Ep. 1395 - A Flock Of Drag Queens Descend On Capitol Hill
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, yesterday was "Drag Lobby Day" on Capitol Hill as several drag queens descended on our nation's capital to lobby for a host of awful legislation. The whole event was a flop, though, which may tell us something. Also, the Biden Administration promotes another cross-dressing man. The city of Los Angeles cracks down on people who are committing the crime of trying to make their communities safe and livable. And, the first annual "FatCon," a convention for fat people, just happened. I'll have the highlights, in case you were under the weight limit and couldn't attend.
Ep.1395
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Today on The Matt Walsh Show, yesterday was Drag Lobby Day on Capitol Hill, as several drag queens descended on our nation's Capitol to lobby for a host of awful legislation.
The whole event was a flop, though, which may tell us something.
Also, the Biden administration promotes another cross-dressing man to a high position in the administration.
The city of Los Angeles cracks down on people who are committing the crime of trying to make their communities safe and livable again.
And the first annual FatCon, a convention for fat people, just happened.
I'll have the highlights in case you were under the weight limit and couldn't attend.
All of that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show.
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It's normally not an especially big deal when various groups are invited to Washington to mark some special or ceremonial occasion.
When an NFL team wins the Super Bowl, for instance, they get to go to the White House, shake hands with the president, everyone goes about their day.
The same is true when scientists are invited to celebrate their Nobel Prizes, or soldiers are honored for winning the Medal of Honor, or families are invited to participate in the annual Easter Egg Hunt.
In cases like these, usually, there's no big scandal that erupts after the fact.
People show up, they participate, whatever the event is, they leave.
Everything's fine.
But over the past year, one very notable exception to this rule has emerged, which is this.
It's become increasingly risky to invite LGBT influencers to descend on Washington.
Last summer, for example, a transgender social media personality went topless at a White House Pride Month event with children present.
And then, earlier this year, a drag queen who was invited to the White House by Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, was accused of multiple sexual assaults.
These are the kinds of episodes that, if you're the cynical type, you might suggest that inviting prominent members of the LGBT community, quote-unquote, to Washington could carry some potential pitfalls.
It's the kind of thing that can backfire in a way that other events with other guests are maybe less prone to.
And yet, despite this sordid recent history, Democrats on Capitol Hill don't seem discouraged in any way.
In the spirit of inclusion, they're continuing to encourage members of the quote-unquote LGBT community to come to Washington and make their voices heard.
So just yesterday, in fact, so-called drag stars arrived in the nation's capital to meet with lawmakers in the House of Representatives.
They called it the Drag Lobby Day.
The drag queens were there alongside the group Move On Political Action to lobby on behalf of a couple pieces of legislation.
Move On, you might remember, began as an effort to move on from the George W. Bush administration, but the group never moved on, ironically enough, and now they're just another left-wing organization collecting donations.
In any event, the first bill that Move On and their drag queens want to see passed is called the Equality Act, which would make sexual orientation and gender identity into a protected class.
The second agenda item is a resolution called the Transgender Bill of Rights, which according to The Hill would, quote, strengthen civil rights protections for trans and non-binary Americans.
So apparently this special class of people, which no one can even define really, needs its own Bill of Rights.
The one we have already just isn't enough for them.
Like, they want that one, the actual Bill of Rights, but then they want another one on top of it.
The rest of us plebes only get one Bill of Rights, they get to have two.
Now, I'll get into the specifics of these proposals in a second.
Nothing they're requesting makes any sense, as you'll see shortly, and as you can already predict.
But first, even before we look at what these people are asking for, this whole drag lobby day turned into a complete farce before it even began.
No one could possibly have predicted that sending men in dresses to Capitol Hill to lobby for legislation would turn into a farce, but that's what happened.
Somehow, for the third time in a row, LGBT activists have managed to arrive in Washington and completely beclown themselves.
Behold this early morning interview yesterday on CNN with one of the drag stars turned lobbyists who uses the name Bridget Bandits.
Keep in mind as you watch this that CNN will cut off interviews with representatives of the Trump campaign.
They'll cut away from speeches from Donald Trump, but they'll allow interviews like this on the air.
Before 9am, no less, when some people are still eating their breakfast.
Because they're far more important than anything the leading presidential candidate could possibly say.
Watch.
I'm curious for you, first of all, what this day means to you, and second of all, have both Democrats and Republicans agreed to meet with you?
Yes, we will be meeting with both Democrats and Republicans, and I'm really excited to go speak with all of our lawmakers about the attacks that we're seeing on our LGBTQ community.
It's so important to talk about and to discuss protections for our queer community.
Can I let you listen to the current sentiment that's being shared by former President Donald Trump, who, of course, is running for re-election?
Here it is.
We're going to take care of our capital.
On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding of any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto the lives of our children.
In those three things, he mentions what he calls transgender insanity.
If he's voted in as the next president, what will that mean to you?
We already see so many attacks on our queer community.
I already don't feel safe in my own hometown just dressed in drag like this, and it's very scary for queer people.
Not exactly sure what's up with the costume there, as always.
looks a bit like, I don't know, maybe what like a flight attendant would look like if
you were on a plane in 1965 and you were tripping on acid.
Anyway, it's very scary to dress like that, we're told, he tells us.
To which a normal person responds, okay, so then just don't dress like that?
If you're saying, oh, I'm afraid to go out in public dressed like this, so then don't?
You could just not do, like, it takes a lot of effort to look like that.
You could just not look like that.
That's an option.
But Bridget Bandit just can't resist, and that's real bravery.
This is Bridget Bandit's sacrifice.
It's why we need a trans Bill of Rights, supposedly.
Now, in any other decade, we'd be asking why somebody like Bridget Bandit would even think of dressing like this for a national television news interview.
But it's 2024, and we all know that dressing like this is how we get jobs in the White House Communications Department.
Maybe that's the play here.
This was a job interview.
Now, as for the substance of what Bridget Bandit said, a few points need to be made.
First of all, feeling safe.
Is a luxury at this point in cities all over the country.
For just normal people going about their days, they don't get to feel safe.
And the thing is that no one has a constitutional right to feel safe, regardless of where they go or how they dress.
And if you're gonna walk around like that, trying to attract as much attention as possible, that's not something we need a new Bill of Rights to solve.
You can solve it yourself by Just wearing normal clothes.
That's an option.
Additionally, it's actually not clear which specific lawmakers were involved
in this lobbying effort.
There's the claim from Bridget Bandit that both Republicans and Democrats
gave an audience to these drag queen lobbyists, but it's hard to find the names of these politicians,
at least for now.
There haven't been a lot of videos coming out of this event, probably by design.
That's too bad, because any lawmaker who had any part in inviting Bridget Bandit to the nation's capital should be immediately impeached and removed from office.
That's especially true if any Republicans were involved.
But it doesn't appear that very many people were involved at all, which may tell you something.
As of now, one of the only members of Congress that was apparently in some way involved in this insanity was Jasmine Crockett of Texas.
Now MoveOn claimed on their website that Crockett would meet with these drag queens or at least participate in some kind of rally they were organizing after the fact.
All we know is that on Twitter, Crockett responded to this picture of the three drag queens outside her office.
Crockett added this caption to the photo, quote, You're always welcome, queens.
In a separate post praising the outfit of Bridget Bandit, Crockett added, Thank you for bringing some big Texas glamour to the hill, sis.
Now, if you've been following Jasmine Crockett's contributions in Congress over the past few months, you might actually be impressed by those tweets.
They're easily the most coherent, grammatically correct sentences that she's ever managed to produce.
Yet, despite MoveOn's claims, it doesn't appear that Crockett did meet with them at all.
In fact, she tweeted later in the day, So even Crockett didn't want to be seen with these people.
Instead, she let them take a picture in front of her door, and that was it.
Later that day, the drag queens held a rally on the lawn of the Capitol building.
I can't find a single video of this event.
I mean, they were rallying in the Capitol.
They had media promoting it.
Can't find a single video.
I'm not saying the videos don't exist, but I couldn't find a single one.
But the Spectator was on the ground and they report that around 30 people showed up for the rally.
So it seems pretty clear that even the Democrats are starting to feel embarrassed by all of this.
They recognize that the American people do not want drag queens setting the agenda in Washington.
The American people want normalcy.
And drag queens quite explicitly and deliberately stand for the opposite of that.
But not everyone in the party has gotten the memo.
In fact, this Bridget Bandit character recently spoke at the Texas Democratic Convention.
And as part of that whole process, some of Bridget Bandit's social media posts attracted a lot of attention, particularly this one.
As you can see, it reads, I hate America, but I love this bikini.
Now, a lot of people saw this post and had some questions for the Texas Democratic Convention.
Why would we want this person to deliver any kind of lecture about American policy at a political convention?
This is somebody who admits to hating America, and that's not even the most troubling thing about him.
But they went ahead and invited Bridget Bandit to speak at this convention in Texas.
Anyway, here's part of the speech that resulted.
And my heart especially aches for our trans children.
While the drag ban bill may have been blocked, the trans youth health care ban has gone into effect here in Texas, preventing access to hormone blockers that are medically necessary for more than just trans youth.
Gender-affirming care is life-saving.
Access to health care is a basic human right.
These policies disproportionately affect LGBTQIA plus youth and people of color.
We have a duty to protect our most marginalized communities.
Trans kids deserve to grow into healthy adults.
So there we have another interesting outfit.
It's like This is like if a lounge singer in the 1970s went to a caricature artist and then the caricature came to life.
And this would be the result of that.
The speech goes on, but you get the idea.
It's the same stock speech you hear all the time from trans activists.
It's inaccurate, nonsensical, dishonest, not remotely original.
It boils down to inject children with sterilizing hormones to affirm them or you're killing them.
This is the kind of insight that the Texas Democratic Convention apparently desperately wanted to hear.
This is the caliber of lobbyists that now walks the halls of the Capitol building.
Now, it only gets worse when you look closely at the proposals that these drag performers, quote-unquote, want to pass.
So let's take the Transgender Bill of Rights first.
Apparently this resolution would, quote, ensure that transgender and non-binary people have access to services and public accommodations by amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include gender identity.
So, supposedly there's a lot of trans-identifying individuals who are being refused public accommodations in this country?
You may have never heard of that happening.
Because it has literally never happened.
It's just not a thing that's happening.
But that's the claim the drag queen lobbyists are making.
That's not the only reason to pass this new Bill of Rights, according to these lobbyists.
It's also important, they say, because too few men are competing in women's sports.
And therefore, the new Bill of Rights will, quote, amend Title IX to clarify that it protects students from discrimination based on gender identity and sex characteristics.
In other words, women's sports would be, you know, effectively completely abolished.
Now for good measure, the new Bill of Rights would also, quote, codify the right to abortion and contraception as well as invest in mental health services designed for transgender and non-binary people.
It would also require the Attorney General to designate a liaison within the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice dedicated to advising and overseeing enforcement of the civil rights of transgender people.
So we get more bureaucracy and more abortion, which are the two things that Democrats think we can never have enough of.
The other piece of legislation these activists want, the Equality Act, would rewrite even more of our existing laws.
According to the activist group HRC, quote, the Equality Act would amend existing civil rights laws, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Fair Housing Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Jury Selection and Services Act, and several laws regarding employment with the federal government to explicitly include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected characteristics.
Legislation also amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination in public spaces and services and federally funded programs on the basis of sex.
Additionally, the Equality Act would update the public spaces and services covered in current law to include retail stores, services such as banks and legal services, and transportation services.
So again, we're meant to conclude that Citibank and Walmart are turning away customers who claim to be transgender.
Which again, has never happened.
The point of legislation like this, in case it's not obvious, is not to prevent these things that never happen from happening.
It's to create a wave of new lawsuits that badger people into giving special treatment to quote-unquote LGBTQ customers and employees.
So if you have an LGBTQ employee who starts, you know, acting out of line, someone that you would want to fire in other circumstances, you would have every reason to fire, laws like this would make it virtually impossible to fire them.
That's the point.
The goal is to empower activists.
It's to allow some of the least productive members of society, these activists, to go after people who are actually contributing.
In every way, this is contrary to the stated goal of the so-called LGBTQ movement from 20 years ago, which back then was supposedly to ensure that everyone had equal rights.
And as any sane person could have predicted, and as many of us did say at the time, that was never what it was about.
It was never about equality.
If you want equality, all you would say is, we want to be covered under the same Bill of Rights that everybody else, under THE Bill of Rights, we want to have the same legal protections.
And if that's what you want, then good news!
You already have that.
So, you've already got that, you're good to go on that one.
But that's not good enough, they want their own Bill of Rights, they want their own laws, they want something more than equality.
Everyone is equal.
Some people are more equal than others.
It's animal farm, and this is what we're seeing play out again and again.
For what it's worth, none of this makes any sense under the law either.
As I discussed yesterday in the context of the Supreme Court case involving Tennessee's ban on child castration, the idea that gender identity is a protected characteristic doesn't work.
Protected characteristics under civil rights law are things that are obvious, immutable, or distinguishing, and there is nothing about transgender identity that is immutable.
And even by the activist's own testimony, by what they say, there's also nothing about it that's distinguishing, because they'll be the first ones to say that just because you identify as a certain gender doesn't mean you have to present yourself any particular way.
And these are also people who claim that gender can change overnight, that it's fluid, so it's not immutable by definition.
All of that's especially true for the identities of drag queens.
Maybe they just put on a new costume and changed their identity.
That's why it's actually kind of incredible that drag queens, of all people, are the ones lobbying for this legislation.
Drag queens don't even claim to actually identify as the female characters they play, which means that, in this case, they're effectively calling for special legal protections for fictional characters.
You know, it's no different than the furry community lobbying Congress for legal recognition, which I'm sure is where we're headed.
This is what happens when you start haphazardly amending laws that were already imperfect to begin with.
At the very least, the words immutable used to mean something.
It theoretically created some kind of limit on the number of special protected categories the government could create.
But now Bridget Bandit and some other drag queens want to get rid of that.
They want the government to continue creating preferred groups and showering them with benefits that other people don't get.
People who admit that they hate America are showing up in costumes to make this argument, and elected members of Congress and the media are supposedly listening to them and taking them seriously.
That's the Drag Lobby Day summarized.
No one exposed himself to children or got accused of sexual assault.
So in that sense, it was an improvement from previous excursions to Washington.
But if this lobbying effort was remotely successful, even if the Democrats were clearly embarrassed by it, there's a very good chance we'll all have to deal with the consequences of this insanity very soon.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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You may have heard by now about the new communications director just promoted by the White House.
His name is Tyler Cherry.
So, we can see him in one picture wearing some kind of see-through halter top thing, and then another one he's wearing, of course, a dress.
We know that this administration from the very beginning has had one top priority, one thing on its mind, and that is its mission to hire and promote as many cross-dressers as possible.
You know, Biden may be senile, he may have the mental capacity of an asparagus, he may be totally incompetent, and he may have failed to achieve anything of note.
But even I have to admit that he did succeed in hiring a lot of crossdressers.
I think that this White House has hired more than any other White House has.
This appears to be the main qualification that the Biden White House looks for in a job applicant.
The first question they ask is, does this person cross-dress?
Second question, if not, are they willing to start?
And Tyler Cherry passed the test.
He answered that first.
He passed it.
He didn't even ask him the second question.
He passed that one with flying colors.
The problem is that, wouldn't you know it, this guy has a history of saying crazy left-wing things on social media.
The New York Post reports, quote, a newly promoted Biden administration official has come under fire over old social media posts that compare police to slave patrols and celebrated the anti-Israel movement.
Department of Interior worker Tyler Cherry's incendiary tweets began to reemerge shortly after he was promoted last week to join the White House communications team.
And then he said a bunch of left-wing stuff.
I don't even know why.
Like, of course he said this kind of thing.
The White House defended hiring Cherry in a statement to Fox News with White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates telling them, we're very proud to have Tyler on the team.
Of course they're proud.
He's highly qualified.
He's a gay man who wears a dress sometimes.
What more could you ask for?
Now, it's also worth noting, as The Daily Wire has in a report this morning, that Tyler Cherry was promoted from his post in the Department of the Interior.
And that department happens to be the wokest in the whole federal government.
This is the same department, you may remember, that had an Ally Awards recently, where they had a diversity poem reading.
As part of the awards ceremony.
We played that on the show at the time.
I'm sure you're hoping that I won't play it again because there's no reason to.
But you also know that it's going to happen.
You can't stop it.
So here's that diversity poem again.
Listen.
I am diversity.
Please include me.
I'm present in every place you go.
Depending on your lens, I'm friend or foe.
I'm forced to be a cogwheel.
Like the winds of change, I move.
I'm swift.
I'm present when two or more are together.
If embraced, I can make the good even better.
I'm not limited to age, gender, or race.
I'm invisible at times, and yet, all over the place.
Don't exclude me due to a lack of knowledge.
Welcome me, like the recruit fresh out of college.
Let me take my saints advocacy.
So, that was the Department of Interior, and they're the ones who gave us Tyler Cherry.
The Daily Wire has more about this department.
The Department of Interior published a guide to inclusive language exclusively obtained by The Daily Wire that tells bureaucrats to avoid gendered terms like husband, son, and daughter.
It even instructs them to use they-them pronouns for individuals rather than assume someone's gender.
The guide includes a list of 104 different terms that the Interior recommends bureaucrats replace with alternate approved words.
Husband and wife, for example, should be replaced with spouse, partner, significant other, the federal agency says.
Daughter and son should also be replaced with child or kid, according to the guide, which even asks bureaucrats to replace cockpit with flight deck.
And by the way, this is not the worst example of PC language here, but I will say that anyone who uses the word partner to refer to their spouse should be deported.
Like, I don't believe in divorce, but if I did, I would say that you could make an argument that your spouse has every right to divorce you if you refer to them as a partner, even once.
That's how egregious it is.
If you're a woman married to a man, that's your husband.
Not your partner.
If you're a man married to a woman, that woman is your wife, not your partner.
She's not a business partner.
You might as well call her, like, your associate, your colleague, co-worker.
No, that's your wife.
Now, if you want to mix it up on occasion, you could say, you know, you could call her your old lady, the old ball and chain.
Women love that.
Keep in mind that this inclusive language guide, they're not just saying that you shouldn't refer to other people, like if you're talking to someone who's married, a man who's married, you shouldn't say, oh, your wife.
You should say your partner.
They're saying you shouldn't say that, but they're also trying to tell you that you can't even identify your own wife as your wife.
They're trying to control how you refer to your own family members.
Here's a little more from the Daily Wire.
Another section of the guide asks bureaucrats to use identity-first language, substituting blind person and amputee with a person who is blind and a child with an amputation.
The interior guide even tells bureaucrats to refrain from assuming anyone's gender and to instead refer to everyone with pronouns they-them to avoid making assumptions.
So that's how they justify many of these arbitrary PC rules for language.
They say that language should be person first, which means that if you're referring to some other trait, you need to say person before the trait.
Person of color, person of blindness, whatever.
But there's no reason given as to why this is the better way of speaking.
And the rule also is not applied consistently.
Like, the most ridiculous example is that they say, well, you can't say colored person Right, because that's incredibly racist because it's not person first, so instead just say person of color.
Well, but then you can say black person, and if you said person of black, everybody would look at you like you're crazy.
So you can't say colored person, but if you identify the color, which isn't even really the color, like most people we call black are not actually black, they're brown, it's like we call people white and they're not, it's like not literally white.
So you can use, so you can't say color, but you can use a, say an actual color that isn't even quite accurate.
But then you can refer to them as being colored as long as the color comes after person.
It's just, there's no reason for any of it.
It's completely arbitrary and the whole point of it is to be arbitrary.
That is the entire point.
All right, let's check in for a moment on Los Angeles.
Highland Boulevard in Hollywood, like so many other places in the city, has been taken over by, or I should say, had been taken over by homeless encampments.
The sidewalk had become unusable.
Like so many other sidewalks in the city, it was not safe for people to walk by.
There were homeless drug addicts all over the place, setting up their tents and their camps and everything else.
Human waste all over the place, very disgusting.
As you can imagine, businesses were suffering, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy because the businesses around this block, people didn't want to go there because of all the homeless people.
So, residents and business owners got together, And they said, this is a problem.
This is making our lives hell.
What are we going to do about it?
And they came up with a plan.
And the plan, they didn't do anything aggressive.
They didn't show up to the homeless encampment with paintball guns or a fire hose.
No, all they did was they set up planters on the sidewalk.
So just big pots with plants.
They put those on the sidewalk.
And the effect is that it took up enough space that the homeless druggies couldn't pitch their tents.
And at the same time, it also made the place look nice.
And so it was a win-win.
You've made the sidewalk look nicer.
You've also made it so that, practically speaking, the homeless can't set up their encampments anymore.
And it worked.
The homeless encampment was dispersed.
The sidewalk was walkable again.
Businesses started getting business again.
The community had been improved.
It was safer.
It was cleaner.
Everything was great.
A community came together, solved the problem, solved it efficiently, cheaply, and nobody got hurt.
Fantastic.
So what do you think the City of Los Angeles did in response to this?
Well, let's find out.
And just like that, the planters are gone.
The city's siding businesses need permits and these planters are an obstruction.
But business owners say no more than the tents that used to line Sunset Boulevard for years.
Encampments encroaching over the entire sidewalk.
This is like Bare minimum of where we should be right now.
We should never have a thoroughfare blocked with bodies and waste because the city neglects the area and this is not a war on homelessness.
Andrew Monheim owns Monheim Microphones nearby and says it's unbelievable.
It's totally disrespectful to small businesses and the people that have been the lifeblood around here and I'm not just talking about myself but like businesses that thrive around here and they keep the pulse.
There's no reason that they should have to stand around and watch like this go to the worst possible scenario.
And it's not just the business owners.
This is the first time I've been able to walk down the street in years because it's been filled with drug dealers, homeless people.
It's been unsafe.
I almost got ambushed once just trying to walk home.
I live right around the corner.
Back in April, 35 people were living in front of the legendary Sunset Sound that nearly had to shut its doors because of the growing encampment.
The city says it's worked to get those people housed, And says it was a success, but many fear the shady block will once again be overrun with the same issue.
What do you do?
Like, you can't walk through here at night with people and not be concerned about the people you're with, your own safety, not to mention how just disgusting it is.
Yep, can't have that.
You can't have people going out and solving their own problems, all willy-nilly-like.
You just can't allow it.
No way.
No, sir.
That's not going to work.
Oh, you guys, you had an issue and you solved it?
And everything worked out fine?
Nope.
Not happening.
Not on our watch.
Problems are not getting solved on our watch.
Sorry.
No solutions while we're in charge.
That's basically the Democrat mantra.
That's what Democrats running every major city say to their residents.
And what makes this just so incredibly infuriating is that The city took down the planters because you need to get a permit to put an obstruction on the sidewalk.
But the homeless encampment was also an obstruction, a much, much larger, more invasive obstruction, and the city never made them file for permits.
So just to review, if you want to put a potted plant on the sidewalk, you got to get a permit.
But if you want to pitch a tent, and shoot heroin, and defecate on the sidewalk, all at the same time if you want, you don't need any kind of approval at all.
Why would the city respond this way?
Like, why would you do that?
I mean, why would you just take the win?
I mean, if you're a politician running Los Angeles, and there's a portion of your city that has actually become livable, Why not just, if anything, take credit for it?
Like, wouldn't that be the political strategy?
Show up and, you know, do a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new homeless-free sidewalk.
Why not do that?
Well, it's because they don't want communities solving their own problems.
The more that you solve your own problems, the less dependent you are on them.
The less helpless you are, the less you can be controlled and manipulated.
This is the hallmark of bad leadership.
Bad leaders actually don't want the people under them to exhibit competence or effectiveness.
They see that as a threat to their power.
And you find this everywhere.
You find this attitude in poorly run businesses.
You find it all over the place in government.
You find it everywhere, and that's part of it.
The other part is that Democrat political leaders value homeless drug addicts over business owners and law-abiding productive members of the community.
Their priorities are exactly backwards, completely flipped upside down.
It just can't be overstated the extent to which these people's minds have been warped and twisted by their ideology.
They're totally beholden to the victim hierarchy.
Homeless drug addicts are victims, in their way of thinking.
Normal functioning people are not, which means that normal functioning contributing members of society will always be last on their priority list, when they should be first.
Also, I just want to say this.
I think that part of what we're seeing in our country, clearly, is that compassion for the homeless has gone way overboard.
We are so compassionate towards them that it's turned into a kind of psychosis at this point, which is how you end up with stories like this.
For years, we've been told, oh, don't judge the homeless, don't assume that they're bad people, don't dehumanize them.
And it's true that we should have compassion for all people.
We shouldn't dehumanize anyone, that's true.
But we should also recognize that these are, for the most part, okay, for the most part, not in every case, but in most cases, these are mostly people who have given their whole lives to drugs.
Their only priority in life, the only thing they care about, the only thing they want to do is drugs.
And that's why they're homeless, because they would rather just do drugs than have a home.
And now they are inflicting that lifestyle on everyone else.
They are actively making everyone else's life worse.
A lot worse.
They are destroying other people's lives for the sake of destroying their own.
And it's like we have this idea that you can't be angry about that.
Right, even the guy in that video is a business owner.
He's obviously mad about the way this has all worked out.
But he made sure to... This is not a war on homeless people.
Nothing against the homeless.
Because he thinks he can't be mad at them.
But no, you can be mad at them.
You're allowed to be angry.
These are people who are actively... They are destroying your community.
They are ruining it.
They are making it dirty, disgusting.
They are making you less safe.
They're making your family less safe.
They are robbing you.
Sometimes literally, and sometimes by setting up their freaking tents outside of your business, they are taking from you.
They are destroying your life.
You're allowed to be angry about that.
Angry at the political leaders who have allowed this to happen, but also angry at those people for doing that to you.
They are doing that to you.
And I would argue that Assigning no agency to these people whatsoever.
Now, I'll be the first to say, homeless people, again, most of them are drug addicts.
Many of them are also mentally ill.
But assigning no agency to these people whatsoever?
Like, we can't blame them for anything at all?
That's dehumanizing.
Because now you're treating them like animals.
You're treating them like, what are they, rabid dogs?
That's how you're treating them.
So to treat somebody like a person is to recognize that they have some element of agency and are responsible to some extent for their own behavior.
That is what it means to humanize someone, to treat them like a human being.
If you want to argue that back in the bad old days, you know, back in the old days people went too far on the other end of the spectrum.
When when dealing with people with you know homeless people and you just called them bums and that was it If you want to argue there was not enough compassion, okay, maybe But at this point and I'm not even sure that I would agree with that but What is undeniable is that we have gone?
Way too far in the other direction at this point and and we see this now with the way these cities are run and Where the homeless are like the, they are, they're perfect angels.
They can't be held responsible for anything.
They are like superhuman now, actually.
They can do whatever they want.
The basic rules of conduct and laws that apply to everyone else do not apply to them.
Like, if you, if any person who is not homeless just tried to go set up a tent, like if I just tried to set up a campsite anywhere I felt like, I wouldn't be allowed to do it.
You can't do that.
You cannot do that here.
It's not allowed.
You cannot turn a piece of a sidewalk.
You can't just take ownership of it like that.
But if you have decided to give your entire life over to drugs, then that's a law that just doesn't apply to you.
Do whatever you want.
Laws against public indecency don't apply to you.
Laws against public intoxication don't apply to you.
All right.
Check out one more thing here.
Apparently they have FAT conventions now.
FATcon, they call it, and this is a new innovation.
So just recently, sorry to tell you, you already missed it, but just recently somewhere they had the first annual FATcon.
Let's see what that was like.
Come with me to the first ever Fat Con.
Yes, that's right, haters.
There is a convention just for us fats now.
There was so much fat entertainment to be had.
Look at this.
Crafts, cute little wall we put together.
We got a few grief cat performances that were very funny.
Here's a little fit check.
I brought a look every day to the con.
New friend.
We had fat pool parties.
Here's a little look I will be releasing for Valentine's Day.
We did get up to shenanigans.
I cannot wait for next year's Fat Con.
Okay.
Yeah, I didn't watch that video ahead of time at all, and so I was not prepared.
I wasn't prepared.
I wasn't prepared for the end of that video.
It took a turn.
I think it was pretty bad the whole time, but then it took a turn at the end, that I just wasn't, it wasn't that side, that, you know.
Yeah.
Anyway, so many jokes that I could make.
About this.
But I can't make, at least not if I want to keep the show on YouTube.
So I'm not going to make any of those jokes that I could make about the Fat Con.
I'm sure it was a fine conference, you know, even if the topics were a little heavy.
Some very weighty, very weighty themes.
Very meaty, weighty themes, I think.
You know, it wasn't all serious.
They obviously had a chance to get together, make small talk.
Or large talk in their case.
Really chew the fat, you might say.
But that's why I'm not going to make jokes about it.
I will say that instead that here we see the problem that we find on the left all the time in so many iterations of it.
But so many words and ideas that they have taken and Destroyed or Expanded in into nothingness And there's a lot of things expanding, you know in that we just saw in that video there And I don't mean that as a joke I just mean, you know, so just a comment But one of the words that they one of the many terms that they have destroyed is the is community.
Okay the idea of community That used to have some meaning to it Not only did community have meaning, but it was an important concept.
You need community.
In the previous video, we saw a positive example of community, even if it was then sabotaged by the government.
But there you saw an actual community coming together to do something positive.
And what do we mean community in that case?
Well, we mean that these are people who live together in the same place and work together and try to support each other.
Right?
That's what a community is supposed to be.
And it's important for us to have community and to find community.
You cannot be a person living, you know, no man has an island.
You can't live entirely on your own without any sense of community.
At least most people can't.
It's very difficult to live that way.
But now we just, you take any aspect of a person, you know, any Proclivity, any habit, any desire, even any character flaw, any sin.
And now we say, well, that is a community.
We build a community around it.
So, this is how you end up with things like FatCon, where it's a place for the fat community to come together.
But that's not a community.
Okay, the fact that you also eat too much and don't exercise enough, which is how you end up being obese.
I know every time I point this out, it's treated as... I said this a month ago, that if you want to lose weight, exercise more and eat less.
A month later, I still have people on Twitter complaining about it.
There are people Especially, and make it even worse, these are people that pretend to be fitness influencers or whatever, that have been crying for a month that I said that.
That's how upsetting it is to them.
But it is true.
Which means that, the reverse of that, the way you lose weight is by exercising more, eating less.
The way you gain weight is by not exercising enough, or not at all, and eating too much.
Right?
And so, if you are a fat person, if you're an obese person, The thing you have in common with other obese people is that you don't exercise enough and you eat too much.
That's not community.
There's no community there.
That's not a commonality that you can take and form a community around.
It's a flaw.
It is a character flaw.
We all have character flaws, okay?
But those of us who have character flaws that aren't trendy, you know, it's like we don't pretend to find community in it.
What's one of my character flaws?
I'll admit, I can sometimes have a bit of a temper.
Maybe you've noticed.
I can be a little bit impatient sometimes.
A little bit.
But I don't get together with the impatient, hot-tempered community.
I don't have a conference, okay, where we all come together and scream at each other.
I mean, if that conference existed, I'd probably go to it.
It'd be kind of fun.
But I don't pretend to find community there, because that's not a trendy, you know, that's not an acceptable sort of character flaw to have.
But sloth, gluttony, I mean, these are trendy.
These are acceptable now.
And so we build communities around it.
But it's just not.
That's not how community works.
That's not what a community is.
Tomorrow night we're doing something that might actually make a presidential debate watchable.
Delaware Plus is single casting the presidential debate, but we're adding something crucial, sanity.
Watch a special live Delaware Backstage for commentary from people who haven't lost their minds in the cesspool of modern politics.
Join me, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boring as we dissect this spectacle in real time.
We're starting at 8.30 p.m.
Eastern with our live pre-show.
Consider it your inoculation against the nonsense you're about to witness during the debate.
It will translate the political doublespeak into actual English, and because we're gluttons for punishment, we're doing a post-show recap.
We'll break down what this all means for America's future.
This is going to be a long show, I'm realizing.
I'm really excited.
I'm excited.
I can't wait to do it.
Look, if you're going to subject yourself to a presidential debate, at least do it right.
See you tomorrow for Daily Wire Backstage at 8.30pm Eastern.
What time does the debate actually start?
We're doing a pre-show that starts at 7.30.
Anyway, DailyWire.com.
See you there.
Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
[MUSIC]
Well, I'm not completely out of the loop on the slang used by our youth today,
but I am usually about five or six years behind, which I guess means I'm completely out of the loop.
Anyway, the point is that I had something else in mind entirely when I heard about the new viral TikTok trend that involves people, quote, raw-dogging on airplanes.
GQ had this headline yesterday, Why Men Are Raw-Dogging Flights.
The New York Post reported on the same day, men are raw-dogging it on flights.
Here's what the weird travel trend means.
Now, like you, I assume that this meant some major FAA violations were happening on board.
I thought that the friendly skies were getting way, way too friendly, but that's not what this trend refers to.
Here's the Post article, quote, "Rawdogging has become the buzziest travel trend of the summer,
seeing stealth plane passengers forego the modern comforts of flying to stare at either
the in-flight map or nothing at all during lengthy trips.
No music, no streaming, no snacking, no sleep."
Quote, I have never seen so many people raw-dogging a flight in my life, wrote Michelle, a stunned New York-based beauty influencer, in the closed caption of a TikTok clip.
Literally just staring straight ahead the entire time?
She added in the video, featuring an aircraft full of jet-setters enjoying a journey sans distractions.
This was a five-hour flight from New York City to San Francisco.
So that is raw-dogging a flight.
That is the trend that's sweeping the nation.
A trend that has attracted multiple headlines in major media publications, not to mention hundreds of TikTok videos with millions of views between them.
And the videos all consist of people filming themselves not doing anything on a flight.
Usually the video is set to music that is way too fast-paced and intense given the theme of the video.
Like this, watch.
[MUSIC]
So that's the trend.
Sitting in a place and not doing anything.
Sitting and simply existing.
Being a person.
Being present in the space you're physically occupying.
Even that we now call a trend.
And worse, the trend has given an unnecessarily sexual name, so now anyone who sits on a plane and waits for it to land is, whether they like it or not, participating in something that sounds like a sex act.
Now, if you're sitting on a plane, minding your own business, literally doing nothing, you might have somebody come up to you and ask if you enjoy raw dogging.
Like, that's a thing that might happen.
And then you might say yes, because you thought they were referring to this, when really they might have meant the other thing, and now you're accidentally in the middle of an inappropriate conversation you didn't mean to have.
This is why I have complained so many times about the modern habit of taking normal human activities and trendifying them.
We've made it so that there are no more normal human activities.
Everything is a trend.
Everything is a TikTok craze.
Everything you do has some QC label attached to it.
Every activity, every habit, every tendency, every personality trait, they all have labels.
We have carved ourselves up, carved our lives up, and put each piece into a little box in a little drawer with its own little label.
It's the hyper-classification of human existence.
And this is a problem that started with the medical field and the psychologists, but has bled its way down into social media.
I hate it.
Everybody needs to stop it.
Now, as for this trend, it will not surprise you to learn that this is often what I do on flights.
Unless I have work to do, I will just sit on the plane.
I don't call it raw-dogging, okay?
I don't use that term.
I've already used that term in this monologue like five times more than I ever thought I'd use it in my life, especially in a monologue.
But whatever you want to call it, I am an avid proponent of finding opportunities to do nothing.
And I mean really nothing.
Real nothing, okay?
Not something that amounts to nothing, like mindlessly scrolling your phone.
We all do that kind of nothing all the time.
That's worse than nothing, okay?
It's nothing with none of the benefits of nothing.
But actually doing nothing means sitting in one place and not actively looking for distraction or stimulation.
In modern society, we spend pretty much every waking second of our days actively seeking distraction and stimulation.
We desperately try to distract ourselves all the time, and then we wonder why we're distracted.
It must be a disease!
We must have ADHD!
Quick, take a pill!
That'll solve it.
And we take this for granted because You know, it's the way that everybody operates.
Like, when's the last time you were sitting in a waiting room or standing in a line at the grocery store and everybody else in the line was just waiting there without staring at their phones?
When's the last time you yourself waited anywhere without staring at your phone?
Most of us are so desperate to be distracted that we even look for other things to distract us while we're piloting a 3,000-pound hunk of metal down the road at 70 miles an hour.
It's how we're wired.
Or rather, I should say, it's how we have been rewired.
Because it may come as a shock, but prior to the advent of cell phones and computers, people would spend significant portions of their day With nothing in particular to distract them.
They would wait in lines and just wait.
They would sit in waiting rooms and just sit there.
Here's the thing that will really blow you away.
Especially if you're a younger person who's only ever known the cell phone age.
You're not going to believe this, but this is real.
Sometimes, back in the old days, a person would even sit on the couch In their living room.
And just sit there.
They would partake merely in the activity of existence.
Here's another mind-bending fact.
Back in the old days, when a person woke up in the morning, they would not immediately reach for something to distract them.
They would just wake up.
They just wake up.
Now you're awake now.
They would situate themselves into the waking world again.
They would be where they are.
They would not try to dive headfirst immediately into a million places where they aren't.
This is how it used to be.
And sure, back in those days, you know, you might read a book, you might look at a newspaper.
You might watch TV or something.
You might, God forbid, actually engage with another human being who's physically in the room with you, but nobody was carrying a book or a newspaper or a TV around with them everywhere they went, 24-7, and filling every single available second by looking at it.
This is the kind of thing people only do with smartphones.
So before smartphones, nobody did anything like that.
And there's really a lot to recommend that way of life.
There are so many benefits of doing nothing.
And the greatest benefit of all is that nothing isn't nothing.
You know, you can do so much while you do nothing.
A moment of nothing can be filled with countless somethings.
Because these moments are an opportunity to use your brain, to let your mind wander, to daydream, to think, to reflect.
Not to have your thoughts guided and steered and pointed this direction and that by algorithms, No, when you do nothing, your mind directs itself.
And, you know, thinking is, it turns out, a lot of fun.
You should try it every once in a while, and you should be able to entertain yourself with your own thoughts.
In fact, that's why I relish being on a plane when I have nothing to do, because it gives me that chance to do so much while I'm doing nothing.
There's so much thinking I get to do, and hopefully nobody there to interrupt it.
Now, if you look at somebody sitting in a chair, thinking, not doing anything, and you're shocked and confused, right?
If you can't even believe that a person could possibly sit in one place for more than 30 seconds and not do anything, then that says something about you.
If you cannot even conceive of entertaining yourself with your own thoughts, If you do not find the act of thinking, of reflection, to be absorbing, even exhilarating, then you are deficient as a human being.
You have lost one of the essential traits that makes you human.
You have allowed this digital age of distraction to eat that part of you, consume it, so that there's nothing left.
You know, the internet has made it so that people are incapable of doing things.
But even worse, it's made it so that people are incapable of not doing things.
They can't even do nothing successfully.
And those people are really missing out, I have to say.
And that is why those who never raw dog in life, and also those who use the phrase raw dog, except for me, just now, are all today cancelled.
