to wokeness.
So if you're successful, it's because of racism.
If you're not successful, it's because of racism.
And that means that for the white person, this creates a sense of guilt, a sense of hopelessness, a sense of passiveness, of shame.
And for the black person, it's also passiveness, helplessness, resentment, hatred, scorn.
That's what all of this creates.
Feeling like you aren't in control.
Feeling entirely swept along by the currents.
I mean, that's really the source of all anxiety.
At some level, I would argue.
And wokeness breeds that feeling.
It is that feeling.
The removal of human agency is the whole point.
It's the whole point of it.
There's always this question of, well, how do you define wokeness?
And, I mean, really, wokeness is just a word we're using for leftism.
It's just a new term.
I'd be fine going back to talking about leftism.
But, you know, if you want to come up with a definition of it, you could do worse than this.
It's the effort to remove human agency, to take away human agency from all aspects of life.
And then what do you get in exchange for it?
So you give up your sense of agency, your sense that like you are at least to some significant degree responsible for your own place in life.
You take that away, and then what do you get in exchange?
I mean, you end up depressed, passive, resentful, guilt-ridden, emasculated, all of that.
So that's one thing you get.
But do you get any benefit from it?
Like, why do people fall into this, given that it makes them so unhappy?
Well, I think you do get, and I wouldn't really call this a benefit, but for the people that make this deal, they see it as a benefit, you get an excuse.
That's what you get.
You get an excuse.
You also get an unearned sense of virtue.
You get to have the feeling that you're a good person without doing anything at all to earn that feeling.
And that's it.
That's what you get.
But the main thing is you get an excuse.
That's what people are really after.
That's all the victimology and everything.
That's what it's really about.
On the individual level, the reason why people find it attractive is, yes, it makes them depressed, anxious,
everything else.
Yes, it removes purpose and meaning from life.
It makes life basically pointless, but it also gives you an excuse.
And so wherever you are in life, it's not your fault.
You can just find your victim group that you belong to, because anyone can find one.
If you're white, you don't get to be in the black victim group, but you can find another victim group to fall into.
LGBT is always there, the ever-expanding alphabet.
You can find a place somewhere in there.
And then it gives you an excuse.
Wherever you are in life, whatever your faults are, whatever your shortcomings, whatever aspects of your life, That you're dealing with that you don't like.
It's not your fault.
Nothing is your fault.
Now, the way that I'm wired, and I think any healthy person is wired, is I'd rather go the other way.
I'd rather err on the opposite extreme.
I'd rather take blame for things that aren't even my fault.
I would rather have a... I would rather go the other way In seeing that things are under my control when they really aren't, if I have to err on one side or the other, I'd rather be on that side.
Because the idea of having no agency, of not being in control of my life at all, is deeply unappealing to me.
So, if I'm in a bad spot in life, or I'm dealing with something, and someone comes along and says, well, that's all your fault, I would rather think it's all entirely my fault, even if there are aspects of it that really aren't.
Even if there are aspects of it that are out of my control, I'd rather accept that and realize that I have agency over my life.
I'd rather accept that and retain a sense of agency than take the excuse and say, oh, it's not my fault at all, and lose that sense of agency.
But I think for people who fall into the woke cult, They just, getting that excuse is incredibly appealing to them, and they'll give up everything just to have the excuse.
And there's more to wokeness, of course.
It also destroys family bonds, it breeds resentments, not just between races, but even worse, between families, between generations.
Possibly worst of all, it makes you, you know, sort of unstuck in time, to borrow a phrase from some book, I don't remember which, I think Slaughterhouse-Five, Unstuck in Time.
It unmoors you, it removes all connection to your past, to your family, to your ancestors, to your culture, particularly if you're white.
It takes all that away, and that creates more despair, more depression, more anxiety.
And the ultimate goal is to remove, is to take away meaning.
Take away meaning for your life.
A woke life is a life without meaning.
And it's not even that, I think we get this wrong sometimes because we would say that people who are woke, leftist, they kind of relativist and they believe that you can make your own meaning for your own life.
Meaning is something that you create for yourself.
I don't even think that's the case.
That's kind of an existentialist approach.
Is that meaning is what you make.
You make your own meaning.
But on the left, that's not really what they believe.
The woke religion rejects meaning altogether.
There is no meaning.
There is no purpose.
There's just pure existence for its own sake.
And it's an existence defined by oppression and self-victimization.
And so, does it make people unhappy?
Yes.
And does it attract unhappy people who are looking for excuses?
Unhappy, passive, emasculated people who are looking for excuses?
Yes.
It does both of those things.
Finally, let's go to a situation up in Washington State.
We'll start with this recent report from the Post Millennial.
It says, a landlord in an upscale neighborhood in Washington State is out thousands of dollars as a result of a deadbeat tenant he can't evict because of the county's eviction backlog.
Jaskaran Singh owns a rental property he bought two years ago in Woodridge, one of Bellevue, Washington's most desirable neighborhoods.
He thought that Sang Kim, along with his wife and kids, were going to be ideal tenants.
That is, until the Kims allegedly started skipping out on rent.
He thought Sang Kim, along with his wife and kids... Well, repeating that same sentence.
He added he lied for everything.
He simply exploited the system.
Sang attempted mediation through the city, and when that failed, he began the eviction process, which has now been dragging on for months.
One of the main issues causing the delays is that King County Courts are behind on at least 600 eviction cases.
Singh says there's no law protecting the landlord justice delayed is justice denied so and there are many such cases especially in Washington State and States like Washington where you've got situations like this where somebody you know rents a property Stops paying rent refuse to pay rent then the landlord says okay If you're not gonna pay to be here get the hell out and the tenant says no I don't think I will I think I'll just stay and You would think if you're you know A sane person, you would think, well, okay, well then you're gone.
And if the person won't leave, then you could call the cops.
Like that person is, they're now a trespasser on your property.
The cops just come and drag them out.
End of discussion.
Well, that's not how it works.
In particular in Washington State, that's not how it works.
Now the person who is living there, and we use the term squatting.
I don't even, I think that, I think you need a stronger term.
This is like grand theft, for one thing.
You're stealing this home.
You're stealing an entire home now, is what you're doing.
You're guilty of home invasion, of burglary.
Every second you're in that property, you don't belong in that property, they don't want you there.
That's the way the law should look at it.
But anyway, we, for lack of a better term, call them squatting.
And then, now, if you're in Washington State, the squatter has rights.
And, as we'll see here in a second, actually has more rights than you as the homeowner.
So that's the background of this particular case, and that led to this week when the homeowner, Singh, organized a protest at his own house against the guy who lives there and won't leave.
This is what it's come to now.
If you live in Washington State and you're renting properties, you have to organize a picket line just to protest the fact that somebody is in your house and they don't belong.
That's what you're left with.
You're left with holding signs and marching and chanting.
Because the law is not on your side.
So there's a protest.
The cops show up to throw the homeowner off of his own property in defense of the guy who doesn't live there.
Let's watch.
Open the door now!
I mean, you've got angry neighbors here.
If you do not leave, I will call the police for the trespassing.
Mr. Kim, just want your side of the story.
What are your thoughts on the protesters?
The police are here.
It's not your house.
Stop laughing.
It's not your house either.
Do you want to comment on the protest?
Get out of my- I already paid, wait a second, I'll go back here.
Back up, off the property, man.
No, we're not doing that.
It's on the property.
Off the property, man.
We're not doing it.
It's like the officer... I'm asking you a question.
Fair enough.
This guy brought his... I need you off the property, okay?
All I'm trying to do is keep the peace.
Okay, I'm just trying to keep the peace, man.
Okay?
That's all I'm trying to do.
Messed up system, man.
Yeah, the system is broken.
So the cops kick off the protesters.
The guy, the squatter in the house, tells them they're trespassing.
I mean, he's trespassing, it's not his house, and he's living there illegally, accusing
them of trespassing.
And if that's not bad enough, the squatter, Sang Kim, was, this is the most recent development,
happened in the last couple days.
He was granted a protection order against the guy who owns the house.
He went to a judge and said, the guy who owns this house that I'm living in illegally is
is harassing me.
He gets a protection order, which means that the guy who owns the house has to stay away from his own house so that same Kim, who does not own it, and is not supposed to be there, can stay.
It's just total madness all around, and this is what happens when you live in a morally inverted society.
You end up in a situation where squatters have more rights than the people who own the homes they're squatting in.
When left-wing victimology becomes the defining principle of the justice system, this is what happens.
It turns everything on its head.
And the result...
The result is that life becomes harder for everybody else.
Life becomes harder for normal, hard-working, law-abiding, hard-working people.
For the sake of this scumbag, this Kim guy, for his sake, so that he could be just a degenerate good-for-nothing, for his sake, everyone's life becomes harder.
So you want to complain about, say, the lack of affordable housing?
Well, the more impossible you make it for landlords, the more expensive and onerous and difficult you make it for them, the more expensive it becomes for everybody else.
I don't know how anyone can rent properties in Washington state anymore at all.
I mean, I certainly wouldn't, but if they do, they need to protect themselves.
They need to ensure that they have the financial resources to deal with the court system because you know, if you're, if you're renting, if you're a renter, rather, if you, you know, if you're a landlord, the person who is putting the properties up for rent in Washington state, you know, you're going to end up in the court system.
Perpetually.
And so, the more expensive you make it for the landlords, the more expensive it is for the tenants.
But after a while, there probably won't be any landlords left in Washington State.
Which, of course, is something that, you say that, you know, after a while there won't be landlords left in Washington State.
Well, left-wing morons will hear a statement like that and they'll say, good!
Landlords are bad!
That's good!
Kick them all out!
Okay, well, Then have fun dealing with mortgages and banks and property taxes and utility companies, you idiots.
And look, I'm a proponent of home ownership.
I think you absolutely should buy a home if you can, rather than renting.
But my point is that if you want to get rid of landlords because you think that they're evil or whatever, you know, they're the evil fat cats who have power over you, well then wait till you have to deal with the banks, you dumbasses.
Like, that leaves you with all these other institutions that you have to deal with as a homeowner who have power and control over you.
You're not going to be at the mercy of a landlord, but you will be at the mercy of the banks and realtors and taxes and utility companies and so on and so on and so on.
And if you don't have the money to buy a house, if you aren't in the right situation for home ownership, if you have $1,000 in your bank account and you make $30,000 a year and you probably won't be in your current location for very long because you're still kind of moving around a lot, which makes buying a house, you know, not practical and probably not even possible.
Well, what then?
If you live in Washington State, they chase all the landlords out.
What do you do then?
That's where renting is the most sensible option.
And it's where making it impossible for landlords to exist and to operate will make your life much more difficult.
But you're gonna have plenty of people who see stuff like this, see these kinds of stories, and somehow, in their twisted, perverted heads, find a way to side with the guy who's stealing the house.
And they'll side with him, Not realizing that he is actively making their own lives more difficult.
And they're too stupid to see it.
And then all these people in Washington State, once all the landlords have been chased out because they just simply can't be in that state anymore, it's not possible, how can you?
And they're gonna look around and have nowhere to live!
You know, they were the people who would provide them houses.
They said, well, why is no one providing housing for me?
Because you chased them all out, you idiots.
It's your fault.
They were there and you chased them out of the state.
And now you've got nowhere to live.
And all those people that cheer on the squatters, you know, if they all end up living on the street homeless, they deserve it.
I hope they all do end up homeless.
Anyone who sees a video like that and sides with a squatter, I hope you end up homeless.
I hope that's how you end up.
Because you deserve it.
That's justice.
You don't deserve to live in a home.
You don't.
All right, on that note, let's get to our daily, or let's get to Wes Wallstrom.
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Okay, a few comments here about the issue of reducing standards for policing to get more women involved.
We talked yesterday about, this is an initiative that hundreds of police departments across the country have taken on, in particular here in Nashville, where they are very determined to get a 30% female police force, and they have basically obliterated the physical fitness requirements.
Physical fitness requirements essentially don't, there are no requirements anymore, essentially, effectively.
In order to make that happen And I'm against that I think I think that's a bad thing,
but some people disagreed with me if you can imagine First come and says I won't disagree with you, but I'll
well okay, okay?
He's saying it doesn't disagree with me, but I'll say this Women's sports are not separate from men's only because men are bigger and stronger.
It actually is a different game.
They play differently and approach the sport differently.
Same with policing.
No, reducing standards is a bad idea, but we're doing a disservice to the differences between men and women if we make things all about those differences.
What about physical standards and also creating a place in policing for the feminine qualities, which women seem to have a greater share of, like negotiation?
Well, the thing I'll say about that is First of all, I think the premise here is wrong.
I don't think that negotiation is a feminine, I wouldn't call that a feminine task.
I don't think there is any evidence that women are better at negotiation.
In fact, and you can check me on this, but I'm pretty sure all the evidence is to the contrary, that men tend to be better negotiators.
That's one of the reasons why women can, even though all the stuff we hear about the gender pay gap is all made up, there can be cases where a woman ends up making a little bit less than a man for doing the same job.
But the reason is, And there have been studies that have shown this, that women don't negotiate, or they do it poorly, for their own, they don't negotiate for their own pay.
So I don't think that there's any evidence that women would make better negotiators.
But with all that said, so I'm not sure, I think negotiation is probably a bad example to make your point.
But at the same time, am I saying that there is nothing that a woman can do in the sort of police world?
No.
But the problem is that this is not how it works.
Like they're not increasing the number of women cops and then saying, okay, well, women have particular talents
but not so much on the physical side of things.
So let's find things for them to do that don't involve physically demanding work.
That's not what happens, okay?
Because the whole point here is they're not recognizing the differences between men and women.
So what ends up happening is that they take these women cops
and they put them on the street, on patrol, which is just, it's just ridiculous.
It's like absurd.
It's an absurdity most of the time when you see female cops out on patrol.
It's just like, what happens?
What happens if you're alone and you see a man breaking the law?
What are you going to do about it?
You can't do anything about it!
Like, just me as a random guy walking down the street, I would be better equipped than a highly trained female officer to deal with another man breaking the law.
Or to put it another way, if you are going to deal with it, you almost automatically have to resort to harsher physical means.
Tasers, gun.
Because you're not going to be able to, on your own, take this guy down and restrain him.
You're not going to be able to do it.
Another comment says, Matt, while I was a cop, I never did 1.5 mile runs in pursuit, pull-ups, or stopped to do push-ups.
I did agility movements like they're doing here.
Scaling fences, finding cover, engaging in foot pursuits, etc.
I'm actually for these modifications being done to becoming a more practical testing process of who can do these things.
Some people can run five miles, but they can't drag a body if they need to.
Okay, but obviously that's the reason they have push-ups on a physical fitness test.
It's not because you're going to be doing push-ups out on patrol.
It's not because you're going to find yourself in a push-up contest with the bad guys.
That's not the point.
It's just a way, it's an exercise to show that you have the requisite upper body strength.
So you might not be doing push-ups.
But you are going to be doing things that require upper body strength.
I'm sure you would agree.
You may not be running one and a half miles at a time most of the time when you're a cop.
But you are going to be doing things that require endurance.
And that's what that tests.
That's the whole point of the physical fitness test.
And so if you want to add If they decided that, okay, we're going to add to the physical fitness test because we want to incorporate more things that involve agility and so on, fantastic, then go ahead and do that.
But instead they're getting rid of endurance, upper body strength, all the things that women, all the areas of testing that women will likely fail, they're taking those out.
And what they're doing is they're specifically looking for things that women, that the average... It's not even just like they're looking for things that a very in-shape woman will be able to do.
They're looking for things that the average out-of-shape woman could do.
And that's how you end up with a test that involves hopping over a fence that's three and a half feet high.
It's ridiculous.
And as I said yesterday, I'm not exaggerating when I say, you know, you look at the physical fitness test as it's currently operated here in Nashville for the cops.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that all of my kids Well, maybe with the exception of our one-year-old twins.
They might struggle, but from our four-year-old daughter up until our ten-year-old twins, all of them would kill that course.
I mean, they would annihilate that course, especially my ten-year-old.
My ten-year-old son, he would annihilate it.
And that shouldn't be the case.
You know, I don't think this is a radical suggestion.
If you have a physical fitness test for law enforcement officers who are tasked with going out and physically detaining dangerous people, if you have a physical fitness test that my 10-year-old son could easily pass and would be like near the top of the class probably, then there's a problem with the physical fitness test.
Fair enough, but how many fat male cops can do this?
Why do we accept people for police duty that are obese and out of shape?
Yeah, I mean, I totally agree.
There are plenty of out-of-shape male cops.
And that's why I said we should be raising the standards, not lowering them.
Okay, rather than looking around and saying, well, we've got a lot of out-of-shape male cops, might as well have some, you know, we might as well throw some female cops in too.
Rather than doing that, we should be going the other direction and saying, well, we've got a lot of out-of-shape police officers.
How do we How do we fix that problem?
How do we raise the standards here to make sure that police officers are in better physical shape?
And that is the thing.
If you're worried about stuff like excessive use of force, police brutality, if you're worried especially about the gun or the taser being pulled out in situations where it wasn't necessary, if you're worried about that, The number one thing you could do about it is to make sure that police officers are physically fit, are strong enough that they don't have to resort to those measures in situations where it is not absolutely necessary.
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Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
It's been a big month for cannibalism.
First, there were the reports of cannibal gangs running wild in the failed state of Haiti.
These are reports that Elon Musk, myself, and others have discussed over the past few weeks, which led, of course, to the media scolding us for discussing it.
On Wednesday last week, NBC News published an article with this headline, quote, Elon Musk and right-wing influencers use cannibal claims to smear Haitian migrants amid crisis.
The article begins this way, quote, As Haiti faces an extreme political and societal crisis amid a wave of intense violence, tech billionaire Elon Musk and right-wing pundits online are weaponizing unverified claims of cannibalism coming out of the conflict to advance a political agenda on immigration.
And later it continues, quote, Musk shared a video from far-right commentator Matt Walsh about cannibal hordes of Haitians potentially migrating to the U.S.
And as of late Tuesday, it had received more than 10 million views.
Musk has also boosted some of Ian Miles Chong's posts about alleged Haitian cannibalism with replies and likes.
Representatives for Musk and Walsh did not respond to requests for comment.
Based on the reporting here, it seems like we're just making up the stuff about cannibals in Haiti.
This is all some kind of far-right fever dream by the sound of it.
But then you continue on to paragraph 4 of this article.
And you find this, quote, the accusations of widespread cannibalism are based on what experts said was a likely intimidation tactic from select gang members.
In some videos, the most prominent examples being at least two years old, alleged members of violent gangs in Haiti appear to bite into human flesh.
Experts said these videos are likely part of propaganda campaigns designed to scare rivals and terrorize local Haitians rather than a reflection of common or normalized behavior.
One former armed group went by the name Cannibal Army.
So, in other words, the claims of cannibalism are unverified until NBC News verifies the claims themselves in the very same article where they call the claims unverified.
In fact, according to this article meant to debunk claims of cannibalism Haiti, it turns out that cannibalism in Haiti is even worse than I thought.
Because when I did that monologue, I didn't know that there was an army, there was an armed gang in Haiti literally called the Cannibal Army.
I didn't even know that.
I regret that I didn't know that.
Otherwise, I would have put it in the title of the episode.
Don't worry though, these aren't the bad kinds of cannibals, right?
These cannibals, you know, they're only eating people in order to send a message.
It's just a gag, a big prank.
Maybe even a form of artistic expression, you might say.
They're just trying to make a point.
And the point...
Is that they're cannibals.
But as I mentioned at the top, Haiti's cannibal army and NBC's defense of them isn't the only big cannibal news of the past month.
There's also been a much more explicit and full-throated defense offered by a website called New Scientist.
And the science here that they're talking about, I must say, is very, very new indeed.
A few weeks ago on Valentine's Day of all days, the supposed science news outlet published an article with this darkly hilarious headline, quote, Is it time for a more subtle view on the ultimate taboo, cannibalism?
Yes, because when you think of cannibalism, the first word that comes to mind is subtle.
You don't want to be an obnoxious, over-the-top cannibal, right?
Rather, you should be subtle and refined and nuanced in your cannibalism.
Because cannibalism itself really isn't all that bad, says the new scientist in an article that is, as you can imagine, very tough to swallow.
Pun intended.
Reading on, it is the ultimate taboo.
In most societies, the idea of one human eating another is morally repugnant.
Even in circumstances where it could arguably be justified, such as when a plane crashed in the Andes in 1972 and starving passengers ate the dead to survive, we still have a deep aversion to cannibalism.
One of the survivors, Roberto Canessa, has since described the passengers' actions as a descent towards our ultimate indignity.
Now, this part is the requisite preamble acknowledging that, sure, most people think cannibalism is bad.
But the writer doesn't waste much time on this.
And side note, speaking of the writer, there is no byline on this article.
There is no author named.
Probably because the author, whoever it is, doesn't want to ruin the surprise for his dinner party guests this weekend.
And anyway, as I said, he doesn't waste much time before getting into the meat of the issue, pun intended.
Quote, If a body can be bequeathed with consent to medical science, why can't it be left to feed the hungry?
Our aversion has been explained in various ways.
Perhaps it is down to the fact that, in Western religious traditions, bodies are seen as the seat of the soul and have a whiff of the sacred.
Or maybe it is culturally ingrained, with roots in early modern colonialism, when racist stereotypes of the cannibal were concocted to justify subjugation.
These came to represent the other to Western societies, and revulsion towards cannibalism became a tenet of their moral conscience.
Now I want you to think about that sentence again.
Racist stereotypes of the cannibal were concocted to justify subjugation.
To be clear, the writer, who for no reason will just nickname Jeffrey Dahmer since there is no byline, the writer, Dahmer, isn't claiming that people were called cannibals for racist reasons.
He isn't saying that the label was placed unfairly on people because those doing the label were racist.
That's not what he's saying.
Rather, Dahmer here is arguing that actual cannibals were viewed in a negative light because of racism.
To see cannibalism in a negative light is racist, is what is being argued.
So if early settlers had been more progressive and open-minded, they would have celebrated the cannibalism of primitive tribes.
They would have even offered themselves up as dinner, just to be equitable.
That's how you avoid stereotyping cannibals, I suppose.
Except the problem is that there's really only one stereotype of cannibals that anyone has in their minds, and it's one that is inherently negative.
The stereotype of cannibals is that they engage in cannibalism.
That's really the only stereotype.
It's the only one you need.
It's enough reason to condemn them.
There's really no reason to add to the list from there.
The article wraps up this way with some more food for thought, pun intended, quote, A slew of recent archaeological discoveries is now further complicating how we think about human cannibalism.
Researchers have unearthed evidence suggesting that our hominid ancestors ate each other surprisingly often.
What's more, it seems that they weren't always doing so for the reasons you might expect, for sustenance or to compete against and intimidate rivals, but...
Often as funerary rituals to honor the dead.
Like it or not, then, cannibalism is an important part of our story.
This isn't to say that we should change our attitudes towards it, but understanding its deep roots might shift our perspective on the few cultures that still practice cannibalism today, albeit only occasionally, such as the Aghori, a Hindu ascetic sect in India that does it in pursuit of transcendence.
Above all, these discoveries invite us to reconsider our revulsion to cannibalism in the context of our evolutionary past.
By the way, before we respond to this, I should mention that there is a second article on this website making the same argument for cannibalism.
It was published on the same day and seems to be a version of the same article.
I don't know exactly what's going on there, but it adds this, quote, Today, cannibalism is a taboo subject in many societies.
We see it as aberrant, as it is clear in films such as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
We associate it with zombies, psychopaths, and serial killers like the fictional Hannibal Lecter.
Positive stories of cannibals are few and far between.
But perhaps it's time for a rethink, because despite our preconceptions, evidence is accumulating that cannibalism was a common human behavior.
Our ancestors have been eating each other for a million years or more.
In fact, it seems that down the ages, around a fifth of societies have practiced cannibalism.
While some of this people-eating may have been done simply to survive, in many cases, the reasons look more complex.
In places like Goe's Cave, for example, consuming the bodies of the dead seems to have been a funerary ritual.
Far from a monstrous affront to nature, cannibalism may be a way of showing respect and love for the dead, say some archaeologists.
There's another Hall of Fame sentence for you.
Positive stories of cannibals are few and far between.
I mean, there's no denying the truth in that statement, you must admit.
I mean, think about the film industry and the bias.
Popular depictions of cannibals in movies are almost always negative.
Cannibals only ever show up in horror movies or extremely depressing stories about people in survival situations forced into cannibalism.
When's the last time you saw a cannibalism in a more fun and sort of positive light?
Have you ever seen, say, a romantic comedy about an uptight guy from the corporate world falling in love with a fun, free-spirited cannibal?
The two eventually learn to see past their differences.
The man learns to appreciate the woman's spontaneity.
The woman learns to appreciate the man, especially when he's served with a side of sweet potato fries.
You never see a movie like that.
Probably because it would be completely insane.
Now, I don't think I need to offer a counter-argument to explain why cannibalism is bad, actually.
If we get to the point where a sizable preponderance of people actually need to hear the anti-cannibalism argument, then it's safe to say that society is finished anyway.
All I will say is that This must be okay, because some people did it in the Stone Age, is not a compelling justification for anything, least of all cannibalism.
Primitive societies also practice slavery, they practice torture, they practice rape, as a matter of course.
The only thing this article has achieved, aside from filling us with a deep sense of revulsion, is helping to dispel the myth of the noble savage.
Now, I don't think that cannibalism was quite as common as they're making it seem here, but it is true that primitive cultures were often quite savage and barbaric.
In fact, primitive cultures still exist, and they are still savage and barbaric.
Often these cultures did not recognize the dignity and sanctity of the human person.
I mean, these are cultures that would worship trees and rocks while treating their fellow humans with a level of brutality that shocks the conscience.
Or shocks it anyway, if you have a conscience, to be shocked.
And this is where the de-stigmatizing agenda leads.
You know, some in our culture have become obsessed with rooting out stigma wherever they find it, and attempting to reprogram society to celebrate whatever the stigma abhors.
But in most cases, there is a reason why the stigma was there.
And usually it's there because we are supposed to be civilized people, and the stigmatized behavior makes us uncivilized.
That's the main reason why civilization stigmatized behavior.
And therefore, the de-stigmatizing campaign is almost always a campaign to uncivilize civilization, which is to undo civilization, to destroy it, to drag us back into brutality and moral chaos.
It's an effort that should always be resisted, especially now that it has led to this rather stomach-churning result, pun intended, and that is why New Scientist is today cancelled.
