WTW15: A Scandalous Chapter of Kilborn's Past Uncovered
Jason Kilborn Part 6: The Grand Finale Folks. You must listen. Seriously. This is too good. It's too good. I can't believe I found this. Kilborn has an incredibly weird, salacious, shocking, but also eerily similar event from his past. In this episode, I take you through the story as told by court documents. Then, get ready for some major context debunking and soap boxing as we bring this thing to a close. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
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Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke, Tea in the Tea edition.
How's it going, Lydia Smith?
This is my favorite kind of episode, I think, because I live for the tea.
Please spill it.
Yeah, and that's not the kind of thing you get to hear me do much because I'm not a tea person.
I know.
By the way, I'm Thomas Smith.
How are you doing?
This is the final installment, I think, in the Professor Kilbourn law exam question controversy.
Saga.
Yeah.
Which didn't have all that much to do with the law exam question.
Spoilers, as you already know by now.
No, not spoilers.
But I'm not going to beat around the bush.
I have teased not only you, but our poor listeners for like 18 hours worth of this stuff.
This is so good.
When Santiago sent this over, there was every chance that this was going to be like, ah, it's a dud or whatever.
He sent it over and I was like, this is everything I would have wanted and better.
So I mentioned that I saw this one random ass comment.
I actually can't even remember where.
I don't think I kept it open.
And maybe it was an angel sent from on high.
To come down and say, one time this guy was a piece of shit in this case, and then I, you know, and here, okay, actually, I did want to say this.
What was funny is, when I searched it, I actually found a lot of cases citing it, which is like, that's, you know, that's kind of rare.
Again, not the law, but like, there's a shitload of cases in life, you know, like legal cases.
The percentage that end up getting cited Regularly, as in like more than, I don't know, like 10 times.
That's an elite percentage of cases.
Yeah.
And this guy does not need anything else feeding his ego.
It won't be doing that because I'm sure he would like no one to be able to find this.
Yeah, I'll tell you what it's cited for later, but that was very interesting.
It titillated me even more because that was all I could find.
I would Google it and I would just find case after case that just cited it by name, and I'd be like, fuck, that's not... But that is very interesting.
And then I mentioned before, or might have mentioned, I wanted to make sure it was him.
Who knows?
Jason Kilbourne is like, you know, it's pretty uncommon, but not super.
I double-checked.
I checked the places that he worked.
It matches the places they... So, like, this is him.
You ready for this?
I'm gonna get right... I'm finally getting to it.
I am ready.
Here is the case of Kilborn et al.
v. Bakir from 2004.
Well, essentially, the final kind of resolution of it, January 9th, 2004.
Okay.
So, in the last bit of fairness to our poor Jason Kilborn, I will note he was a younger man.
Did you find out how old he actually is?
I think he's 51 now.
Like now?
So that, oh, I'm way too tired to do math.
2023 minus 51 is 19... Jesus Christ.
He was born in 1972 and so he was 32.
So he's 32 years old.
He's not a spring chicken.
That's true.
- He was 1972. - '70, yeah. - 1972, and so he was 32.
So he's 32 years old. - He's not a spring chicken. - That's true, that's actually not as young as I was thinking.
I didn't know how old he was for sure.
So, this is a 32-year-old grown-ass man, actually.
Now that I think about it, here we go.
I'm going to probably read like all of this.
It's not that long, but there's no part of it that I would skip.
Like, it's that good.
I, Defendant Igor Buckier, referred to from here on out as Buckier, brought a motion for sanctions against Plaintiff Jason Kilbourn Pursuant to the court's inherent power, by order dated March 7th, 2003, the court awarded sanctions in the amount of $18,641 following a report and a recommendation of the magistrate judge.
This is kind of some procedural crap that's, it is kind of interesting, but it doesn't really matter because the sanctions were awarded and then they were actually vacated and remanded.
Oh, that was another twist to the story.
I did find part of it myself, but it was that order that was remanded and vacated.
So I was like, oh, he never, oh, maybe it was not a real thing.
No, it was remanded.
And then the court, it was like kind of a technicality thing.
And then the court was like, no, yeah, sanctions.
They just redid it.
And it was because, you know, they just kind of left something out.
The parties have now made post-hearing submissions and the following are the court's findings of fact and conclusions of law.
I just wanted to read mainly that, like, this is the fucking court.
This is not me.
This is not a...
It's not like a like a magazine, like a gossip magazine.
Right.
Here we go.
For the purposes of this decision, the record can be summarized as followed.
Bakir and plaintiff Olga Lukashevsky were a married couple and recent immigrants from Russia in late March 2000, when Lukashevsky accepted a position at the law firm of Wilmer Cutler and Pickering.
By the way, that's where Kilburn worked, and I verified that.
As a systems analyst while working at the firm, Lukashevsky met Kilbourn, an attorney licensed to practice in New York and the District of Columbia.
Kilbourn speaks fluent Russian.
Side note, that was an interesting component of it.
He claims, and I might believe him, that he speaks French as well.
Yeah.
I was just going to say that was a comment he made.
Yeah.
That's like kind of impressive.
I speak their language.
Yeah.
He's a multilingual or he's a Russian spy.
I don't know.
Where do you think this is going?
I'm just curious.
Any predictions?
Any thoughts?
Sexy time.
- That's always a good prediction.
At Lukaszewski's request, WCP, which is the law firm, configured the couple's home computer.
Oh, we get some year 2000 technology talk.
You ready?
Configured the couple's home computer so that it would automatically dial up the law firm's server. - Amazing.
It actually says that in the thing.
It sounded like this.
For posterity.
Part of the official record.
I had to read it.
So that she could access work from the home computer.
Pretty fancy in 2000, but we were a big law firm, you know.
Love a work from home situation.
According to Bakir, because Lukashevsky's English was very weak, she agreed that he could access her law firm email inbox to help her with her work.
Wait, her husband's going to help her with her work?
Uh, yeah.
So apparently, and again, this is the court's fucking finding.
In fact, he spoke English better and read English.
So she was like, yeah, hey, can you, you know, maybe you can read stuff to me when I can't understand it.
Who knows?
Gotcha.
Okay.
All right.
Continue.
So she agreed that he could access her law firm email inbox to help her with her work.
Therefore, the home computer was configured so that when the computer was turned on, the email inbox popped up on the screen showing the header and first three lines of a message.
Oh no.
Bakir claims that one evening, he discovered an email on the home computer from Kilbourn to Lukashevsky thanking her for quote, good sex.
Oh my God!
Why?
Bakir claims, I love the email too, to the work email.
Yes.
Thank you for the good sex.
Thank you for the... Possibly, this is according to Lukashevsky, or sorry, this is according to Bakir.
Thank you for the good sex.
But think of the intrigue, the Russian couple, and he speaks fluent Russian, and he's having a dalliance with the wife, but this is not the end by any means.
Bakir claims that he confronted Lukashevsky, who confessed to him her affection for Kilborn.
According to Killborn, he sent an email to Lukaszewski counseling her about divorcing Bakir after she sought his advice, but he denied that it made any reference to sex.
So his version of the story for that is like, oh, yeah, I didn't say thanks for the good sex.
It said, yeah, you should divorce him.
I don't know.
Seems fucking weak to me.
Thanks for the good conversation.
Yeah.
In July 2000, Lukaszewski left WCP, the law firm.
Okay.
Thereafter, she left Bakir and their child.
What?
Holy shit, and their child, and moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Whoa!
With Kilborn, where they lived in Kilborn's house for the next two and a half years.
Wow.
Bakir then brought an action for divorce against Lukashevsky in Fairfax County Circuit Court, alleging adultery, the divorce action.
Bakir's lawyer, who cares?
He's the husband.
I mean, by the way, he's the sympathetic party, so far as I'm concerned, but he hired a lawyer.
And then it says Lukashevsky, that's the woman, hired attorney Richard Gray to defend her, but she fired him early in the divorce action and purported to proceed without counsel, which Seems interesting.
You might doubt it.
Maybe she's being helped by the lawyer she's fucking.
Yeah.
On July 17th, 2001, more than a year after Bakir allegedly read the email between Kilbourn and Lukashevsky, the two filed this action against Bakir, alleging that Bakir unlawfully intercepted email communications from Lukashevsky's law firm email account.
Okay.
In violation of 18 U.S.C.
blah, blah, blah.
Oh, wow.
And Virginia law.
Section 270 provides for liability when a defendant intentionally accesses without authorization a facility through which an electronic communication blah, blah, blah.
So it's like a hacking kind of law.
Uh-huh.
In the divorce action.
Yeah.
Where do you think this is going?
Do you have any predictions from here on out?
I'm just curious.
I don't know.
It's a wild ride.
Yeah, you're right.
That's smart.
Smart move.
Don't bother.
In the divorce action, Bakir claimed that Lukashevsky took marital funds before she moved to Louisiana with Kilborn and laundered those funds through the accounts of family members.
Oh my God.
Although Kilborn, this is Bakir's claim, so we don't know for sure, but this is just the record of what Bakir claimed.
Although Kilbourn claimed that $25,000 he used for a down payment on his house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was borrowed from Lukashevsky's grandmother and that he paid it back in three months, Bakir's lawyer for Curie testified that the judge in the divorce action ordered that $12,000 be returned to Bakir, finding that the down payment was money from the marital estate.
Well, there you go.
So he actually, it's more than just him alleging that he won on that case.
Wow.
That had been laundered through Lukashevsky's grandmother to Kilbourn.
Fakhoury, again, the lawyer, also testified.
It's interesting that the lawyer is testifying.
So that shows you where we've gotten.
This is not the divorce action.
This is like downstream of that.
Yeah.
Because the lawyer is testifying to what happened.
Fakhoury also testified that during the divorce action, Kilbourn sent various correspondence to Fakhoury.
Any guesses?
Anything?
Was it forward, letter of recommendation?
I'm disappointed.
How dare you?
Yeah, and you for signing this divorce action or whatever.
Kilbourne sent various correspondence to Fikouri and witnesses in that action containing threats of criminal prosecution or deportation.
Wow.
Threats to contact a party or witnesses employer and threats to escalate the litigation to make the divorce action cost prohibitive.
This guy is nuts.
Yeah.
He's nuts.
He's been accused of intimidating fucking witnesses and threatening deportation to this poor husband.
You know, I mean, I guess I, again, I should, I don't know the details of this interpersonal thing, but.
For all we know, it's the husband who he seems to have been having an affair with the wife, and then, oh, wouldn't you know it, they moved to Baton Rouge to live together, and he's trying to sue over money she took.
I take it back.
There is a decent amount, we can pretty plausibly say.
Who knows if Bakir sucked?
I don't fucking know.
You never know.
Sure.
But he won on the idea that she took $25,000 and gave it to Kilborn.
To buy a house.
Yeah, he won that.
And now he's like, in order to get out of this, like, lawsuit, he's threatening to deport him and threatening other witnesses.
I mean, this seems like... Like pretty big?
Pretty big and incredibly unethical.
And I'm surprised he's still allowed to practice law.
Yeah, yeah.
It does seem surprising, doesn't it?
Yeah.
And by the way, threatening to make the divorce action cost prohibitive.
I mean, think about that.
He's saying he's a lawyer.
Remember, he's an expert lawyer.
Yeah.
He is threatening this poor guy saying, hey, if you don't drop this, I'm going to make it so expensive you can't continue it.
And let me tell you, that gets really expensive.
Yeah.
And that seems like a really shitty thing for a lawyer to do, wouldn't you think?
While he is sleeping with the wife in his New Orleans home.
Or even if he's not.
Yeah.
Bakir initially hired Roger Edelman to defend him in the federal action.
So this is a different action.
This is a federal action.
And then Edelman withdrew.
And then he hired a new, new lawyer, David Schur and Mark Cummings later on.
I only mention that, normally I would leave it out, hun, but I mention it because during the federal action, Kilbourn made threats to Bakir, Edelman, and potential witnesses in this action, including threats of deportation and criminal prosecution for inter alia perjury or suborning perjury.
Other threats were more obtuse.
For example, on January 23, 2002, Killborn sent a threatening email directly to Bakir, warning Bakir that, quote, a fool and his money are soon parted, and told Bakir to, quote, fuck off.
Oh my God.
The combination of those two things is really funny, where he's like, he's like this poetry.
Pouring Shakespeare!
Also, fuck you.
I know that's not from Shakespeare.
I was just joking.
Although Kilbourn acknowledged at the hearing that he sent this email to Buck here, he claimed that he was simply attempting to learn the identity of Buck here's new council.
No.
Doesn't this sound familiar?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, sure.
I sent that email, but it was, you know, it was a friendly way that I was totally fucking guilt tripping my fucking student into not, you know, signing a letter against me.
Does UIC know that this exists?
I don't know.
Can we send it to them?
It's 20 years ago.
Part of me is like, that's a long time.
But it's the pattern.
It's the pattern.
Can you see why I was fucking dying when I got this email from our lovely Santiago who sent me this?
And it's unbelievable.
It's perfect.
These people, I think I told you that.
I was like, I can't tell you what this is, but these fucking people never, oh no, I posted this on Facebook.
Yeah.
These people never fail.
They never fail to be this exact person.
They just don't.
There's a reason that he's a piece of shit and he can't handle this entire thing.
It's because he's a piece of shit and he can't handle this entire thing.
And he is, it's just, that's who he is.
Yeah.
We're like halfway through.
Oh, gosh.
And what part of this could I have left out so far?
Like, it's gold.
It's gold, Jared.
Kilbourn threatened to contact Buckhear's employer and to subpoena Buckhear's work computer and informed defense counsel that he would do so unless defense counsel filed for a protective order.
After the motion for a protective order was filed, Kilbourn agreed not to pursue discovery from Buckhear's employer.
So why would he do that, you ask?
I don't know, what?
To cost him money.
Oh, yeah.
He's just making it impossible to... Delay, delay, delay.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Kilbourne spearheaded the divorce and federal actions, essentially acting as Lukashevsky's lawyer in both cases, even though, this is kind of important, he is not admitted to the Virginia Bar.
Oh boy.
Kilborn signed, drafted, and argued all pleadings on behalf of Lukashevsky in this action.
Kilborn admitted to providing legal guidance to Lukashevsky in a letter to Edelman dated September 5th, 2001.
Oh man, six days before 9-11.
Wow.
What if the, just for fun, the fact pattern was like, then fucking those planes hit the building.
On 9-11, yeah.
Yeah, like that was nuts.
Like I just, it's not relevant, but like fuck, did you see that?
Anyway.
It's a dark day in history.
Yeah.
Kilbourn made at least one telephone call to Fakhoury, Bakir's divorce attorney, and admitted to helping Lukashevsky write pleadings in both cases.
He testified that he helped Lukashevsky, quote, understand the law in preparing the divorce action, that he communicated with Bakir's lawyers on her behalf in the federal action, and that he wrote all of the motions in the federal action.
Of course.
In response to an interrogatory request from defense counsel, he claimed an attorney-client privilege to the email communication with Lukashevsky that is the subject of this action.
Oh, okay.
Well, that's what this fucking action is.
According to Edelman, Kilbourn flouted the fact that because he's... Oh God, this is good.
Right when you think he can't be any shittier.
Kilborn flouted the fact that because he is not a Virginia attorney, he was not subject to disciplinary action for his conduct.
What?
Ironically, and by the way, a fucking decision saying ironically is not common.
Yeah.
Ironically, the Virginia State Bar admonished Kilborn for practicing law without a license in response to a complaint filed by Lukashevsky with the State Bar against Gray, the attorney she discharged in the divorce action.
See, Virginia State Bar letter dated August 6, 2001.
So just to decode that slightly, because I know it's hard when you're not reading it, she complained against her attorney that she discharged.
So she's doing some sort of complaint to the bar.
Yeah.
And the bar took the time out of their day to be like, hey, yeah, cool, but like, why is Kilborn- What's going on here?
Why is this other guy practicing law without a license here?
Yeah.
Like, just an unrelated issue.
God, there's more.
It goes on.
Kilbourn admitted to helping Lukashevsky write for Curry an email dated October 5th, 2001, in which they threatened to rack up thousands of dollars in legal fees by prosecuting the federal action and by filing a second divorce action if Buck here proceeded with his attempts to track down missing marital funds in the Virginia divorce action.
Trying to think, is the word extortion, like, Yeah, it feels like extortion.
Yeah.
Kilbourne repeatedly offered to drop the federal action if Bakir would drop the divorce action.
Wow.
And his claim to missing marital funds.
The fact that this guy is not only an attorney, but teaches the fucking law.
Come on, man.
It's unforgivable, honestly.
Yeah.
Yeah, like losing that 2% merit salary adjustment or whatever.
Like, no, he should be gone.
Unbelievable.
This is ridiculous.
And I want to know, the only possible thing here is mistaken identity.
If somebody else named Jason Kilbourne worked at that law firm the same years, then I have the wrong guy.
Yeah.
But like, I mean, fucking, I doubt it.
Yeah.
Especially with so many of the parallels.
Like, there's a lot of parallels.
Kilbourn also insisted on numerous occasions that Bakir admit to perjury in the divorce action in exchange for dropping the federal action.
Yikes!
Kilbourn did not personally appear at pretrial conferences held September 26, 2001 and January 17, 2002 in the federal action, and he failed to notify Edelman that he would not be appearing.
Both times, Edelman heard at the last moment that Kilbourn would not be appearing.
Kilbourn took no depositions in the case and attended no pretrial proceedings except his own deposition.
That's funny.
And he never produced the allegedly, quote, intercepted emails that were the subject of the complaint.
Moreover, Kilbourn failed to attend a March 1st, 2002 hearing before this court on Bakir's dispositive motions filed February 11th, 2002 by Bakir's new counsel, and he did not receive the court's permission to be absent.
Moreover, he did not notify Bakir's counsel that he would not be appearing.
Kilbourn acknowledged that he eventually learned that Bakir and Lukaszewski would email each other daily so that Bakir could help her with her work.
But he maintained that when he initiated the federal action, he believed that Bakir had no authority to access Lukaszewski's work email account.
So this is important because, again, you get in trouble if you file a complaint that has stuff you know is false.
Right.
And now he's saying, oh, I didn't know that Bakir would help her with her work.
And that's why he had access, which seems fishy to me since, you know, why is he involved in this at all?
Well, it's because Lukashevsky told him about it.
So he maintains, and I think he gets away with this one.
So whatever.
He maintained that when he initiated the federal action, he believed that Bakir had no authority.
He claimed that Lukashevsky told him that she did not give Bakir access and that Lukashevsky's aunt was prepared to testify that Bakir told her that he somehow accessed Lukashevsky's account without authority.
What is that?
I don't know.
Look, I'll maybe believe that, like, OK, let's say let's play it out, hon.
Ah, I can't believe my Russian lover.
We have to speak Russian.
I can't believe that you fucking you let your husband see my email thanking you for the good sex.
And then, you know, the Russian woman is like, I didn't let him see that.
He hacked me.
I got fucking hacked.
Yeah, I could see that.
But then this thing that like Lukashevsky's aunt was prepared to testify that Bakir told her that this fucking what?
Why would?
OK.
That just seems, I guess.
She comes in, inserts herself.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like Yenta.
In response to the February 11, 2002 motion for judgment on the pleadings by Buckeer's new counsel, Kilbourn filed a cross motion for voluntary dismissal, which he neglected to serve on Buckeer's counsel.
So it's like he dismissed it.
This guy sucks at the law.
It's the worst.
Everything.
No, it's intentional.
This is all tactics.
He's like doing nuisance-y stuff, but then trying to get away with it.
So he dismissed, voluntary dismissal means like, oh, nevermind on the lawsuit.
But he didn't tell Bakir that he did that.
So like, Bakir might still be, you know, racking up legal hours or whatever.
Like, it's all calculated.
So Citibank should be viewing him.
When I talk about cockroach, yeah, fucking Kilborn's the cockroach.
He's the cockroach the whole time.
Yeah.
On March 1st, 2002, Defense Counsel appeared, but Kilbourn did not.
So again, yeah, on the theory that, like, he's just costing him money because he doesn't tell counsel that... Yeah, I mean, it's... The court dismissed the action with prejudice, reflected in an order dated March 6, 2002, and granted Bakir leave to seek sanctions.
Eventually, the sanctions motion was made and referred to the magistrate judge for a report and recommendation.
Kilbourn neglected to appear at the hearing before the magistrate judge, who determined that Kilbourn failed to file timely Rule 26 disclosures, appear for a hearing on the defendant's motion for judgment on the pleadings, serve defendant with his omnibus response to defendant's motions for judgment on the pleadings, and some other stuff.
Blah, blah, blah.
Okay.
Yeah.
So he failed to do a bunch of stuff that we've already heard.
The magistrate judge recommended sanctioning Kilbourn $33,481 for the attorney fees and costs incurred by Bakir.
Now, I'm gonna warn you that the ending to this is so perfectly fucking depressing.
Oh no.
Yeah, content note, this, just, the fucking assholes pretty much always win.
That sucks.
By order dated March 7th, the court accepted the report and recommendation, but reduced the amount of sanctions to 18,000.
Kilbourn appealed, and the Fourth Circuit vacated the order and remanded.
I told you about that already.
Noting that the order lacked a determination that Kilbourn had, quote, willfully disobeyed a court order, or that he filed suit or proceeded with the litigation in bad faith.
Oh, please.
Well, hold on.
That's the technicality.
And then the court's like, okay, sorry, we fucked up, I guess.
So, Bakir seeks sanctions equal to his attorney's fees and costs in the amount of $35,587, pursuant to the court's inherent power.
As the Fourth Circuit noted, sanctions are appropriate under the court's inherent power if a party, quote, filed suit or proceeded with the litigation in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons.
Moreover, the court's inherent power to impose sanctions Quote, extends to a full range of litigation abuses.
Note, I think that's why this is cited because it's kind of an interesting situation.
I believe it's like, can you sanction a guy who wasn't barred?
You know, like, cause he's in that weird zone of like, he wasn't actually practicing, but he did effectively do this stuff.
So I think that's why it's cited a lot now.
Cause it's like, yeah, look, they did impose the sanctions, meaning you have- There's no rule that a dog can't clip.
Yeah, there is a rule that we can charge a dog for being a piece of shit while playing basketball, essentially.
Oh, so, sorry.
Let me set this up.
I know, ultimately, I tease that this doesn't end great, but there's a bit of a momentary victory here, because...
You had a very visceral reaction, I don't blame you, when the higher court, the circuit court said, well, you haven't said that he willfully disobeyed a court order and that he filed suit or proceeded with litigation in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons.
And that's why it got remanded.
And let me read you this sentence.
So this is after that remanding, this same court again, you know, that's what remand means.
It goes back.
Yeah.
And so here's this sentence on, you ready?
Killborn has proceeded in this action in bad faith, vexatiously, and for an oppressive reason.
So that's the court saying, all right, we didn't write literally the words, you did this, but fucking obviously he did it.
So I feel like that's the higher court being a piece of shit and this court being like, all right, man.
Yeah.
Read it.
Like he did this, you know?
Yeah.
Use your brain.
Yeah, fucking read the words on the page.
So they just decide, all right, we will write the magic words.
Yes, he did this.
And that's what this decision is.
Beside the fact that Kilbourn apparently brought this action to drain Bakir economically to make it difficult for him to litigate the pending divorce action.
In order to seek tactical advantage in the state divorce action, Kilbourne's sanctionable conduct is evidenced by the cumulative effect of his failure to appear at scheduled hearings without providing notice to his adversary, his threats, intimidation, accusations made against Bakir, Bakir's counsel, Bakir's witnesses, and exploiting his status as an attorney in that regard, and his failure to serve his motion for voluntary I think this is the court saying, these are all the fucking reasons.
Yes, obviously it was vexatious and you should have just fucking let it stand, assholes, but whatever.
They're screaming at the wind because the higher court won't see it again because they just did it and then it's fine.
And his failure to serve his motion for voluntary dismissal.
Like, they're just calling out all the bullshit he did because he really did.
Accordingly, and here's where it takes a turn, hon.
Okay.
Accordingly, considering Kilbourne's limited financial condition, to which he testified at the hearing, the court imposes sanctions against Kilbourne for $7,500.
Oh my God.
Representing a portion of Bakir's attorney's fees and costs in this action.
Kilborn shall make payments and equal monthly installments of $1,250 per month for six months.
With payments due on the first of each month and with the first payment due on... Each payment shall be sent made payable for... If Kilborn fails to make any of the payment, Council... Bakir shall be entitled to... So ordered.
So he just basically ruined this guy's life.
After all that, after all that, he does essentially in the first Batman movie, where it's the very end and Jack Nicholson's Joker is like, Batman's like, just punching him and finally gonna kill him.
And he just puts on glasses.
He's like, you wouldn't hit a man with glasses, would you?
Oh, yeah.
It's that.
He does all this shit.
This fucking, fucking weasel.
I hate this fucking guy.
He's a terrible person.
He's absolutely terrible.
He does all this shit.
And then in the end, After putting him through all that, he's like, oh, I don't have any money.
Oh, I can't afford the bugaboo.
And then the court for some reason is like, oh, poor guy.
Yeah.
Why?
Yeah.
It's fucking insane.
The legal system, let me tell you, not top notch.
I know.
Yeah.
Very disappointing.
Zero out of ten would not recommend.
I think my hypothesis that maybe this guy is actually a piece of shit.
What do you think?
You got a ruling on that, Judge Lydia?
He's terrible.
I don't think he should be allowed to practice law anywhere.
He shouldn't have been allowed to practice law anywhere.
He should not be allowed to teach law.
It would be a shame if this case ended up... They have to know about it.
Like, how could they not know about it?
I want to send it to UIC.
I want to send it to all the, above the law, the Catherine Rubino who like wrote about it.
I'm like, oh.
Yeah, so that's what we need to do.
Business meeting right now.
Hey, actually, anyone listening, if this is anything you think you could help us with, we need fucking a website where we do write-ups of this so that, because that seems to be the way to get, you know, yeah, people hear this podcast, but when you want to get stuff like kind of officially done, you need to just be able to point to like, read this, you know, and then spread.
I think Something that lives on the internet in that way.
Let us know if you could help with that.
We're so maxed out, but we're hoping to do stuff like that.
But I'm mad.
This guy's getting away with a lot and it's like he's been getting away with a lot for 20 years.
Yes.
He is the kind of person, and gosh, I hate to say, I think I've met a person like this before, that seemingly can just abandon any commitment to the truth whatsoever when they want to win a legal fight.
Yeah.
They can just say whatever they want because fuck it.
There's apparently nothing matters.
And you can just say things because you can get away with it because you know, you're a little shit weasel and the then you can cry about it.
And then somebody will be like, oh, well, don't be mad because something I don't know what, but it's abusive.
It's abusive, manipulative.
And and unfortunately, in this case in particular, preying on an immigrant and, you know, his economic situation.
Yeah.
Like it's just it's it's honestly evil at that point.
Unbelievable.
After he steals his wife, too.
But holy shit.
What a journey.
What a journey.
We tried to track down if they're still married or whatever or something.
Yeah, I couldn't find anything.
He's probably, maybe he keeps that under wraps for some reason.
I even like went to, because he has a website, right?
Through Weebly is his...
My wife!
He's like, yeah, why don't you speak your language?
in way back and I was like clicking on all the times that it was there because he has like an about me section and I was like really hoping for like here's me and my wife but it's just about him doing yeah it's just about him uh doing races he's like yeah watch I speak your language my wife yeah fluent in Russian right that'd be so funny if he was bullshitting about all that I I know, he's probably not.
Who knows?
Yeah, this fucking guy.
Now, we're not done, hun, because I can't let this go.
Yeah.
This is why we're doing the show, because when I get mad enough about something, it inspires me to spend countless fucking Decades researching this like it's just there's so much and it's infuriating and now I want to go back in light of all We know in light of all we know and I kept it from you a little bit everybody I want to play the fuller version probably I don't know that the whole thing of the Bill Maher segment now Let's let's listen to this.
Let's just listen to this in light of what you know And finally, new rule, if you're part of today's woke revolution, you need to study the part of revolutions where they spin out of control because the revolutionaries get so drunk on their own purifying elixir, they imagine they can reinvent the very nature of human beings.
Communists thought selfishness, selfishness, could be cast out of human nature.
Russian revolutionaries spoke of the new Soviet man who wasn't motivated by self-interest, but instead wanted to be part of a collective.
No, it turns out he wanted to be on a yacht in a Gucci tracksuit holding a vodka in a prostitute.
Not standing in line all day for a potato.
You know.
The problem with communism, and with some very recent ideologies here at home, is that they think you can change reality by screaming at it.
That you can bend human nature by holding your breath.
But that's the difference between reality and your mommy.
What?
None of it makes sense.
Lincoln once said that you can repeal all past history, but you still cannot repeal human nature.
But he's cancelled now, so fuck him.
That's the only slightly funny joke in this entire thing.
Yesterday I asked ChatGPT, are there any similarities between today's woke revolution and Chairman Mao's cultural revolution of the 1960s?
And it wrote back, how long do you have?
Well, it's not funny.
Because again, in China we saw how a revolutionary thought he could do a page one rewrite.
This is important.
He ordered his citizens to throw off the four old-- - Okay, let's, this is important.
This is what he's comparing this event to, this woke controversy to. - So, your whole life went in the garbage overnight, no biggie.
And those who resisted were attacked by an army of purifiers called the Red Guard who went around the country putting dunce caps on people.
Yeah.
Who didn't take to being a new kind of mortal being.
A lot of pointing and shaming went on.
Oh, and about a million dead.
And the only way to survive was to plead insanity for the crime of being insufficiently radical, then apologize and thank the state for the chance to see what a piece of shit you are.
And of course, submit to re-education.
or as we call it here in America, freshman orientation.
Whoa!
Burn!
Listen to this story.
There's a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago named Jason Kilbourne, whose crime was that on one of his exams, he used a hypothetical case where a black female worker sued her employer for race and gender discrimination, alleging that managers had called her two slur words, the type of real-world case these students might one day confront.
And knowing The extreme sensitivity of today's students.
He didn't write the two taboo words on the test, just the first letter of each.
He was teaching his students how to fight racism in the place where it matters most, the criminal justice system.
But because he merely alluded to those words, again, in the service of a good cause, he was banned from campus, placed on indefinite leave, and made to wear the dunce cap.
No, not really the dunce cap part.
But our American version of that.
Eight weeks of sensitivity training.
Weekly 90-minute sessions with a diversity trainer.
And having to write five self-reflection papers.
A grown-ass man.
A liberal law professor.
If you can't see the similarities between that and this, the person who needs re-education is you.
So, in light of all we know... - It's so ridiculous.
It's just, I'm sitting here shaking my head.
- It's just, I...
It's the, it's, uh, and then you, then the next step of this process is realizing, oh, Bill Maher is the same guy.
They're the same guy.
It's a lot of the same qualities.
It's this angry, arrogant white man who Bill Maher is the most dismissive, sarcastic, can't believe how dumb everyone else is, but him person.
Yeah.
And it's these kind of white men who just cannot accept the slightest hint that they might be wrong about something.
This hysterical notion that...
That what we saw here, which was the school investigating some very serious claims and in the end being like, take a class, maybe.
By the way, they didn't even require it at first.
At first they're like, we recommend it.
Yeah.
And then they're like, well, now we require it probably because you're a piece of shit and doing a bunch of media tours and do a piece, you know, protests and stuff.
But that's the same as this.
Fucking Maoist, this revolution.
Are you out of your fucking mind?
Yes, the answer is yes.
Yes, we do have our own Red Guard here, but they do their rampaging on Twitter.
Here's a cute example from a couple of years ago, the banjo player.
From Mumford & Sons, tweeted that he liked a book, a book that apparently had not been approved by the revolution.
So, of course, he had to delete the tweet, then take time away from the band.
Oh, my God, you mean this could have affected Mumford & Sons?
And then the cringing apology, I have come to better understand the pain caused by the book I endorsed.
Pain?
From a book?
Unless he hit the drummer over the head with it.
What happened to "I can read whatever the fuck I want"?
This is an ironclad point, you see.
Books cannot cause pain.
So if he endorsed, hey, I was just reading this book, Mein Kampf.
Love it.
Great book.
Then nobody's allowed to be mad about that because a book can't cause pain.
I can read whatever I want.
I can read whatever.
It's fine.
I can endorse any book, doesn't matter.
It's so deliberately missing the point and disguising it in argumentative language that a bunch of idiot white dudes can be like, yeah, a book that can't actually cause pain because it's words.
Yeah.
It's like, well, first off.
His apology sucked because he was probably just trying to stay in the fucking band and he failed at it.
It's not like the woke side endorses that apology.
But you know what also people can do?
In addition to reading whatever they want, they can also support whichever musicians they want and tweet whatever the fuck they want.
Yeah.
It's the funniest thing.
Somehow it only goes one way for these folks.
No, I can read whatever I want.
Doesn't matter if it's Minecraft, doesn't matter if it's race science, whatever the fuck it is, I do whatever I want.
Can you tweet at me about it?
No, that's it.
That's beyond the pale.
You cannot tweet your opinion about it because that would be something.
I don't, what?
Why is that?
You know, it's the rules go one way.
Yeah.
There was once a very different musician named John Lennon who wrote a song called Revolution.
And people who didn't really listen to it thought it was a rah-rah call for revolution.
No, it was the opposite.
The lyrics are, you say you want a revolution?
Well, you know, we all want to change the world.
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anybody anyhow.
There's a guy who understood how good intentions can turn into the insane arrogance of thinking your revolution is so fucking awesome and your generation is so mind-bendingly improved that you have bequeathed the world with a new kind of human.
You're welcome.
With communists, that human was no longer selfish.
In America today, that human is no longer born male or female.
And obesity is not something that affects health.
You can be healthy at any size.
Really, we voted on it.
None of this is funny.
A formerly serious magazine last year published with a straight face an article called, separating sports by sex doesn't make sense.
Oh, by the way, that's in the Atlantic, so I agree with you.
That's not a serious magazine.
I guess the only other thing I wanted to comment is this idea that, no, actually, you see, John Lennon was a very sensible, practical man who didn't, it's like, are you really going to base your argument on John Lennon?
No, you see, he would have agreed with me, fucking Bill Maher.
John Lennon, he was fucking doing naked protests to stop war in general.
Like, yes, he wanted a revolution.
Anyway, this guy fucking sucks.
He's also a scab.
This was another one I saw go viral recently was him talking to Jim Gaffigan and talking about the writer's strike.
The strike is a perfect example.
Those guys would never go back.
This strike could go on till the 24th century.
They would stay out.
I feel for my writers.
I love my writers.
I'm one of my writers.
But there's a big other side to it, and a lot of people are being hurt besides them.
A lot of people don't make as much money as them.
In this bipartisan world we have, where you're just in one camp or the other, there's no in-between, you're either For the strike, like, they're fucking Che Guevara out there.
You know, like, this is Cesar Chavez lettuce-picking strike, or you're with Trump.
You know, like, there's no different.
There's only two camps, and it's much more complicated than that.
It is, but I do feel like there is a lot of the points, a lot of the grievances, I kind of agree with.
I do understand that they're getting screwed a bit by the streamers, yes.
Yeah, I mean it's a change and you either You know, it's like anything that is, you know, I believe in free market, but I also believe in trust and then verify, right?
What does that mean?
Meaning, you know, you don't trust You know, like, the reason, I mean, Zaslov made $400 million, and I think they're looking for $80 million for, you know, it's like, they're gonna, you know, you leave a kid in front of a bowl of marshmallows, they're gonna eat the marshmallows.
It's not like some grand thing.
It's... Well, I don't know.
What are you saying?
They're only asking for $80 million?
Well, I'm saying that... They're asking for a lot of things.
They're asking for a lot of things.
That are, like, kooky.
Like, what I find objectionable about the philosophy of the strike, it seems to be they have really morphed a long way from 2007 strike Where they kind of believe that you're owed a living as a writer, and you're not.
This is show business, this is a make-or-miss league, and not everybody... You don't think that streamers should reveal numbers so that they can... Oh, maybe.
Sure, sure.
Oh, I'm not saying they don't have points.
Maybe that's... I felt like these micro-rooms are... I mean, the TV shows that we used to watch We're 22 episodes, 26 episodes, and... Okay, but you're... No, I know things change, but what I'm saying is that, like, it's not just that.
It's also these shows... You know, the life of a show is now two years, so I'm not saying that, like, hey, tough noogies, that's what happens.
I'm saying that, like, if they're making all their money If streamers are making all their money, or someone's making all their money in the first year, then if the writers are constructed, their deals are constructed on working for a couple years, And that's removed, then they should probably recalibrate how they get compensated.
I don't disagree.
There should be recal... All of this in a nutshell.
There was a way things used to work in the past, and I think that.
And that's why I agree with the corporations.
Like, but it doesn't work that way anymore.
Yeah, but, you know, the past.
Zero empathy, too.
I mean, it's just remarkable.
He makes tons of money, so why does he care?
Yeah.
It's amazing how completely blind somebody could be.
This common complaint of, oh, you're either on one side or all the way on the other.
That's just such a cop out for when somebody is disagreeing with you, you know?
Like, nobody's like, you're Trump.
Nobody said that.
I mean, he's very conservative and he's getting more conservative.
Also, the part where you're like, oh yeah, well I agree, you know, they have these good claims.
Yeah, they have these good claims.
But I just, you know, what?
That's what I want to ask him.
I wish Jim Gaffigan would ask him, so then should they stop?
Should they cave?
Or what?
What is it that he wants?
He just has like these vague disagreements Yeah.
Because they're asking too much, but then you're like, okay, but you know, the other side is the corporations making gazillions, literally don't even tell you how many views they get on certain things, which would be necessary.
Oh yeah, I agree with all that.
Oh, okay.
So then what the fuck are you talking about?
Like just that alone would mean let's strike until that's resolved, right?
Like what do you, I don't even understand what his points are.
Like what, what does he want to happen?
Like if you're demanding that, plus you demand something else he disagrees with, then you get nothing?
Is that how he thinks?
It's just not, it's absolute nonsense.
You know, you mentioned we used to watch Bill Maher, and I did, and I was actually reflecting on that.
For one, I remember my first encounter with him, I didn't really know him through the fucking 90s or any of that crap, but in the atheism stuff, he made Religulous or whatever.
And so when I was into the atheism stuff, that movie was brought up.
And I always just found it way too mean-spirited.
There is a kind of thing where he's always been incredibly mocking in a way that's just so clearly he's the fucking brilliant genius and everyone else is an idiot.
And there are times when, if that's something you agree with, Sometimes you're like, oh, that's kind of funny here.
Cause you know, if, if someone's mocking Trump in that way, you're like, well, yeah, I mean that level of mockery might make sense there.
And so it kind of blends in and maybe you don't find it as objectionable, but I always thought his manner was just so.
Over the top about that stuff.
And then he also believes some like Wu bullshit, like he has some other beliefs that are clearly non-scientific.
So that combined in my mind of like, okay, you're being incredibly insulting and dismissive in the religious context, which I agree with some of that because I find religion ridiculous.
But simultaneously you're over here with these anti-scientific views on this side.
You're just an asshole.
You don't have some principled stance that would justify this kind of mockery.
It's just your views are the greatest ever and everybody else who disagrees sucks.
So, whatever, I've never been a big fan, but during Trump, we started watching it because I feel like a lot of people could relate to the fact that we just craved any sort of sanity in that moment, any sort of, like, someone talking about Trump in a critical way in that moment.
And he regularly platformed, you know, some of the Republican never-Trumpers and getting to hear, like, their perspective on, you know, the show I found valuable at that time, you know, gave me false hope maybe, but... Yeah, and I did... I remember saying that back at the time.
I did like that he would try to engage Republicans somewhat.
Here's what I remember really appreciating.
Because of the Trumper, like, mythos around Trump as some sort of alpha tough guy, blah, blah, blah, was so pervasive and then Bill Maher was over and he would literally call him a whiny little bee and it was like I'm glad it was nice to have somebody actually calling out that this apparent macho whatever is really just being the whiniest little fragile baby boomer yeah just this absolute baby and then ultimately that's what Maher is too.
And all of this is that exact thing?
Because when you see what the reality of this story is, and then contrast it to his depiction of it as Mao's Cultural Revolution.
The Red Guard.
What a whiny little baby!
It's so whiny.
So I remember, I can't remember the dates or anything, but the moment I quit watching that fucking show, like I would watch it and be kind of mad the whole time and be like, yeah, there's still some stuff, but whatever.
And you and I got in the habit of kind of watching it.
Yeah, it was on the list.
One of those Sunday show like you and I watch.
And then he had Barry Weiss on.
I was like, Jesus fucking Christ, this is so annoying.
And then you had her on like the week after.
My memory is it just became, oh, so that's your whole fucking thing now.
You're just going to be the intellectual dark web bullshit having Barry Weiss on.
You're talking about how everybody's afraid of disagreement and freeze, blah, blah, blah.
And then you just have the same guest on over and over, parroting the same points, not ever having anyone argue with you meaningfully.
That's when I quit and never watched it again, and everything I saw ever after in any sort of clip was the most obnoxious, irritating thing.
And it goes to show, hon, he didn't stop becoming shitty when we stopped watching him.
It just kept going and going.
Yeah.
Here's a video that was up pretty high on Reddit the other day, and it's Bill Maher on PragerU.
Of course.
It's not me who's changed.
It's the left.
who is now made up of a small contingent who've gone mental and a large contingent who refused to call them out for it.
But I will.
That's why I'm a hero at Fox these days.
I just have to play this until we get one of the most hilarious, forced, fake laugh crowd reactions I've ever heard in my life.
You gotta hear this.
Which shows just how much liberals have their head up their ass, because if they really thought about it, they would have made me a hero on their media.
It's not my fault that the party of FDR and JFK is turning into the party of LOL and WTF.
Listen to that!
It's not fun.
Listen to that.
They're still going.
Yes.
Members of Congress.
Are you kidding me?
That's the weakest bullet.
It's so terrible.
You might as well be that fucking red eye guy on Fox News.
And I want to note, I guess this isn't him doing a video for PragerU per se, or at least I'm not going to watch the rest of it, so I don't know.
But it's a video featuring him And also someone who is doing a video for PragerU, Dave Rubin, doing their whole... In 2022 this was, by the way.
So a year and a half ago, February 2022, them still doing the routine of, oh, I was a liberal.
I'm the liberal, but the left left me.
They're the ones who...
Dude, it's like seven years ago we saw through this.
What are you even still doing here?
So, yeah, that's where he is now.
This hero complex that he had, too, like, that he should be, you know, revered by the left, you know, if they had any sense kind of thing.
It's like, oh, God.
It's so terrible.
Ridiculous.
You know, there's something else I realized that I wanted to share that I thought was kind of, I don't know, kind of a funny insight.
The way that these very terrified white men look at these conflicts and how they're so terrified of the couple of students who tweet stuff at them.
It's really something to behold, because if you do the Google searching, as I've obviously done a billion times, like I said, you get 87,000 articles in support of Kilbourn.
And I mentioned the New York Times article.
I already covered that in the first part.
The only thing that article references is the black law students' tweets and stuff, which, again, I already mentioned it had barely any likes.
For fun, I did the Wayback Machine.
And at the time of the whole conflict, it had like four likes.
And the parallel I realized that was kind of funny is people just see black men as larger and more threatening when they're the same size as white men.
This has been studied.
It's the reason police kill black men.
It's a reason police kill black men.
It's the reason witness statements will overestimate black men's size and age and all that stuff.
I'm realizing it's just this, but online.
Like, Bret Stephens, when he's writing his column, is like, officer, there's a black student's account, and it had like 100,000 million billion followers, and it's in control of the world, and it's trying to do a revolution.
And it's like, you look at it, it's like, this had four followers, man.
You're just scared because they're black.
That's the only reason you're scared.
You took up ink in the New York fucking Times To defend a professor who's already defended Times Infinity against a tweet with four likes.
It's embarrassing.
Yeah.
It's absolutely embarrassing.
But it isn't because they're just lying.
It's actually just a fucking lie.
So, trying to tie up some loose ends, you remember Catherine Rubino, who wrote one of the first articles?
Yes.
That was kind of like, oh, more complicated here.
She did eventually do a follow-up that was like, oh, actually, there's more stuff.
Oh, good for her.
And so, yeah, so, you know, give her some credit.
No, I still feel like she was a little soft.
The last sentence is like, the entire episode serves as a reminder that the allegations of racial bias can be a lot more complicated than they appear.
Yeah, right.
More complicated.
Whatever.
She covered it.
That's just to tie up that loose end.
She kind of fixed her thing there.
But a lot of other people didn't, and in fact, there's an article in The Fucking Atlantic from February 7th, 2022, so that's right after the lawsuit was filed, by Connor fucking Friedersdorf, titled, The Educators Who Decided That Context Doesn't Matter.
Students Lose Out When The Language Police Ignore The Distinction Between Using Offensive Words And Discussing Them.
And Connor Friedersdorf, After having, you know, again, the investigation report is out, everything, all the information's out there that you would need, he writes the same bullshit article in the Atlantic, from the point of view that it was all about the question, and therefore, you're doing the conclusion that he was punished because of the question, and they're fine, they're fine, blah.
It's embarrassing.
Like, the way they spin out to the difference known as the use slash mention distinction to educators still brave enough to teach it is a key bulwark against anti-intellectual attacks on our... Talk about anti-intellectual.
You don't just read.
You don't read the facts of the case.
And then we get February 11th, 2022.
This is the last wave of news coverage that I didn't go through because it's kind of in response to the lawsuit being filed.
That's the last wave that I've seen.
You get also, because they hadn't collected them all yet, a Washington Post opinion piece.
The Washington Post by George Will.
Read this hysterical man's first couple of paragraphs.
A sludge of ignorance and cowardice oozes so constantly through today's campuses that institutions acquire immunity through recidivism.
Progressivism's totalitarian temptation is too common.
Just fucking God.
That's too much.
Is too commonplace to be newsworthy, but I'm going to write about it anyway in the Washington... All right.
America's vindictive intolerance has become humdrum.
The University of Illinois is so repulsive that attention must be paid to Jason Kilbourn's ordeal.
Wow.
He is enduring, as the price of continuing as a tenured law professor, progressivism's version of the ancient torment, the pillory.
He has been sentenced to multiple debasements, devised by UIC, which is wielding progressivism's array of tools for mind scrubbing, conformity enforcing, God, yeah, like I can't tell if any of it's a bit or- No, that was all word for word.
Literally all word for word.
Oh my god.
So then he talks about the fucking question, and he just goes through the same wrong facts.
Yeah, parroting all that stuff.
Votes all the students who said they had heart palpitations.
That's how weak all these students are according to him.
But then, great minds hunt.
I mean, there's a lot of the usual bullshit I won't go through, but I just wanted to read this lovely paragraph.
Could those who concocted this sentence ever recognize their kinship with the moral purifiers of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, or of Mao's Cultural Revolution, or of the Stalinist interrogator Gletkin in Arthur Kessler's 1940 novel Darkness at Noon?
If so, would UIC's unconscious emulators be discomfited by the resemblance?
Unlikely.
This guy.
Jeez.
Oh boy.
It's just unbelievable.
It's unbelievable.
The final thing I wanted to do is essentially a little context debunk.
I've already hinted at it, but if you want to talk about Chairman Mao's fucking revolution, why don't you, instead of this fake bullshit that isn't real with Kilborn, Why don't you listen to the episode of the Washington Post podcast that was about, and it's probably an article too, but I heard the podcast, entitled, Reported on by Her Own Students for a Lesson on Race.
Last spring, South Carolina English teacher Mary Wood was horrified when her students reported her to the local school board for teaching about race.
As she starts a new school year, we ask what it's like for her to step back into the classroom.
So here's what happened.
This teacher is, you know, she's obviously liberal.
She wears that on her sleeve a little bit to the extent you can in high school in a conservative area.
She assigns Ta-Nehisi Coates between the world and me.
And she, by the way, she goes out of her way to do the both sidesy stuff and make sure she's, you know, not enduring, whatever.
But just assigning that book led some students to complain.
You want to talk about actual fucking dystopia?
The students complained that the book made them feel bad for being white, and so she was forced to cancel that.
She had to take the book back from the students.
And not do the lesson she planned.
Wow.
Listen to this dystopian scene of when she had to take the book back, hun.
Listen to this.
What happened after that?
Mary was given a few days to figure out what to do next.
She couldn't even mention the book moving forward.
And on her very first day back, after scrambling to come up with a replacement class, she had to take away the copies of that book from her students.
Listen to this fucking scene.
It was really hard to take that book out.
I remember Crying before going into that classroom.
So five teachers in the English department, including the chair, Tess, decided they had to help Mary pick up the books.
They wanted to show her support because she looked so upset that morning.
And they wanted to help her pick up and remove the books as quickly as possible, with the least fuss.
Students took their seats and saw five English teachers gathered really weirdly at some point in the room.
Then they heard Mary say these three carefully constructed sentences.
We will no longer be reading this book.
I will be collecting it now.
Please look at the smart board so that I can direct you to today's lesson.
Like, that was literally all that I could say.
And students were quiet.
And maybe they were like, this is real weird.
But it was weird.
One of the students in the class that day, Connor Bryant, did remember exactly what he was thinking.
I kind of expected it would happen, so I wasn't too surprised, but I was still disappointed.
Do you remember what she looked like when this was happening?
She looked like she wasn't taking care of herself as well, like in all honesty.
Like, I think she was really upset by it, like visibly so.
Teachers walked up the five aisles between students' desks, and they picked up copies of Coates' book from the desks as they walked.
Some kids were whispering to each other.
Some kids were fidgeting with their hands.
Some had their hands completely still.
Some were flipping through their books, taking out sticky notes or reading some stuff that they wanted to look over.
There was one kid next to me that had like five sticky notes on each page.
He looked pretty upset too, yeah.
A teacher stood and waited until that boy had pulled out every single note.
Connor said it took almost half a minute.
Then the teachers placed the collected copies of Coates' book on a shelf in the classroom.
Yeah, talk about a fucking dystopia.
Students just have to say the word that, oh, I feel uncomfortable for being white.
And then a teacher is forced to take back the book in this disturbing ritual where she can't say anything.
I mean, it's insane.
This is a real thing, too.
This really fucking happened.
Unlike every description of this bullshit, lying con artist fucking weasel's story about the exam question.
This is real thing happening.
It's real.
That's so sad.
One more part.
I have to have people here.
When thinking about Bill Maher's fucking hysterical red scarf, all that shit.
Listen to this part.
So Mary Wood made some of her students uncomfortable.
She was reported by those students.
She had to remove Ta-Nehisi Coates' book, Between the World and Me.
And then she's back in the classroom to face these same students, knowing that they had been involved with her situation, bringing this complaint up.
And she had to teach them for the rest of the school year.
Yes, and as you might be able to imagine, this was not easy to do.
She said she could barely find the energy and the confidence to teach her students basic AP Lang exam prep.
I just, like, presented the facts.
Only the facts, ma'am.
Like, here are the concepts for the argument essay.
Here's the way that you can do this.
I was afraid to select texts that were different, so I just went with past exam questions.
And it was so boring.
They had to write every class.
I couldn't allow class discussion.
If I allowed class discussion, somebody might say something that made somebody feel uncomfortable.
I couldn't have thoughtful dialogue because every single thing that I said could have been misconstrued.
Like you feel your heart break a little bit each day when they come into your classroom and you're afraid to meet their eyes.
You're going to be able to trust your students this year?
Listen to this.
I have a question.
I don't know.
I'm so scared.
I got a nice email from my dad the other day, and I don't know if I can even trust the email.
Like, he reached out and he said something like, we were so happy to find that our daughter was in your class this year.
We'd go out of our way or something to Yeah, does that sound like a fucking dystopian, can't trust anybody, you might be reported for wrong speak or wrong think?
I don't know.
Like, can you believe that?
Like, there's like, it's not just broken trust between you and the students, it's broken trust between you and the whole entire community.
- Yeah, does that sound like a fucking dystopian, can't trust anybody, you might be reported for wrong speak or wrong think? - Yeah.
- Boy, that sounds a lot more like that to me than the bullshit nothing that happened at UIC.
It's out-fucking-rageous.
And while these asshole, lying, grifting, dishonest pieces of fucking hysterical garbage are out there crying about a grown-ass man having to, like, read something as a punishment for being a racist, This is what's really happening.
They are making this happen.
They are active participants in making this happen because they've been doing a bullshit, fake, culture war, moral panic about the woke for 10 plus years.
It actually dates back forever, but like this latest one.
And they are making this happen.
They are the reason this has happened because it's not confined to the fire.org.
It's not confined to the pages of the Atlantic.
The right also partakes in this and it fuels them.
And if it were just the right, maybe we could stop them, but it's not.
They've also influenced the center and the center left and people like Bill Maher, who kind of used to be on the left.
And they are the reason the right wins and can do stuff like this.
So they're actively making this happen.
Man.
And you know who we should be really worried about instead of a very privileged white fucking asshole who has tenure, isn't going to get fired and is barely in trouble at all?
Literally any other employee in the entire fucking country.
Yeah.
Because that's something these people, I guess they never think about.
They judge these situations as though professor is like the only job there is or something.
We're like, well, your employer could make you take a class that has a policy that you might not harass people and they can make you agree to that.
Dude, Amazon drivers have to pee in bottles.
Like, that's the comparison we need to be going with.
They judge it in this different world where, like, you have all these rights as an employee, you've got all these things, and yes, you should.
Okay, I did this just for fun.
How many professors are there in the entire fucking country?
And estimates vary, and now there's also the lecturers and the blah, blah, blah, there's a bunch of different stuff.
But it was somewhere, we'll call it a million, maybe.
And by the way, how many of them is actually going to have anything like any real problem regarding the First Amendment or anything?
Like, even if you just take them at their word that there's some number of people, academic freedom, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
How many is that going to be?
A tiny percentage.
A handful.
Minimal.
Yeah.
Let me google how many Amazon workers in the US.
This is just one corporation.
There are 1.1 million Amazon workers in the US.
And virtually every single fucking one of them is working for shit wages, working too hard, in bad conditions, and we're supposed to care about a guy who has to take a diversity course once, who makes six figures, and has tenure and can't be fired.
This is one corporation, Amazon.
And I just, for fun, I know I referenced the pee bottles.
I have to point out this article that I found when I googled it.
It's by Vice.
Here's the headline.
You'll love this.
Amazon denies workers pee in bottles.
Here are the pee bottles.
Now we get the one sentence.
We always get the one sentence under the title now.
Now I love it.
Quote, you don't really believe the peeing in bottles things, do you?
Amazon tweeted.
Drivers say they're being gas lit.
Huh?
To the point where back before Elon Musk, you know, ruined Twitter, the tweet itself by Amazon's like official account had one of those like readers added context.
This is one of the many articles that have been published by journalists involved in investigations into the misconduct and malicious intent by Amazon to punish people for going on break.
And then everybody was posting their pee bottles, you know, and here's some quotes.
Quote, we're pressured to get these routes done before nighttime and having to find a restroom would mean driving an extra 10 minutes off path to find one.
An Amazon delivery driver told Motherboard, which is the Vice site.
10 to 15 minutes to find a bathroom can add up, meaning 20 to 30 minutes there and back altogether.
Obviously, we drink a lot of water throughout the day, so this is happening a lot through the drive, they continued.
I can tell you that if I drove off to find a restroom, that I would be bringing back packages every night, and that would eventually mean I would get infractions, which would lead to termination.
I usually do it in a bottle, in the back of the van, away from any packages, and clean my hands with sanitizer because I understand how gross it is, they continued.
I just park off to the side and close the front sliding door.
All the guys do it, another Amazon driver says.
The best drivers get overtime, so there's incentive to cut corners.
The most productive drivers get rewarded the most hours.
And I'm supposed to fucking care about this whiny baby ass prick of a professor who has to take a diversity class because he's a racist.
Yeah.
It's just, it's insulting.
The lack of perspective is just insane.
At its core, I know the fire.org would like to make this some noble thing.
Ah, freedom, academic freedom.
And yeah, sure.
Academic freedom, I agree.
Yeah, whatever.
At its root, it's an employment law question.
Like one you might not find on Professor Kilbourn's exam because he doesn't teach employment law.
But that's what the issue is.
It is the rights and freedoms of a worker.
Professors aren't like a gilded class of wizards that should get more rights than you or I should get.
What do you think happens if an Amazon worker, oh, I don't know, tries to unionize and utilize their free speech to organize, to maybe not have to piss in fucking bottles?
You know what happens to them?
They get fucking fired.
Yeah.
And they don't have virtually any protection.
Or if they do, it might be because Biden won the presidency and so maybe the fucking federal, labor, all those places might do something about it.
Maybe.
If they can prove it and if they can do it, you know, a lot of ifs down the line.
Let alone if Trump is in office and then nothing fucking happens because they don't care.
Republicans make things worse in every single aspect of life.
This is what we should care about.
This is not just whataboutery for the sake of whataboutery.
This is the same issue.
The rights of Employed people in this country.
That's the issue.
You don't get to just hyper focus on one tiny group of extremely privileged people and make up problems that aren't even real and cry about them and raise millions for them to jack off in the courts with cases that go nowhere because they're fucking insane.
What a waste of resources.
What a waste of help.
How about you help someone who actually fucking needs it?
What a mess.
who has no, effectively no rights because they're at will and they are employed by a large corporation that can just trample all over them.
How about you defend them for once?
What a mess.
Oh, we got through it, hon.
I think I said, you know, most of what I planned to say.
Yeah.
So this was a thing.
This was quite a thing.
Oh boy.
And now we are going to edit for the rest of our natural lives.
But we already did that, if you're hearing this.
So I want to thank you for listening to Where There's Woke.
Please, please, please support the show.
This is... Talk about employment conditions.
I am not complaining, but it is a tremendous amount of work we do.
And if you find that valuable, please consider pledging at patreon.com slash where there's woke.
Thank you so much to those who have.
And I truly We are not complaining in any way, shape, or form.
We don't have to be in bottles over here.
If you like the work we do, please support it.
If you'd rather put that dollar somewhere that you think deserves it more, by all means, please do.
But if you'd like to get access to the bonus content and support what we do here, we'd really appreciate it.
And thank you to those who have.
And until next time, hun, what a wild marathon here.
