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Feb. 13, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
04:48
2911 P!nk Would "Rather Go Naked"
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Hi everybody, so occasionally you come across an artist full of some significant contradictions.
Now, artists aren't always the best at processing their own emotional trauma.
They tend to channel it through their art rather than deal with it themselves.
They no more process your emotional trauma than your plumbing takes a shower.
It's just a conduit for the water.
But there is something that is kind of confusing about the singer Pink, who I think is a great singer, a great songwriter, a great performer.
But not too long ago, she came out with a few unusual statements, I guess at least from my perspective, about parenting.
And she declared that parents should be able to, and I quote,"...beat the crap." Political correctness has gone too far.
She says her own father's beatings saved her life.
She said, I think parents need to beat the crap out of their kids.
Not should have the right to, need to.
She said, I think the whole spanking thing and how it's all gotten PC is just for the birds.
When asked whether her father, a Vietnam veteran, spanked her, Pink replied, Oh, he put me through a wall.
It's the only reason I'm still here.
It's the only reason I'm still alive.
The singer's parents divorced when she was seven years old.
By nine, she says she was smoking, and in her early teens, she was regularly taking LSD and ecstasy.
She was thrown out of home at 15.
She said, I deserved it.
I would have kicked me out when I was eight.
I was not comfortable with authority or rules.
I was bad.
And for those who don't know, it's a great song, Family Portrait.
She sings that it ain't easy growing up in World War III never knowing what love could be.
I don't want love to destroy me like it has done my family.
And it's brutal, brutal stuff.
And there's sort of Early pain, which results in bad behavior, which has her father, and I don't think she's being allegorical here, putting her through a wall, is combined with this oddly contrasted nurturing side in the performer, which is that she's apparently very into attachment parenting.
She's a big fan of breastfeeding, and she just recently We're good to go.
If Pink were to say something like, I think that people need to be able to beat their puppies, put them through the wall, just so they learn right from wrong.
People need to be able to beat their kittens and their baby bunnies and so on.
People would be like, ah!
They'd be shocked.
They'd hit higher notes than Celine Dion squatting on a half-frozen bidet.
It's astonishing what would happen if she put that argument out.
But with children, you see, be kind to animals.
Treat animals well.
I won't even wear leather.
Bam!
Got to be able to hit your kids, though.
Need to hit your kids.
Should beat the crap out of your kids and put them through walls so that they turn out right.
It's just astonishing the degree to which we still...
We cannot view children as moral agencies, moral agents deserving of protection and respect, at least at the level of your average pet bunny.
And now, I don't know what Pink's current views are on child raising or child rearing, whether she intends to put her daughter, I think it's a daughter, through walls and beat the crap out of her and so on.
It's hard to say.
But if you're for the ethical treatment of animals, which I think is a fine goal and a fine idea, I would say perhaps we could go just that little bit further.
And do you remember how way back in the day you couldn't categorize slaves as human beings and therefore you could treat them worse than you would treat animals?
We're kind of there when it comes to kids, to children.
These days, we don't seem to have the ability to say, well, if I'm for the ethical treatment of animals, and children are animals, maybe I should do less nude posing to save baby seals, and possibly,
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