Ezra Levant and David Menzies expose how media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and CBC fabricated a 2019 incident against Kentucky teen Nick Sandman, ignoring his legal warnings while Alberta’s NDP fined Rebel Media $5,500 for criticizing Keen’s Fire David Egan campaign—a censorship echoing the 1938 Press Act. Martina Markota and Menzies mock Gillette’s "toxic masculinity" ad, predicting backlash as it clashes with women’s appreciation of masculine men like Desmond Das, while questioning feminist support for Gillette’s Venus line. The episode highlights media bias, corporate overreach, and the hypocrisy of progressive outrage when directed at transgender individuals like Tiffany Moore, whose viral outburst critics dismiss as toxic behavior, rejecting "the customer is always right" in cases of aggression. [Automatically generated summary]
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, ladies and gentlemen, and the rest of you, in which we look back at some of the very best commentaries of the week by your favorite rebels.
I'm your host, David Menzies.
Well, the year is young, but did we just collectively witness the worst example of fake news in 2019, namely that story depicting a teenager with a Catholic school in Kentucky being vilified for supposedly disrespecting a native elder?
Ezra Levant is loaded for bear regarding the fakery and the fallout.
Once upon a time, former Edmonton Journal reporter Paula Simmons was a free press champion.
So what happened?
Well, she received a Senate appointment from Justin Trudeau, and now it seems that she's taken a vow of silence when it comes to the provincial government in Alberta declaring war on press freedom.
Sheila Gunreed shall explain all.
And in the department of What Were They Thinking, Martina Markota will join me to discuss Gillette's new and not so improved ad campaign.
You know, the one that suggests that too many men are embracing so-called toxic masculinity and this is supposed to make guys want to buy Gillette Razors and Shaving Cream.
Yeikes.
And finally, we get your letters every minute of every day and I'll share some of the letters we received regarding my commentary about the now infamous Tiffany Moore, that freaky femme who freaked out in a GameStop store for being misgendered.
Those are your rebels.
Now let's round them up.
I believe that by remaining motionless and calm, I was helping to defuse the situation.
I realized everyone had cameras and that perhaps a group of adults was trying to provoke a group of teenagers into a larger conflict.
I said a silent prayer that the situation would not get out of hand.
It goes on and on, so many details, and you saw the corroborating video for all of it, didn't you?
What do you think happened here?
Do you think that silent kid was racist?
Do you think he was smirking racistly?
Do you think he was taunting the man with the drum, threatening him?
Do you think these kids did anything more than be a bit boisterous?
Would you have been so calm in the face of racial slurs being thrown at you by the black extremists?
Even against a fellow African American, would you have been so calm if someone walked up to you within an inch of your face and banged a drum in your face for five minutes?
I would not have been so calm, smiling and praying.
You know, this is a version of what they did to Brett Kavanaugh.
This is what they did to an anonymous kid from Kentucky.
This is what they'll do to you.
And by they, I don't just mean the lying thugs at the Lincoln Memorial.
I mean the lying thugs in the mainstream media, including the lying thugs in our own Canadian media, including and especially at the CBC.
Well, thanks to outrageously disingenuous media coverage, the optics look brutal.
A white teenager sporting a red MAGA cap, staring down a native Vietnam veteran, a man who later claimed he felt frightened for his very life after being swarmed.
Just one hitch.
None of it was true.
For it was the Kentucky Catholic school kids, not Nathan Phillips, who were targeted.
It was the entourage accompanying Mr. Phillips who spewed vile racist slurs, not the teenagers.
And yet, if you had tuned into CNN or MSNBC or even Justin Trudeau's CBC, the story being reported made it seem that the victims were the perpetrators and vice versa.
Just when you thought the mainstream media couldn't go any lower in terms of a biased narrative, we witnessed that.
And joining me now with more on this shocking story of media manipulation is our very own rebel commander, Ezra Levant.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup.
Thanks very much.
Great.
Now, Ezra, here's the deal.
Now that it's been revealed that this so-called hounding of Nathan Phillips is a complete and utter hoax, why isn't every single media outlet that reported this false narrative issuing a retraction and an apology, and I'm no lawyer, but I think what was done to these kids was actually actionable.
Well, I've seen at least two different prominent American lawyers be retained by either Nick Sandman, the kid involved, or other families of kids.
And from what I understand is that they have sent out hundreds of warnings to different people on the internet, even a congresswoman from Minnesota who called them Nazis, who said they were doing things that they clearly weren't, and saying retract or be sued.
And I've seen probably a dozen retractions, either out of fear of litigation or genuinely contrite that they got it wrong.
It is possible to get it wrong.
But it's so powerful, the narrative, white kid a surrogate for Trump because he's wearing a Trump hat, Aboriginal man peacefully banging a drum.
And you're right, it was all fake.
It was like actors.
I mean, the Aboriginal man turns out he was not a Vietnam veteran as he claimed he was.
So that's stolen valor.
He lied about being taunted by the kids.
So he really is an actor.
He's a professional activist.
This is very important.
You mentioned this in your commentary.
He seems, Ezra, to pop up in the most volatile situations and making hay of it.
Yeah, he was up there at the big anti-pipeline protests in North Dakota.
He's done bizarre stunts all around Washington.
So he's a professional protester, a dramatic actor, who, when, you know, in fact, I know a reporter in Washington who says she sees him everywhere, just a perpetual protester.
But when the national media saw him for the first time, they took him in face value.
So he pulled the wool over people's eyes.
In America, their defamation laws are more tilted towards freedom than they are towards protection of reputation.
But there's an important caveat in that.
If you're a public person, a celebrity, someone who lives and chooses to be in the public eye, a politician, obviously, the threshold to win a defamation case is very high.
If you're suing a defamer, you don't just have to prove that they got it wrong.
You have to prove that it was malice, that they actually meant to harm you.
That's an extremely hard thing to prove.
But that standard does not apply to a private person.
So if you're a 16-year-old boy who's just waiting at the Lincoln Center for his bus back from the March for Life to Kentucky, who does not say one word in public and just smiles the whole time and later says, well, I just didn't want to seem aggressive.
I didn't want to seem offensive.
I didn't want to escalate in any way.
So I just thought smiling, I mean, that's what a 16-year-old in an extremely strange, stressful position thought in real time.
That is not a public person.
And for him to be filmed, named, shamed, maliciously defamed is one of those rare cases in U.S. defamation law where a private citizen will have great power in the courts.
I'm not an American lawyer, but I know defamation law as a publisher for many years.
And in America, you can say almost anything about a public person.
I mean, it's wild.
It's the First Amendment for you.
You can say anything about Donald Trump.
Anything about Barack Obama.
But a 16-year-old schoolboy from Tennessee who did not say a word, you can't go after him in the same way, even if it's scratching your anti-Trump itch.
I think there will be, by this time next week, 100 lawsuits filed.
And I say that because I've seen the two lawyers.
I hope so.
And you know, Ezra, let's talk about, you know, Mr. Sandman's sins here.
He was smirking.
Gee, last I checked, I didn't think that was a crime.
And more disturbingly, and I was listening to a lot of Canadian radio roundtables, which are, of course, almost 100% co-opted by lefties.
And the narrative was this.
You know what?
You wear a red MAGA hat into the public square.
You're just asking for trouble.
You're just cruising for a Bruce.
Almost that, like, this is waving a red flag in front of a bull, and whatever happens to you, you get what you deserve.
I'm not making this up, Ezra.
That was the narrative.
I think this is appalling, especially since what a MAGA hat means to me, it's a statement of patriotism.
Make America great again.
And it's Donald Trump's slogan, and there's nothing inherently hostile about the words.
It's like Obama shirts that said hope on them.
You're flying your colors.
And we saw a lot of those during Obama's term.
We see other political icons on shirts.
Shea Guevara shirts are popular on campus.
You even see Mount Satong's shirts, which are, I think, quite offensive, considering he killed more than 50 million of his own countrymen.
Like he's the greatest mass murderer of all history.
And he murdered his own people.
And to put that on a shirt, so we don't believe in attacking, abusing, God forbid, punching, which many celebrities publicly said, punch this kid.
Reza Aslan, a CNN commentator, said he's got a punchable face.
So if you're a celebrity with a half a million followers on Twitter and you say this Nazi's got a punchable face, I don't know exactly, I don't remember exactly what Reece Aslan said.
All it takes is one in a thousand people to say, yeah, this guy really is a Nazi.
Like if you are on Twitter saying punch him in the face, and God forbid someone punches him in the face, I think there is a connection.
If you defamed him, lied about what he did, and granted some sort of law, and one of your followers did it, I mean, you have to be careful about that, but if you're literally exhorting violence against someone and someone who heard your message did what could be reasonable, I mean if you're saying punch him, it's reasonable to think that that could lead to someone punching him.
And I think that what I'm excited about this kid is this.
Let me say two things about the smirk.
I watched the full tape.
That Indian elder, which is just a fancy way of saying he's an old man, walked out.
I mean, he doesn't have any status in this community.
He lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
He's just a faker.
He walked right up to the kid, actually touched him a few times, and was banging a drum this close to his face.
Oh, I know.
And the kid didn't flinch, didn't blink, didn't break.
I wouldn't have had that composure.
So if his smile looked like a smirk, try holding a smile for five solid minutes.
And you know, it's funny because I was looking at the book 1984 by Orwell, and they have a word in there called face crime.
Face crime.
A face crime is related to thought crime.
Thought crime is if you have wrongthink.
Face crime is if you're not looking happy enough when you're supposed to be happy or sad enough when you're supposed to be sad.
If your face betrays an emotion that is deemed incorrect, that is a word in Newspeak, in the book, 1984, called face crime.
So this kid apparently is guilty of a face crime.
You know, it's astonishing because a face crime does exist in places like the People's Democratic Republic of North Korea, where people were ratting out their neighbors for not looking sad enough when Kim Jong-il's father passed away, how sad that it would come to America.
But, you know, Edge, I want to talk about the media in the aftermath.
Media Missteps and Darts00:04:46
Some have dialed it back.
Some have taken down their postings, but others are doubling down.
And I speak of two days ago in The Guardian, which is the best fish wrap money can buy, Jason Willis did a, Jason Wilson rather, did a column and it was entitled, How Conservative Media Transformed the Covington Catholic Students from Pariahs to Heroes.
He's bemoaning that the narrative that was allegedly correct to begin with due to right-wing pressure is being flipped upside down.
Yet we know when you watch those tapes, you make mention of the black Israelites saying the most vile, profane, racist slurs imaginable, and that never got coverage in the mainstream media for some reason.
Well, that's the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Black activists are allowed to be racist because don't pick on them.
I'm not sure if it was the Washington Post.
I think it was that said the real victims here are the media.
But you know what?
I think that this was such an unfair thing, and so many people saw it and watched it, and it reminded people of the unfair slurs about Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's nominee who's now sitting on the Supreme Court.
And it's a reminder of two things.
That the left is absolutely vicious and will personally destroy anyone, from the strongest man, a Supreme Court Justice of the United States, to a weakest man, a 16-year-old boy.
Good point.
And that's their tactic now.
And that the media are not about actual fact-finding, but they are part of this gotcha activist advocacy.
And so much of journalism would be really what's called political opposition research.
So just trying to land a punch on Trump.
The reason that MAGA hat, Make America Great Again, Hack, was what set this off because everyone thought, aha, this is finally my sniper shot that's going to get Donald Trump.
For two years, for three years, the media has not done journalism in the traditional sense of reporting the facts and maybe commenting on the facts.
The media has done, we must find a silver bullet to stop Trump.
It's Russia collusion.
It's the election was hacked.
It's Stormy Daniels.
It's the, I mean, every day it's some new, and they, for three years, it's been fake news.
And all their scoops have turned into nothing.
So many retract.
And the retractions in the eras are only one way.
They got it wrong against Trump's favor.
And it was Buck Sexton, a radio host, who said the other day, in Barack Obama's eight years as president, can anyone name a single time a big media scoop was found to be in error and the scoop was embarrassing to Obama, the media embarrassed Obama with their facts wrong.
They never once did it to Obama in eight years, and they do it to Trump every week.
That can't be an error.
That can't be random.
If you're throwing darts and if you're throwing a thousand darts and every one of your darts is to the right of the bullseye, that's not random.
That means you're tilting right.
If you're a journalist and you're throwing darts at the dartboard and every single time you're off, you're off in one direction.
This is not random.
These aren't random mistakes.
And when you've never been off with Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi or in this country, Justin Trudeau, that is a sign that the media can no longer be trusted.
This boy, Nick Sandman, and his peers, I hope they get a lot of money from these people.
I understand that Trump has invited them to the White House.
That'll hopefully help redeem them.
In some eyes, it'll convict them in other eyes.
Yes.
But I think that it was just more proof that you cannot believe a single word the media says.
Well, you know, Ezra, we have to wrap it here.
Your commentary was great.
What so saddened me about this, you know, Trump's a big boy.
This is a 16-year-old kid that did nothing wrong and was vilified in, let's face it, it was a hoax.
And if there's anyone in the mainstream media watching this, and I know some of you do, if you wonder why you get labeled with the term fake news, well, for 2019, this, my friends, is Exhibit A. Keep it here.
more of Rubble Roundup to come right after this.
Journalists Under Fire00:12:20
Paula Simons posed her article by saying, and I quote, today though we're also faced with community activists and lobby groups who want the government to tell journalists how and what to write to conform to their social values.
whether the issue is how we report on suicide or school test results or domestic homicides.
But any suggestion that a government should encourage or direct reporters to report in a certain way starts us down a perilous path.
Anyone unhappy with our coverage has the right to complain, to lobby us to change, but demanding the government get involved, that summons the ghost of Aberhart's Press Act from the grave.
But since writing that, Simons has taken a partisan appointment with Trudeau's liberals to the Senate, approving liberal laws and endorsing liberal policies.
Now, despite her claims to be independent, she's still an independent liberal partisan appointee.
Despite Simons' past protestations about having the government not become involved in the free press, she now sits as an independent Senate liberal appointed by the same prime minister who is giving $600 million in a media bailout to outlets based on what liberal appointees to a panel decide is quality journalism.
Once upon a time, well, about 10 seconds before her Senate appointment, actually, former Edmonton Journal reporter Paula Simmons was a champion when it came to those stories involving freedom of the press.
But those days are apparently a distant memory because as Notley's NDP government tries to maliciously put the rebel out of business, Ms. Simmons appears to have taken a vow of silence.
Isn't it funny what a cushy appointment, a six-figure salary, and a gold-plated pension will do when it comes to somebody suddenly deciding to park their principles?
And with more on this story is the host of the gun show, Sheila Gunnreid.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, my friend.
Hey, David, thanks for having me on.
Always, always a pleasure, Sheila.
So Sheila, it sure didn't take long for Paula to, what's the saying, go native?
Yeah, she was sure assimilated quickly into the Liberal Party or at least the Liberal Party ethos, despite her claims that she's an independent, nonpartisan member of the Trudeau Senate appointments.
You know, and I mean, what makes this perversely ironic to me, Sheila, as you noted in your superb commentary, is that she used to be with the Edmonton Journal, and the Edmonton Journal dines out on its Pulitzer Prize that it justifiably won way back in 1938, I believe, when it went up against the provincial government of the day in terms of that government curtailing press freedom, demanding that the paper hand over sources,
demanding that it print official government rebuttals of stories and so on.
So the Edmonton Journal, justifiably from that time period, they dine out on this, like I said, but here we are in 2019 as various newspapers are going to go on to the government teat at the tune of $595 million.
Golly, it's amazing what that sum will do to one's media ethics, isn't it, Sheila?
Yeah, and I think there's a real irony here that Paula Simons herself was the author that wrote the article that commemorated the 80th anniversary of the Edmonton Journal winning that battle against the Aberhart government here in Alberta.
Yet she's notably silent, except for saying something like, oh, I find the rebels lawyer very interesting.
Yeah, well, fine.
Fred Kozak is interesting, but what do you think about the censorship from the government that you have so vehemently and passionately written about in the past?
I mean, the things that are happening to us are some of the same penalties that journalists here in Alberta faced 80 years ago under what was colloquially known as the Press Act.
It was escalating fines, court injunctions to stop publications.
I mean, none of us are going to get locked up, but back then they were even locking up journalists using an act of the legislature to do it, which I would draw a similarity to us in the fact that they would do this sort of stuff without a trial, without a participation from the accused, which is exactly what's happening to us.
And the best Paula Simons, the author of that passionate article can muster is, well, Fred Kozak is an interesting guy and let's see what shakes out of the trees.
Like, come on, lady.
And Sheila, what does that mean, calling Mr. Kozak an interesting guy?
I mean, that's about as neutral a statement as you could possibly make.
That's taking neither one side or the other.
No, that's exactly what's happening here.
I mean, it's pretty easy for someone who is truly principled and against censorship.
Some of my friends used to be to say, yeah, that's censorship and that's not cool, especially when it's coming from the government and a newly created bureaucrat whose sole role is to censor political enemies.
You'd think that that would be a pretty safe bet for anybody to say, but more specifically a former journalist, but she's just not willing to say that.
But when you look at her track record with regard to press freedom and government meddling in the press since she's been assimilated by the Borg.
I hope you like that sci-fi reference, David.
But, you know, like she said, oh, I'm against the media bailout because she tweeted about being against it.
But did she really pick up the phone and call the PMO?
Because she could probably do that and say, I'm against the media bailout of $600 million.
She, you know, she hasn't really said anything about that publicly except for the odd tweet here and there.
And that's just a cop-out.
Well, you know, to paraphrase another sci-fi saying, we're going to prove that resistance is not futile, Sheila, when it comes to this.
And by the way, can you very quickly recap the news that broke late last week, Sheila, in terms of the Alberta Notley government essentially declaring war on us in such a way that evokes a combination of 1984 with the Star Chamber?
Yeah, I mean, we've sort of had an inkling that this was in the works since November of 2017.
That's when we first got our, we first got a warning letter from the Alberta government from the elections, I think at that time it was Elections Alberta.
And they sent us a letter saying, we have a complaint against you that you're in contravention of elections law.
Our lawyer, Fred Kozak, apparently an interesting fellow, sent them a letter back.
We never heard from them again.
And then just recently, since Keen's big, beautiful Fire David Egan billboard went up on a very busy highway in Alberta, we received a complaint, or at least we heard that the elections commissioner, this newly created bureaucrat mercenary, had received a complaint.
We never got a chance to respond to the complaint.
We've never even seen the complaint to say what we aren't complying with.
But not only that, we don't need to comply with elections laws because we're journalists, not third-party advertisers.
We're not advertising for any political party.
So these laws don't even apply to us.
They fined us $5,500 basically for illegal criticism of the government as journalists.
And because of that, and because we've never even had a chance to see the complaint, we're challenging it.
We're not paying this.
And we won't comply with elections laws because we are not third-party advertisers.
We don't have to stop our criticism of the government.
And we don't have to report to the government how much we spend on things.
These just aren't things that apply to us.
It is just strong-arming, heavy-handed censorship leveled at us from the government.
And that's how we ran afoul of Notley's government.
And that's something that we're just not going to lay down and die over because the fines can escalate.
They can even get injunctions against us to stop us from publishing.
And two things.
We could put our head down and submit a check for $5,500.
But us fighting it, it's going to add a multiple of at least 20 to that figure, I should think, by using Mr. Kozak.
And secondly, Sheila, this is the parallels are uncanny about what's happening to us and what happened to the Edmonton Journal in the 1930s.
And yet, once again, the one person out there who should be blowing a whistle and calling a foul is, as you say in your commentary, hiding under a blanket somewhere in Ottawa.
Yeah, I mean, but like you pointed out, in the same way that the $600 million media bailout is buying favorable coverage for Justin Trudeau from the mainstream media, a patronage appointment to the Senate is buying a lot of silence from a woman who I used to think was a very principled freedom fighter, although we disagreed on a lot of things.
I always thought that she was a woman of principle.
But now that she's been snatched up and stuffed into the Senate, her principles have gone away.
And you know, Sheila, and one last question because we have to wrap soon.
But here's the deal.
It's not just her, it's that even other media outlets, even media outlets that hate the rebel, should be coming to bat for us based on the principle alone.
You know, I've had this conversation with Ezra before when he was the publisher of the Western Standard and he was the only courageous person in Canada to publish the Muhammad, the Danish Muhammad cartoon.
You had journalists and various media outlets come to bat for his Western standard, even though they appalled it almost as much as they appalled the rebel.
Today, if we were to do that, if there was a Western standard that would do that, I know Ezra feels that there would be zero support.
Isn't it shocking that in the space of less than 15 years, things have gotten so partisan, so personal, that journalistic ethics and principles, they just go out the door now, don't they, Sheila?
I think it happened a lot faster than that.
I think it happened in a lot smaller timeframe.
If you look at how journalists reacted when Rachel Notley both kicked me out of the legislature and banned all of us from being recognized as journalists by the government, the backlash at Rachel Notley was nearly immediate.
It was international and growing.
My haters and enemies were even saying that, you know, like this was a bad thing.
It's bad for press freedom.
It was totalitarian.
It was authoritarian.
That was two years ago.
Yeah.
So two years ago, there were still enough journalists standing on the side of freedom to speak up.
I don't really see anybody coming to our defense.
I see a few op-eds, but those are from other groups that were themselves fined, like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
I don't see any journalists really running to our defense right now.
And I think that might be a harbinger of what we are going to see on their editorial pages as we head into the election.
If we can run afoul for an editorial opinion, I think they're going to tamper their coverage so that they don't.
Couldn't agree more, Sheila.
Attacking Masculinity Classic00:09:44
And you know, folks, if you want to support us, because we are not on any kind of government payroll, please visit standwitherebel.com, make any kind of donation you can.
Fighting for freedom does not come cheap.
Sheila Gunread, thank you so much for weighing in on this and another superb commentary by you.
Thank you, my friend.
Great, David.
Thank you so much and have a really great weekend.
You got it.
And folks, keep it here.
and more of Rebel Roundup to come right after this.
And this is why the Gillette ad is an interesting example.
They act as if there is some wild, wild west of interaction between men and women.
Instead of implying that all men are bad, they could simply encourage respect with others through our already developed system of social cohesion that they are so eager to destroy.
I think etiquette is important for all people.
They are not rules.
They are not forceful.
But when one does know how to treat others around them with respect, it goes a long way.
And it is not forgotten.
It can make someone's day.
The difference is that politeness is merely formal.
Political correctness requires that you internalize the lie.
Politeness is telling an ugly woman that she is attractive.
Political correctness is encouraging her to try for a modeling job and then picketing the modeling agency if they don't hire her.
It is all well and good to be polite in social situations, but when discussing actual policies, politeness must not get in the way of clear thinking.
And this is an important distinction to make.
Etiquette offers the ability to be honest and political correctness forces you to lie.
Well, they say there's no such thing as bad publicity, but is that really the case?
I'll bet you a dollar that Procter ⁇ Gamble is suffering from buyer's remorse right now, thanks to the sort of publicity they're receiving for the new Gillette ad campaign.
Gone and forgotten is the Gillette tagline of olden days.
You know, be the best the man can get.
Because now, whether it was intentional or not, the new Gillette ad campaign seems to imply that too many men inherently embody so-called toxic masculinity.
And wow, what a fantastic way for a company to endear itself to its target market.
And with more on the Gillette marketing misstep, I am joined now by Martina Mercota in London.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, Martina.
Thanks for having me.
Always a pleasure, my friend.
Now, Martina, as you state in your commentary, this Gillette ad campaign is more than merely an attack on men.
It is also an attack on the very concept of etiquette.
What exactly brought you to this conclusion?
Well, I'm a big fan of etiquette, the Emily Post guy to etiquette.
And I've done some videos before on the topic.
And when the Gillette ad thing came out, I was like, yeah, you know, I get everyone's point.
It is the way it was.
It's an attack on men, sure.
And I didn't think I had anything more to add.
But the more I thought about it, I said, wait a minute, you know what?
They're missing something.
And this is what I noticed what they do a lot when they reboot old movies or TV shows and things like that.
They're getting rid of the old to implant a new form of ideology that they want to implant within those shows and things.
You know, with definitions, they remake definitions.
Racism is now a whole new thing involving institutionalism and whatever.
So I was like, this is another thing because when I used to have lefty friends, they really hated etiquette and they thought it was old-fashioned.
I mean, this is something that feminism has been fighting against is etiquette.
They say, we don't need a man to open our doors.
We can open doors ourselves.
You know, they really have been pushing to get rid of etiquette, but now they're having this weird way of trying to implant a new form of social cohesion.
But we already have one that works.
Why are they redoing it?
So that's my kind of concept.
I was like, wait a minute, this makes sense with etiquette.
They're trying to re, what is it called?
Not rebrand, you know, reprogram.
They're trying to reprogram that how men should be acting.
But we already have a system of respect for women.
Well, you know, and I'm with you there, Martina.
I'm old school.
I guess I'm old-fashioned as the case may be.
I'm big on etiquette.
I like to hold the door open for a lady.
And I've never had the lecture.
It's always appreciated.
So I just wonder who this lunatic fringe is of feminists that don't want that courtesy done.
But going back to the ad campaign, I think what ruffles my feathers, especially since I'm a guy who shaves, is, first of all, some corporation with the ostensible policy goal of having an uptick this financial quarter, using the idea of masculinity as being a bad thing.
And I say masculinity because I'm not falling into the trap of toxic masculinity.
I think, Martina, toxic masculinity is a code word to attack masculinity classic, if you will.
And I'm sick and tired of this because the women in my life have always appreciated masculine men.
What's your take on this as a woman?
Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean, what you said was accurate.
Like, who are these people that don't want this?
And it is a very, very few minority.
And that's what we've seen.
We've seen the few loud minority make a big stink about stuff when it doesn't really represent the majority.
And women definitely do appreciate a masculine man.
I mean, who wouldn't?
Who wouldn't want that?
And it should be noted too, Martina, as much as masculinity, it's kind of fashionable to frown upon it when it comes to the heavy lifting.
And I know in the Army and the police force, in the fire service, there are women in those roles.
But for the most part, these are still guy things.
So if we're in a conflict, if there is a police situation, if there is a fire, it is guys putting their lives on the line.
And I don't think the critics on the left at that point have any problem when it comes to being saved by this so-called men embracing toxic masculinity.
Yeah, and I think that that's what the ad did wrong and what they could have approached the ad in that way where, you know, and in my video, I bring up Desmond Das and all sorts of virtuous men that really put their life on the line.
They're virtuous for women and children and society in general.
And I think that would have been really powerful for Gillette to go in that direction to show virtuous men being as manly as possible for women, for children.
And that would have resonated with everyone, I think.
That really would have done better advertising than targeting them as innately bad because I don't think that's true.
I think men innately want to protect.
I agree.
And you know, Martina in the Department of Full Disclosure, I use the Gillette Fusion, or I should say, used past tense because I'm not going to support this company anymore.
But the reason I use it is that despite the cost and they're not cheap, those are, in my estimation, the best razors on the market.
So I'm in this dilemma now of do I avoid the advertising campaign, which I think is appalling, and choose their razors based on merit, or do I now go to, say, shick, and maybe their blades are just as good now.
It's been a long time since I've used that to make a point.
And I guess in the bigger picture is this, Martina, when the financials start to roll in for Gillette, do you think, because that's what it's all about, it's the bottom line, do you think this ad campaign is going to affect sales in a positive or a negative way?
Yeah, I mean, it always is about the money.
And I think that's what the attempt is with trying to pander to stuff.
They think that's what the mainstream wants and they're going to pander to it.
And that's where the money should go.
But once they see, you know what they say, they say, get woke, go broke.
I mean, they've been seeing time and time again that these kinds of things don't work.
So I think it'll work against what they intended.
And they'll probably back off a little bit.
I think that's the general direction with a lot of these advertising.
They think it's a good idea.
They think this is what society wants to see.
But once they go broke, they're just like, oh, shoot.
It's all about the money in the end.
Well, and you know, on that note, maybe the fact is, Martina, I know a huge selling brand for Gillette is the Venus product for ladies, but I'm not sure how many feminists shave their legs.
So maybe that's a knock-starter.
But overall, as an excellent question, Martina, all the feedback I've seen by those I respect in the media that weigh in on such issues, my friends, my colleagues, my family members who are male, it's been absolutely negative.
Do you see Gillette doing some kind of a retreat to save faith somehow?
Or are they just going pedal to the metal that this is what they're all about, preaching to their male customers that you're kind of piggish and we don't like that?
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting question.
I don't know.
Backlash and Boardroom Decisions00:04:55
I think that they might just keep going with it because God knows who they have up in their boards and whoever's pulling these strings.
So they might just go, oh, okay, there was some backlash for that.
Maybe that's good PR.
You know what they say about PR?
I don't know.
But maybe they're just like, oh, okay.
And then they'll just kind of do their normal commercials again.
But if they backtrack even more and then say the other side go, oops, sorry, we were wrong.
You know, that small minority, they're super loud and angry.
So it'll tick them off all over again.
So it'll be this weird back and forth that they really take hard lines.
Hey, and maybe for me and thousands of men like me that are saying goodbye to Gillette, maybe when we go and buy the alternative like shit, maybe Gillette's done us a favor.
Maybe they've so upped their game that even my beloved fusion is now second best.
So I'll have to send a thank you note for Gillette.
In any event, Martina, thank you so much for weighing in on this topic.
Thanks for having me.
You got it.
And that was Martina Mercota in London.
Keep it here, folks.
It's more of Rebel Roundup to come right after this.
Here he is in his own words.
What's really sad is it's bringing so many bigots out of woodwork.
But Moore, a local MC and rapper, isn't letting the memes get to her.
She's using her newfound viral fame to raise awareness about the transgender community and she even wrote a song to get her message out there.
We're humans just like you.
We're people just like you.
We have kids.
We have parents.
We have brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins.
We're just trying to live.
Yeah, my phone.
My phone is myself.
As for how Moore handled the situation inside the store with that expletive-filled outburst.
And yeah, I could have reacted a whole lot better.
But you know what?
I look back at it.
If I could, I wouldn't change a single thing.
I would do it 100,000 times again.
I would kick over that display 100,000 times again because my actions were justified.
I mean, it was blatant and malicious hate.
So what lessons did we learn from the latest transsexual media darling, the oh-so-angelic Tiffany Moore?
Well, for starters, Z-Zay is completely unapologetic when it comes to committing vandalism.
And for someone clamoring for empathy and understanding, he, she shows a complete lack of empathy and understanding for the young employee at the GameStop store who was clearly not looking for a confrontation.
And this guy gal has no regrets about the incident.
Tiffany says he'd still yell profanity and carry out acts of vandalism and try to engage in a physical confrontation with someone about half his size 100,000 times over again.
Because at the end of the day, Herman Munster in a mini skirt isn't the problem.
Rather, society is.
In any event, here's what some of you had to say about this latest episode of Trans Sanity.
Stella Ashe writes, it's a bloke and he's the size of a rugger player.
Unfortunately, he has the mind of an immature idiot.
Well, you're correct, Stella.
Hey, if a man is going to go through life pretending he's a chick, maybe he should, I don't know, consider acting ladylike.
And call me a sexist if you must, but being a lady doesn't mean kicking over display cases and grunting and swearing and asking a clerk if they want to take it outside.
Alexandria Hardy writes, she has such toxic masculinity.
Oh, wow.
You really nailed it, Alexandria.
Funny how the usual suspects on the left are not all over this brute for this particular brand of truly toxic masculinity.
Or is toxic masculinity okay in the eyes of the progressives if a she male is misgendered?
Gee, has anyone written a rule book on all this new age etiquette stuff yet?
I sure need it.
YTS Debunker writes, it's clear in the interview that he is mentally unstable.
He needs a psychiatrist, not a dress.
Yep, that's how we did it in the good old days.
Psychiatric care would benefit the person suffering from mental illness while keeping society at large safe.
But insanity is becoming increasingly normalized now.
I guess it's all part of that diversity is our strength, shtick.
Mr. Adam Bick writes, Was that Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs?
No, Mr. Adam Bick, I don't recall Buffalo Bill being quite that creepy.
CMAWPG writes, somewhere a football team is missing their linebacker.
The Customer Is Never Right00:00:47
Hey, no kidding.
And based on last week's AFC conference final, I think that team might be the Kansas City Chiefs.
And Chibi 1986 writes, speaking as a GameStop employee, I wouldn't have an ounce of sympathy for this lunatic.
If that were my employee he was shouting at, I'd be telling him to get out and never come back or the police would be called.
After calling said police, well, well said, Chibi, and so much for the worst phrase ever coined in the history of retail, namely, the customer is always right.
Well, that wraps up another edition of Rebel Roundup.
Thanks so much for joining us.
See you next week.
And hey, folks, never forget, without risk, there can be no glory.