Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - 2911 P!nk Would "Rather Go Naked"
Aired: 2015-02-13
Duration: 04:48


=== Brutal Parenting, Great Love (02:52) ===

[00:00:00]  Hi everybody, so occasionally you come across an artist full of some significant contradictions.
[00:00:07]  Now, artists aren't always the best at processing their own emotional trauma.
[00:00:10]  They tend to channel it through their art rather than deal with it themselves.
[00:00:14]  They no more process your emotional trauma than your plumbing takes a shower.
[00:00:20]  It's just a conduit for the water.
[00:00:23]  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.
[00:00:32]  But not too long ago, she came out with a few unusual statements, I guess at least from my perspective, about parenting.
[00:00:45]  And she declared that parents should be able to, and I quote,"...beat the crap." Political correctness has gone too far.
[00:00:55]  She says her own father's beatings saved her life.
[00:00:57]  She said, I think parents need to beat the crap out of their kids.
[00:01:00]  Not should have the right to, need to.
[00:01:04]  She said, I think the whole spanking thing and how it's all gotten PC is just for the birds.
[00:01:09]  When asked whether her father, a Vietnam veteran, spanked her, Pink replied, Oh, he put me through a wall.
[00:01:15]  It's the only reason I'm still here.
[00:01:18]  It's the only reason I'm still alive.
[00:01:21]  The singer's parents divorced when she was seven years old.
[00:01:25]  By nine, she says she was smoking, and in her early teens, she was regularly taking LSD and ecstasy.
[00:01:32]  She was thrown out of home at 15.
[00:01:34]  She said, I deserved it.
[00:01:35]  I would have kicked me out when I was eight.
[00:01:37]  I was not comfortable with authority or rules.
[00:01:40]  I was bad.
[00:01:45]  And for those who don't know, it's a great song, Family Portrait.
[00:01:50]  She sings that it ain't easy growing up in World War III never knowing what love could be.
[00:01:56]  I don't want love to destroy me like it has done my family.
[00:02:00]  And it's brutal, brutal stuff.
[00:02:04]  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.
[00:02:27]  She's a big fan of breastfeeding, and she just recently We're good to go.

=== Treat Animals, Beat Kids (01:55) ===

[00:02:52]  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.
[00:03:02]  People need to be able to beat their kittens and their baby bunnies and so on.
[00:03:05]  People would be like, ah!
[00:03:09]  They'd be shocked.
[00:03:12]  They'd hit higher notes than Celine Dion squatting on a half-frozen bidet.
[00:03:16]  It's astonishing what would happen if she put that argument out.
[00:03:20]  But with children, you see, be kind to animals.
[00:03:23]  Treat animals well.
[00:03:24]  I won't even wear leather.
[00:03:25]  Bam!
[00:03:26]  Got to be able to hit your kids, though.
[00:03:27]  Need to hit your kids.
[00:03:28]  Should beat the crap out of your kids and put them through walls so that they turn out right.
[00:03:34]  It's just astonishing the degree to which we still...
[00:03:39]  We cannot view children as moral agencies, moral agents deserving of protection and respect, at least at the level of your average pet bunny.
[00:03:51]  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.
[00:04:05]  It's hard to say.
[00:04:07]  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.
[00:04:18]  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?
[00:04:28]  We're kind of there when it comes to kids, to children.
[00:04:32]  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,