And several other mini stories! There are always so many little stories we don't get to, so this month we decided to try a roundup of sorts. Lydia put together some of the top anti-woke stories from January to share, and it was lots of fun! If you're enjoying our work, please consider sharing with your friends, leaving a 5-star review, or pledging over on Patreon! Feel free to email us at lydia@seriouspod.com or thomas@seriouspod.com! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 37.
I'm Thomas.
How are you doing, Lydia Smith, closet dweller?
I'm doing well.
Yeah, I hope people don't take that the wrong way.
You literally just record out of a closet.
There's no other connotations.
Yeah.
It's just where you are.
Surrounded by clothes.
Yep.
Yep.
It's cozy.
It's fine.
You know.
It does seem nice.
It is, until I get hit by like a cardigan against my head.
Wow, do your cardigans move without... I think I move maybe a little bit, and it's like just enough.
There's like a sleeve I can stare at right now in front of me.
I was gonna say, I don't, you know, I don't know everything about women's fashion, but I didn't know the clothes moved without you, but you could have convinced me.
Yeah, you're like, it's normal.
Every single woman's clothes... Yeah, no pockets and clothes move without you.
Yep.
So what are we doing today?
Well I thought it would be fun to do sort of a little look into what's been happening in the news in the anti-woke world.
We spend episodes doing a debunk on a specific thing and there's just so much that comes out of There's too much.
It's a lot of highlights, you know, and we wanted to be able to cover more discrete events without having to go too in-depth on all of them.
Yeah, yeah.
There's a lot going on, so I'm excited that we're doing this.
It's gonna be a fun one.
You ready to just kick it off?
Sure.
We'll just dive right in.
Okay, so looking at the month of January, one of the big things that came out in January was iPhone pushed out an update and people were not happy about it.
Can you guess why?
Oh, it was game show format.
You have an iPhone.
Yeah, I actually don't even... Oh, is it going to be an emoji thing?
Nope.
Oh, it's not like an emoji was a different skin color and they're mad about that?
Not this time.
Yeah.
That was last month.
No, I don't know.
Yeah, this is a good game where I could force myself to be right because I could just Google that and I'm sure it'll be somewhere and I'll be like, see?
It was that.
No.
Hmm.
What?
I don't know.
Users can add pronouns to contacts.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And so Apple shared a guide on how to do this on Twitter, and that brought a lot of attention to it.
I think normally people wouldn't have noticed because it's just pushed out with the update.
It's on your phone.
If you're not accessing that, you're not accessing that.
How often are you adding a new contact, you know?
Almost never.
I wish I had no contacts.
What do you do, call them?
I don't understand.
Yeah, but Apple support tweeted out like a four panel picture that says, add pronouns to contacts.
Step one, in a contact card, in contacts, tap edit.
Step two, tap add pronouns.
Step three, enter the contacts pronouns.
Yeah.
And people were not pleased.
Step four, you're now gay!
There was a reaction like that, yeah.
So this got picked up in Daily Mail, and essentially it was just the Twitter firestorm as a result of this.
Some of the reactions, it is very dumb.
Someone said, Steve Jobs would die if he saw this.
I got bad news for that person.
Yeah, we'll die again, I guess is what they said.
That's on me.
I'm going to let that Twitter person off the hook here, guys.
That woman's on me.
I misspoke.
And then some other reactions.
Why in the fuck would anyone want to do that?
Oh, I could help.
Maybe they want to remember someone's pronouns.
Makes it easy to decide who to decline calls from, to be honest.
Okay, I love that because picture what that person's doing in their mind.
I'm going to add Thomas to my contacts and then I'm going to say that he's a he, him.
Oh yeah?
No, I'm deleting him.
Now you're going to call me and I won't pick up your calls.
Cool man, you got me.
You totally pranked me.
Another person said, See ya, Apple.
Another company that alienates the majority of its loyal users.
Yeah.
Think it's time to switch to Android with all of this woke shit.
Yeah, I mean, but if you had said like, yeah, you can add Mr. or Mrs. to it, they'd be like, well, that's obviously fine.
Yeah, any honorific or whatever, right?
Like, they would want that.
I think they really don't know what pronouns are in a significant way.
Yeah, and I, like, didn't bring this up as a reaction because I was like, this has to be fake, but I'll just say it out loud.
Someone was like, I don't know anyone with pronouns.
Yeah, that's my favorite.
I could see that being real.
I could see that being real.
But yeah, I hear you.
It's almost too good.
Yeah, exactly.
It felt like- I don't know anyone with pronouns.
Like just someone kind of trying to don the mask of the outrage, right?
And kind of like jump into the middle of it with everybody.
Yeah, the only thing that would be better is, well, if I have any friends with pronouns, I can't think of who they are.
Yeah.
Or something, you know, that would've been good.
Yeah.
Maybe I should tweet that.
That is good, yeah.
Tag in Apple Support, and then you'll draw, you know, 300,000 views over this.
I'll have a new YouTube channel.
Literally, Apple Support, most of the replies to their posts are, my iPhone is doing a weird thing, and... Yeah, most of their replies are, hey, there's been a glitch since 1980 in this thing, and it just says never resolved, and they never resolve it.
That's most of it.
Maybe this'll bring some attention to all the other problems I have with software that needs to get fixed.
Yeah, I mean, you hope.
Ooh, should I start doing that?
When it's like, okay, this is not like a, uh, I hate Apple.
I actually love Apple, but it's because I'm always using like specific kind of technical stuff, you know?
So it'll be like, oh, my DAW is not working with this, blah, blah, blah.
Is what I need to do, do I need to add like some pronoun-y anti-woke Stuff to my tech request.
Be like, God, this woke company won't fix this runtime error I'm getting when I try to load an audio file when I, you know.
So I don't know if Apple would respond to you still.
Well, if it gets enough buzz.
Yeah, exactly.
You have, you know, lips of TikTok on your side.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Things would go well.
Pro tip.
So guess what also is woke?
You gotta give me a little more than that.
Speaking of things!
Speaking of all the things.
So Star Wars announced their new director for the next Star Wars installment.
Her name is Charmaine Obad Chinoy.
Her name already disqualifying in pretty much everyone's minds that's anti-woke.
She will be the first woman and the first person of color to helm a movie in the Star Wars franchise.
She's an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker.
Two different documentaries about Pakistan and sort of a girl's experience in Pakistan and some of the things that are going on there.
And the Hutt crime family is the other one.
What?
Jabba the Hutt is the other one.
Lydia doesn't know Star Wars at all.
I do, I just couldn't put it together because I was talking about Pakistan in real life.
There is a bridge.
The bridge is Ms.
Marvel on Disney, so she actually directed a couple episodes on Ms.
Marvel, so that got her involved with Disney and the Marvel universe, and then she was pinged for Star Wars as part of Disney properties.
But the news of her coming on, I'm sure sparked some outrage.
But what really got people going was when she did an interview with CNN and she said, it's about time that we had a woman come forward to shape a story in a galaxy far, far away, and that she's thrilled about the upcoming project.
And people were pissed.
Can I just say, I don't really like the word choice of come forward.
Was that actually what she said?
Yeah, it's quoted.
Yeah, might have been a little bit of a misspeak there.
Like I feel like that suggests that, oh yeah, women just haven't come forward yet to direct these things.
It's a little, not the best choice of words, but that's okay.
I don't know, but is that what's going to spark the outrage?
No, I'm not saying it's going to spark the outrage.
I'm saying I don't like that wording.
Sorry, it's priced in that obviously the dumbass anti-woke outrage is stupid.
I'm just talking about things that are real.
Sorry, I was trying to— Different conversation!
So the Right got really, really mad about this, and people kind of went digging to find out more about her, and Matt Walsh tweeted footage.
From her participating on a panel at the Women in the World Summit in 2015 to kind of keep stoking this outrage.
And I sent you that clip if you'd like to play it.
Okay.
What is the balance of activating a force for change?
Is that Jon Stewart?
Yeah.
But also trying to permeate that patriarchy?
A force for change is the name of the movie, by the way.
And is that a part of the calculation of your art as well?
And what's been the reaction to that?
Oh, absolutely.
I like to make men uncomfortable.
I enjoy making men uncomfortable.
Not you, just not you.
Point taken, point taken.
But, you know, it is important to be able to look into the eyes of a man and say, I am here, and recognize that.
And recognize that I am working to bring something that makes you uncomfortable, and it should make you uncomfortable, because you need to change your attitude.
And it's only when you're uncomfortable, when you're shifty, when you have to have difficult conversations, that you will perhaps look at yourself in the mirror and not like the reflection.
And then say, maybe there is something wrong with the way I think, or maybe there is something wrong with the way I am addressing this issue.
That's it.
And then Matt Walsh added, this movie is destined to be Disney's biggest flop yet.
Well, okay.
Why do they do that?
I don't know.
Didn't you do that with Barbie?
How did that go for you, idiots?
I mean, even just from an evil strategy standpoint, just talk about how you hate it or something.
You don't have to make falsifiable predictions that won't work out.
It's the weirdest thing.
That tweet specifically was viewed 10.2 million times on Twitter.
Again, you know, who knows how their algorithm works.
I think if, like, you scroll past it and linger for half a second... Oh, Twitter?
Yeah, that's nothing.
Yeah.
But, you know, still, like, everyone's talking about this, that her goal is to make men uncomfortable.
Obviously stripping all of the nuance, what question was actually posed to her.
Something I thought that was pretty interesting is, again, her background with advocating for girls and women in Pakistan and sort of what their experiences are, is I think a lot of times people on the right are happy to give Ayaan Hirsi Ali benefit of the doubt because of her experience as a girl and a woman in a different country and sort of how that's impacted her, but not here because it's touching their precious Star Wars.
To be serious for a moment, God, it's such hell to just be in the spotlight and be any sort of progressive woman at all.
It's just absolute hell.
Like it's just the most thankless thing.
Why would you do it?
Yeah.
Why would you subject yourself to it?
Yeah.
But Matt Walsh wasn't the only one getting in on this.
I sent you another link so we can hear from our friend Ben Shapiro.
Oh, it's not working.
You have to, sorry.
It's my episode.
I'm going to post an Apple help about it, though.
There's a glitch.
Every time I try to click a Ben Shapiro video, it doesn't work.
Actually, this isn't a glitch.
Thank you, Apple, for disabling Ben Shapiro.
She then was a director, one of the directors, on Ms.
Marvel, the 2022 series from Disney Plus that literally no one watched, and that no one wanted to watch, and that no one cared about because it looked not good.
And they've decided to put her in charge of the next Star Wars movie, which we'll focus in, on Rey.
You remember Rey, or maybe you don't.
She's the star of the last Star Wars trilogy.
Yes, I remember the character from the biggest, like, movie event of the decade.
Yeah, I remember the guy.
I don't like those new Star Wars very much, but I remember the character, you idiot.
Love in favor of characters that no one gave any hoots about whatsoever.
No one has said the name Poe Dameron in years because no one cares.
No one cares about Finn and barely anyone cares about Rey.
So, they got rid of all your old favorites, and they killed off Han uselessly and stupidly, and then they killed off Luke.
Yeah, they should have kept him, and he could be a 400-year-old man doing movies for- What are you talking about?
It's better.
Oh, okay, sorry.
Uselessly and stupidly, and then they killed off Leia.
Absolutely uselessly and stupidly.
And then they added beloved characters.
Life killed off Leia.
An awful character who annoyed everyone.
So much so that they literally wrote her out of the third movie, The Rise of Skywalker.
Yeah, it's only due to wokeism that Star Wars contains annoying ass characters that people don't like.
It's like he's never heard of Jar Jar Binks, essentially.
I mean, it's what I'm saying.
I mean, it's not the, this is just a natural component of Star Wars is You're going to swing and miss a few times on some of the characters.
They might seem annoying to some people.
He says at the beginning of this clip that the prequels have been growing on him because of the stuff that's been coming out lately.
Oh, God, I hate it.
Broken Clock is right twice or whatever, because I'll be honest.
So it's funny because I have the opposite problem with the new Star Wars, which was I thought the second one was the only interesting one.
But I also think they were tearing themselves to pieces, trying desperately to appeal to everyone.
That like the second one set up a bit of an interesting thing, albeit I think it was kind of flawed, but it was interesting.
And then for the third one, they were so mad at getting any sort of backlash that they turned it into this just absolutely lukewarm pun I didn't mean to make.
Lukewarm, just absolute turd.
Like it's just so boring, like just derivative and nonsensical.
They're just like, they got so scared.
They're like, literally, let's bring back any like we have to bring back the familiar because no one can handle the risk of making anything different.
And they just aren't good.
Every time I think about that last Star Wars movie, whatever that one was, I hate it even more.
And I'm sad about it, because we did only have one more shot with Leia, with Carrie Fisher.
We don't get another that.
And it's so frustrating, the route they took on that.
Yeah.
And, you know, he mentions in the clip kind of ragging on Ms.
Marvel.
No one liked it.
It's 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from critics' scores.
Audience score is way lower, but it's because it got review bombed on IMDb as well as on Rotten Tomatoes.
Lots of one-star ratings.
People saying that it was woke.
But Malala Yousafzai praised Ms.
Marvel and said that it was really beautiful reflection of the Pakistani people.
She was struck by how familiar Kamala Khan's life seemed to her.
No, I hear you.
But also, we should note, if we haven't before, that Andor is fucking amazing.
And so if Malala likes it, then I'm on board.
And if you don't like it, then- She's who I go to for my Marvel Universe reviews.
Yeah.
No, I hear you.
But also we should note, if we haven't before, that Andor is fucking amazing.
God, it's so good.
Please somehow involve whoever made that a little bit in your movies and to make them actually good.
Here's what I don't want.
Maybe you weren't expecting this.
Here's what I don't want to fall into.
And I also think it's a cynical thing that Disney does because Disney is a multi-gazillion owner of every single intellectual property ever created by humans now.
So I don't want them, which is what they're trying to do, To create a situation where I think they benefit from it too.
I think Ben Shapiro does and I think they do, which is, oh, you hate Ben Shapiro?
Well, then you'd better watch and like the new Star Wars because we had a woman direct it.
And it's like, I do like if you cast diverse people or employ diverse people to make your films.
Don't get me wrong.
I do like that.
I'm not, that's great.
I'll take that.
But so often this is just clearly they know that the outrage also is a way to sell tickets and they know that things are so polarized they can use that kind of hatred both ways.
Actually, the first Wonder Woman genuinely felt like it was a little risky to criticize because it felt so synonymous with feminism and what was happening in the world.
And then the second one was so bad that we're like, oh, thank God, okay.
It's so bad that nobody could possibly defend it, so we don't have to feel like we're hostage to it a little bit.
The answer isn't, oh yeah, well, I'm going to love everything this bazillion dollar corporation does.
That's great.
That's not like a solution to it.
I'm not accusing you of that.
No, no, no.
I'm here agreeing with you because I think that is a fair point.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed, though, because when Daily Wire didn't like the Snow White that Disney was working on, they decided they were going to make them wrong.
Please try to make your own Star Wars.
Oh my god.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we're gonna see them.
Oh, that would be the best.
Yeah.
Oh, that would be the funniest thing to ever happen.
Yep.
It would be so terrible.
But in general, the response to this has been pretty negative, pretty intense.
A response to what?
To the female director for Star Wars.
There is some language in one of the right-wing articles that says that there's opposition to the woke baton being handed off to the next activist looking to substitute the genius and message of the original films with identity politics while further sowing seeds of dissension across our nation.
She hasn't done it!
There's no movie yet.
You're just reacting to her identity.
That's it.
Yeah.
You have to wait a second, you know?
Yep, but she's going to be responsible for injecting identity politics when all you're doing is responding to her identity here.
Yeah.
It's insane.
Fingers crossed.
Daily Wire, Star Wars, you know, it'll be like an off-brand.
Totally chill, totally normal response that these assholes are having to just literally an announcement of someone's identity.
That's it.
Yeah.
But now we're going to pivot to something a little more serious.
Star Trek.
Yeah.
This was at the beginning of January.
On January 5th, Alaska Airlines flight 1282 from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California.
Oh, here we go.
I know what you're going to talk about with this fucking shit.
A panel blew out after takeoff.
Thankfully, even though every single airline is always, from my experience recently, completely full to the max, nobody was actually sitting in the seats directly next to the panel.
So there were, you know, very few injuries.
No one was like horror movie status being sucked out of the plane, thank goodness.
They were able to land the plane.
Just going to note though, someone, there was a, I think, not like a young kid, but I think like a young-ish person who's like, shirt was sucked out and like their phone was, I think there was an iPhone that got sucked out that actually they found and it was okay.
That was a good iPhone commercial.
But yeah, no, this is, it was, wow.
This was close to being a horrifying disaster.
Yeah.
You know, it's like just luck that it happened at the right time.
I'm incredibly traumatic for everyone who experienced it.
Oh yeah, for sure.
Normally I'm not a freak out due to freak accident thing, but I know we're going to talk about it, but I'm genuinely like my position is no one in our household is flying on a Boeing fucking until something is figured out.
Yeah.
Because there's actually a systemic issue going on.
There is, and we're gonna get there.
And that issue is diversity, baby!
Hey!
You scooped me!
I know, sorry.
It's alright.
So, they were able to land the plane, and after they landed the plane, the FAA grounded all Boeing 737 MAX planes requiring safety inspections for all of them before they were going to let them be up in the air again.
Alaska and United have been doing sort of independent safety inspections as a result of this, and they're also going to be doing The broader FAA ones as well.
And from their initial inspections, Alaska and United have both come out to the media and saying that they are very concerned with what they were seeing.
They had many planes for both of those airlines that had loose bolts.
It's not clear if that was the issue specifically in the Alaska flight, but you know, you have people who manage a fleet of planes for a living, and they're walking around and being like, Uh, that's not good.
That's not good.
That's not good.
And it's like a lot of planes and their fleets are being impacted.
Boeing definitely has quality control issues is sort of the general determination here.
And we'll have to wait to find out exactly what went wrong with this flight.
Congress is calling them out for it, especially because there were two previous crashes on the MAX planes, not in the United States, but in October 2018 in Indonesia, there was a crash.
And in March 2019 in Ethiopia, there was a crash.
And combined between those two airplane crashes, 346 people died.
They grounded all MAX planes as a result of that.
Yeah, that was the autopilot thing, right?
And things were supposed to be better, yeah.
And it was, you know, like a combination of factors, but primarily... Because the autopilot was a diversity hire, that's why.
It ended up costing Boeing $20 billion in fines, compensation for the people impacted, legal fees, etc.
And then there's also an estimated $60 billion loss when you look at the indirect costs, because they had 1,200 canceled orders as a result, understandably.
I canceled my order.
I was like, fuck this, I'm done.
Not today, Boeing.
Hey, stop making my jet.
I don't want it anymore.
But we don't know what happened here with that panel in particular, so while we wait for more information about the cause, the right is taking it upon themselves to give us some ideas.
Yeah, while we wait for what really happened, the right is deciding what happened.
That's cool.
And none other than James Lindsay is the biggest voice here.
You know, honestly, like this is probably a whole debunk episode of its own.
This in particular, Hunt, like he is threaded so much on Twitter.
That's what makes him so frustrating is he just produces so much garbage that you can't keep up.
And I hate him so much that multiple times I've been like, all right, gotta finally do a James Lindsay episode.
And I read one tweet, I'm like, no, I can't do it.
Can't do it.
Someday we'll figure it out.
But maybe when AI gets good enough to read it all for me, he's insufferable.
Elon Musk is retweeting him.
Elon Musk says, do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritize DEI hiring over your safety?
That is actually happening.
People will die due to DEI, right?
That's his like little catchphrase that he likes saying.
And that's just ridiculous.
That's just not true at all.
James Lindsay really like focuses in on You know, like the SEC filings where Boeing has demonstrated their commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and they've added it as a way that executives could receive additional compensation because it's one of their target areas.
This is being completely misinterpreted purposefully, probably.
Perfect microcosm of what actually goes on where the idiot, insane, right version is they are prioritizing diversity so much that they'll just fine.
They see a black person on the street, they'll give them a job.
Head of safety at Boeing.
And then what really is happening is like, no, it's a way to pay some people more money, like executives more money.
Yeah.
They're just like, if you hit a target, then we can pay the people more money that already make all the money.
Right.
So this is talking about their annual incentive plans for their executives.
In 2021, they had, you know, financial performance leads to whether or not the executive would get an incentive.
But then there's operational performance measures as well.
In 2021, those were product safety, employee safety and quality.
In 2022, they added climate and diversity, equity and inclusion.
So now there are five areas in 2022.
Oh, does that mean literal climate like as in emissions or like worth climate?
No, I think it's literal emissions.
As part of this, James Lindsay says up to 40% of the executive's potential pay is in that annual incentive pay program, which is tied to hitting DEI targets.
And I don't think- That does not seem right.
Yeah.
It's not.
I don't think he knows how to read charts or he's colorblind because the number- Oh, he is an idiot.
Does that help?
The number that he's citing, it's, you know, one of the donut charts, right?
So it shows the proportion of compensation tied to these various things.
And the 40% that he's citing is depicting premium-priced stock options.
Annual incentive is not the color he's talking about.
Annual incentive is 13% of the compensation.
And again, DEI is one component of their annual incentive pay program.
And nobody calls him out on this.
Oh, well, let's do it.
So we're going to do it, yeah.
But again, it's an insane thread.
He goes on crazy tangents.
I have their DEI report that they put together, kind of their plan and their principles.
Oh, we need to do a whole thing on this.
I would love to do that because it's just, it's ridiculous.
But that's one piece of the puzzle.
You know, it's not just James Lindsay and Elon Musk going after Boeing.
We also have another voice that I know you love to hear from.
Well, look, as long as it's not James Lindsay, actually.
OK, it's not.
Yeah.
Somehow, by giving me worse news and then pulling it back a little bit, it's better.
This is a management tactic.
She's been reading, Lee's been reading a management book, you know?
Yep, yep.
Oh, you're talking about Glenn Beck?
Yeah.
Okay, I'll be honest.
I actually don't mind listening to Glenn Beck, just voice-wise.
He's kind of like... Ridiculous.
Yeah, he's a little bit silly.
You know what I mean?
I actually don't even mind Bill O'Reilly for that reason, too.
He's such a dork.
He's a clown.
I don't mind listening to a clown.
You listening, Stuart?
Someone like James Lindsay or Ben Shapiro are just agony.
So that's delightful.
is a wonderful metaphor for our entire society.
When, now listen carefully, boys and girls, when we promote people because of their political views or their race or their sex, even if that sex is completely made up, instead of what they know and who instead of what they know and who they are, the content of their character, we will continue to have planes fall out of the sky.
Yeah.
Whatever company is involved in all of this stuff, their, quote, planes, whatever it is they build, will fall out of the sky.
Until our government gets away from this craziness, America's Republic will fall out of the sky.
Yeah, they put a quote on The Republic.
They're like, you need more diversity in The Republic or it's gonna fall out.
What are you talking about, you idiot?
So ridiculous.
God, he's so overly dramatic, he's the best.
Yeah, and this is obviously like really stupid.
Barron's did an article where they talked with people in the airplane industry and analysts of the airplane industry that actually like chimed in on this and talked about the things that happened in 2018 and 2019, those crashes.
The autopilot issues there, which was an enormous safety issue, was designed long before they had any changes to management incentives, doesn't believe DEI has anything to do with building safe planes.
Yeah, plus, you know what's really a bad management incentive?
Is killing a bunch of people in your airplanes.
Yeah.
The idea that people, like these managers, are gonna be like, no, don't make a plane that works.
How about, in order for me to get this 4% incentive, Just make a plane that crashes, but hire a person of color.
It's just stupid.
Someone chimed in and said they do think that Boeing has a culture issue, but it's not one associated with diversity.
Well, it's also deregulation.
Yeah, under-resourcing production and inspections.
I'm sure there's elements of this that are tied to capitalism that the right doesn't want to talk about because, again, there are other metrics besides DEI that lead to— - Deregulation and the ability to do stuff without as much inspection because we've created, it's literally the opposite.
If they think it's because we're too liberal that planes are falling out of the sky, it's actually the opposite.
We're too fucking Reagan-ish.
It's the exact opposite of what these people think. - And the last point in this Barron's article that I really want to highlight is that if DEI were the problem, then we would theoretically see this with Airbus.
Airbus is out of Europe, and Europe's DEI policies are stricter than American ones, and we don't have that problem with Airbus.
Airbus is flying fine, so not falling out of the sky.
No way.
Wow.
What a diva.
No, no insult to you.
It really is.
This is, it's frustrating because as stupid as this argument is, this is the argument right now.
Like this is, this is pretty major.
The DEI thing.
We've been doing some work on researching this, but it's man, it feels so big.
It's hard to get a handle on it, but that's the next frontier.
And it's as stupid as it is important.
Yep.
All right.
I want to fly us on over to... Brilliant transition.
Well done.
Thank you.
To Oklahoma.
You might have seen some comments from folks saying Oklahoma is not okay.
That's been sort of like a trending...
Knowing you, I'm still unsure if you're talking about the musical or the state.
We'll see.
Both.
I mean, no.
Actually, the musical is okay.
The musical's great.
We can debate that later.
I meant for the news story.
Like, are you covering an Oklahoma-related... Like, they cast a black Oklahoma or something.
No, I'm talking about the state.
I don't know any of the characters.
I assume one of them is named Oklahoma.
No!
Oh my God.
Mr. Oklahoma.
Mr. Oklahoma.
I don't know.
That's another podcast.
I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole.
I'm going to pull myself back.
This just came out like last week.
Ryan Walters is the superintendent of Oklahoma's Department of Education, and last week he created a Library Media Advisory Committee and announced that he appointed Haya Raychick, aka, also known as Libs of TikTok, to it.
Oh, God.
Yeah, he issued a press release on Twitter and included a little comment that says, no one has done more to expose what the radical left is all about than Haya Raychik and Libs of TikTok.
Hers is a powerful voice to protect Oklahoma kids from porn in schools and woke indoctrination.
I'm proud to have her on our team.
Yeah.
And I called this out.
I had shared this when this came out, but hers is H-E-R apostrophe S, you know, superintendent.
Education department.
Oh my god.
That's too on the nose.
It's too on the nose.
It's so bad.
Their ideology is killing them so much that it causes them to put people who can't read in charge of the reading.
It's so depressing.
It's too depressing to even imagine there's nothing in my mind the order of offenses number one is using apostrophe for a plural Now that's complicated somewhat by the fact that my own fucking phone Decides to just do that for no reason.
It's the dumbest.
You gotta tweet it out Shit, yeah, I think I do.
I think I need to do that.
I can't understand.
I'm telling you, I could have programmed a better autocorrect in a TI-85 calculator in 1993.
I don't understand it.
It decides that, like, what's the one it always decides is not a word?
It decides were is not a word.
Like, if I'm saying were, it's like, you mean we're.
I'm like, no, I meant the word were.
That's what I meant.
That is a legitimate word.
You know, those aren't like words that you use in place of one another ever.
There's not a close call on that.
Right, the context definitely determines which word you're trying to use.
So obviously this had quite a lot of reaction to it.
The apostrophe?
Yeah, I agree, finally!
Get out the pitchforks, everybody!
But this is crazy.
This is insane.
So, I mean, it's even a Republican in the state legislature in Oklahoma is saying, I don't see any need to have a 28-year-old realtor from New York that has no children appointed to this position when there are extremely qualified parents, teachers, and librarians in Oklahoma.
Yeah, who can be racist and homophobic but use the proper apostrophes.
Yeah, I agree.
Democrat in the state legislature of Oklahoma, Representative Mickey Dolan said, is she a librarian?
No.
Does she have kids in Oklahoma schools?
No.
Does she even live in Oklahoma?
No.
How is this representative of the people to be served?
And their position is that this actually might violate the Department of Education's own rules for their advisory committees because they are supposed to be representative of the people that are being served.
Ryan Walters doesn't care.
He loves this.
He loves this so much.
He connected with Fox News and issued a statement for their coverage of this and said, That's a new one.
That's a new one.
Oh, so Donald Trump?
Yeah. - Yeah.
Oklahoma is ground zero to take back our schools from the radical leftists.
I am proud to have her as a fierce defender of conservative values.
Union Smut Peddlers is the funniest thing.
Yeah.
Like, why would that be?
I actually... That's my band name.
That's not bad.
No, I think it was Janis Joplin's band name, wasn't it?
The Union Smut Peddlers?
I followed all this nonsense enough to where I know the origins of all the word salad that that was.
I get it.
But if you're a human being who goes outside, then you must be pretty confused as to what that could possibly mean.
Union smut peddlers?
Yeah, he really does not like the teachers union in Oklahoma.
Why would their goal be to peddle smut?
Look, you can even take a conservative stance and be like, I hate unions because they jack up pay and then the taxpayer has to pay.
Why would the union position be, we also want porn in the school?
It's a perk that we want as a union, and we feel we deserve it.
Well, and I think what's happening here, too, is that he was able to get a revised definition of pornography through the Department of Education, and so now it's like a reasonable person would find to be inappropriate based on the youngest person that could access this material, basically.
Anything involving, like, puberty, depending on if there's images in there, I guess, would be considered porn if someone who's, you know, like, seven got a hold of it.
So stupid.
You know, not just the representatives are upset and really confused about what the heck is happening here, but a lot of parents are also very upset.
And a lot of them are talking about a role that Raychick played in a very real concerning thing that happened in Oklahoma recently.
Back in August, she tweeted out a video that an elementary school librarian had made on TikTok.
And, you know, it's like a tongue in cheek sort of silly thing trying to be funny.
And the librarian said, POV, teachers in your state are dropping like flies but are still just not quite finished pushing your woke agenda at the public school.
And in the caption, she also wrote, my radical liberal agenda is teaching kids to love books and be kind.
How about you?
I think I'm going to make one of these every year until I die or end my teaching era.
Make one of what?
TikTok.
Like just being silly and stuff.
Oh, OK.
And so Libs of TikTok retweeted it and He helped connect the puzzle pieces and said, this is someone who teaches elementary school kids.
Ryan Walters retweeted, libs of TikTok.
I wonder if that teacher was like, yeah, it's in.
I said that.
Yeah.
It's in my video.
You blew the lid off that one, libs of TikTok moron.
Oh, I know.
I know.
And so then Ryan Walters, the superintendent, says, Democrats say it doesn't exist.
The liberal media denies the issue.
Even some Republicans hide from it.
Woke ideology is real and I'm here to stop it.
What issue?
Did I miss something in the video?
She was wearing like a yellow wig and then saying that, pushing her woke agenda at the public school.
My radical liberal agenda is teaching kids to love books and be kind.
And then his response is... She said it was to... I know.
I can't.
I just can't with these people.
You reach a level of dumbness saturation where I can't do it anymore.
I'm just, my brain hurts.
I get it.
This wasn't a cleverly veiled satire that they fell for.
She's literally saying My woke agenda is to teach kids to be kind.
They're like, knew it.
Knew there's a woke agenda.
You guys, you guys doubted me when I said there's a woke agenda.
Well, how do you feel now?
How do you even respond to that?
I don't understand.
Well, I'll tell you how some people responded to it.
Some people decided that they were going to call in bomb threats to schools.
As a result of this, specifically mentioning the teacher in the TikTok, this included an elementary school that received bomb threats multiple days in a row, and kids had to go on lockdown for a chunk of the school day before, you know, thankfully there were no bombs, but they had to treat them as credible, obviously, right?
And one of the messages that was sent to one of the schools says, quote, the innocence of children is sacred.
That is a fact that has been known for the entirety of human history.
And the end of civilization, such as in ancient Rome, are often marked by normalization of pedophilia and child abuse.
I'm not going to stand by as you B words continue to indoctrinate and prey upon our children.
This is why we placed a bomb in the school.
You will evacuate the building so nobody dies.
Cool.
Why is that the response?
Like, that is insane.
Yeah, these people are crazy.
Insane!
So now with this coverage of her being appointed to this advisory board for library, media, whatnot, that's so stupid.
A lot of the articles are talking about what happened in August and connecting her to it, connecting Haya Raychick to it.
And she is, she's not happy about that, and she is manipulating the interpretation of that coverage.
saying that they're all defaming her.
They're all lying about her.
But she's saying because they're saying that I called in bomb threats or directed people to do that.
Nobody's saying that.
Literally no one has said that in any of these articles.
Everyone is saying you retweeted something and you know the consequences of your rabid following.
In the same way like Trump, right?
When he says something, it's kind of an indication of, you know, like what they're thinking.
It's stochastic terrorism.
Yeah.
And Walter's, you know, like I said, he's eating this up.
He's loving it.
He thinks that everyone is mad about this and talking about it because we're scared of the work that she's going to do.
But it's not just her.
It's an entire committee.
He has not shared the names of the other people of this committee.
Which other Twitter personalities are going to fill out the committee?
Yeah.
Cat Turd 2.
I got my money on Cat Turd 2 for a position.
But they have been meeting already, so we'll see what kinds of nonsense comes from that.
This all comes just after one month when Walters issued a press release that declared Oklahoma would no longer follow the American Library Association guidelines for their schools.
Looking at the standards of what it used to be and what the standards are that they're drafting now and public comment just closed for them.
But I do have a draft version.
And it looks like the primary change is that they are moving from sort of a group of different items, skills, dispositions, responsibilities and self-assessment strategies and moving to just focusing on skills.
And then they're also breaking out what those skills should be, those standards and guidelines based off of grade level, whereas the American Library Association guidelines is sort of overall.
But when I'm looking at a side by side of the actual content of them, when I'm not just looking at the structure change or that Oklahoma decided they didn't want to have responsibilities and standards tied to that for whatever reason, the biggest change that I see is the word diverse has been removed.
You know, that's not something that they care about here about, you know, diversity of thought, diversity of classroom, anything like that.
And Walters is just very insistent that the American Library Association guidelines were, it was another opportunity for woke indoctrination.
Some reporters, you know, local reporters and stuff asked him to specify which of Oklahoma's current standards from the ALA, American Library Association, were considered activist or left wing for his, you know, from his interpretation.
Like the books part.
And they just didn't even They were like, yeah, we're not gonna, we're not gonna chime in on that.
When he tweeted about this, he included that the ALA is an advocacy organization run by a self-proclaimed Marxist.
I don't know where he's getting that at all.
I tried looking that up and I'm not, I don't know.
I don't understand.
Boy, this person's the next president.
Yeah, this is... Oh, probably.
He's young.
Until we solidly rebuke this movement, and maybe not even then, but until we do that at a minimum, this is how they think that they win stuff.
They're all doing their little impression of Trump.
And I think another thing that's happening is when they figure out that they can't do the charm part that Trump does particularly well, Then they think what they are missing is more cruelty.
Yeah.
I think the only saving grace a little bit is that actually the people as a whole aren't that cruel.
There's a solid percentage, don't get me wrong.
Like DeSantis, well, he sucked for a million reasons, but that level of cruelty doesn't appeal to the masses very well, you know?
And I think that, but I think that's unfortunate because that is the part that they're emulating, thinking that's the missing ingredient that's keeping them from being President Trump, you know?
Yeah.
And then just some other notes, because again, this guy, he's going to probably make future appearances on the show.
I'll just say that.
There was an article where they did a Public Records Act request for reimbursement receipts from Oklahoma State and found that even though the governor's office had banned public spending on out-of-state travel, Walters Over the course of his first year had racked up a lot of expenses and was being reimbursed for them.
And that was things like speaking engagement fees when he went to go to a Moms for Liberty event.
Like just really like hyper-partisan situations that he was in.
He also expensed seeing a horror movie.
He went to like the red carpet premiere for a movie and then like charged the state for it.
Okay, so maybe he'll be taken out by corruption.
Because honestly, it correlates because when you're just a corrupt piece of shit, like a good way to deflect from that is these kinds of MAGA-esque tactics because they're conversation stoppers.
Like you said, they ask you, hey, which part of the thing is liberal?
And they don't have to answer.
They don't care.
It's a way to distract from other evil pursuits.
Yeah, but I don't know because then they bring this up with the governor.
And again, the governor's office had a ban.
And it's like such a non position that that the governor's office responded to.
Governor Stitt thinks all elected officials and government employees should be good stewards of taxpayer dollars.
That's their response.
To this when it's like itemized in front of their face what this guy is doing.
You know, Heritage Foundation, again, Moms for Liberty.
One of the recent board agendas that I was looking at was to potentially they were going to be discussing securing First Liberty Institute for legal representation for the board.
First Liberty Institute, if it sounds familiar, it should.
They are focused on religious liberty, of course.
They represented Coach Joe Kennedy.
Oh, God.
For the football coach and praying at the 50-yard line that SCOTUS decided we needed to be able to allow.
Oh, he's not a football coach anymore, by the way.
Not anymore, no.
No.
That's the kind of moves that they're making in Oklahoma right now.
I don't think Oklahoma is the only state where this is happening, so I guess this is a call to action a little bit, too.
Oh, for sure.
Pay attention to what's happening locally within your city, your county, your state.
All of this stuff is happening everywhere kind of all the time.
And I'm only one person.
I'm going to try and illuminate where I can.
Well yeah, and there aren't newspapers anymore.
It really is a big systemic problem.
I mean, newspapers, local newspapers are just absolutely dying, if not already dead.
And there's genuine, legitimate studies that show when you lose a local newspaper, corruption in the local government goes up.
Because there's just nobody Nobody's paying attention to that.
Like, think about it.
I mean, when's the last time you paid attention to it?
And we're a subselection of very engaged people.
Sometimes it makes me feel bad.
I'm like, God, should I somehow, like, pay attention and cover, like, Sacramento-related stuff?
Yeah.
But then it's like, who's the audience for that?
Because everything is so nationalized now.
Everything has to be the national news stories.
It's really, really unfortunate.
And so, yeah, it's always a good reminder as a corrective to try to pay attention to local election.
Make sure at a minimum you're voting and everything.
That should go without saying.
Yeah, and again, if there's something that you see and you just don't have, you know, the spoons to do it, you can always send it our way and I'm happy to dig into things further.
Like if you see any apostrophes used incorrectly, please send them.
Yes, tell me.
Then I just wanted to close out our little January roundup with a moment of silence for two really important politicians of our current age, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis.
Yeah.
This month, we saw two of the biggest anti-woke GOP candidates drop out of the race.
Vivek dropped out January 16th and endorsed Trump after finishing fourth in the Iowa caucus.
Ramaswamy said that he made the decision after determining there was no path forward for him in the race.
And in quotes, absent things that we don't want to see happen in this country.
What does that mean?
What a nutjob that guy is.
Isn't that weird?
Yeah.
He said he would be open to vice presidential consideration, so maybe we'll see him there.
Just putting it out there.
Single, 35, you know, it's just like, come on, man, so desperate.
He was sure to say, I'm not somebody who's going to be able to speak anyone's convictions but my own.
So if that's a role that I can perform from the vice presidency or any other one, I'm going to evaluate whatever is best for the future of this country.
But my number one commitment is to truth.
So we said goodbye to him.
I think one of the things that was really interesting when he stepped out of the race, specific to the Iowa caucus, and I know you and I talked about this offline a little bit, but The Nation reports on this, that in the days before the Iowa caucus, his wife, Apoorva Ramaswamy, was getting questions in campaign events and stuff that made clear that despite holding nearly 300 events in the state,
More than any other presidential campaign, a number of Iowa Republicans still have questions about the Ramaswami's faith, nationality, and race, even though he's addressed all of those factors of his personal life repeatedly.
And one voter...
No, you are though.
That's the thing.
You're explicitly doing that.
Yeah.
skeptics of her husband's campaign mentioned his dark skin and they think he's Muslim.
And in the bulwark, they quoted another Iowa voter as saying, I'm not being prejudiced, guys, but I don't like his name.
I don't like where he came from.
No, you are, though.
That's the thing.
You're explicitly doing that.
After 9-11, I still harbor a lot of hard feelings.
Against India?
Yeah.
It's just mind-boggling that that was happening.
And so, yeah, I would say that racism still exists in this country.
There was a little-known third plane that hit the towers, flown by India, I guess.
Yeah.
And then, of course, Ron DeSantis, on January 21st, he ended his campaign and endorsed Trump ahead of the New Hampshire primary.
So he decided to bow out after Iowa as well.
But took a little bit of time.
Apparently, he was making calls to his, like, top donors and supporters and privately letting them know ahead of time.
Because he finished second, but it was a 30-point differential.
Yeah, it's meaningless.
Exactly.
He canceled TV appearances in between Iowa caucus and announcing he was ending his candidacy and blamed it on a miscommunication with his PAC.
He still stopped in South Carolina on his way back down to Florida, which I think is hilarious, even though he knew he was going to drop out.
His statement was, while I've had disagreements with Donald Trump, such as on the coronavirus pandemic and his elevation of Anthony Fauci, Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden.
That is clear.
But he's still, you know, focused on Washington.
Some people think that he's trying to lay some groundwork for 2028 because he wants to do it again.
I don't.
I don't know, but he's really chiming in on a lot of things at the national level still.
He said that there should be some constitutional amendments for the U.S.
Constitution because the president should be able to line item veto things within major bills.
He has also been calling for Ilhan Omar to have her citizenship revoked and deported to Somalia because of comments that she's been making in the last couple of days.
And then just pretty funny.
Because he is not a serious person.
And honestly, a lot of the Republican sphere, they are not serious people.
I'll just go out and say it.
The top queries on Google while he was campaigning was about his height and also whether or not his boots were designed to make him appear taller.
Like, that's what people were Googling about Ron Santos.
That was by far the most popular thing and important thing.
And pudding.
That's true.
Pudding was the first big one and then the height stuff, the boot stuff just took over after that.
He must have been like trying to eat Pudding like on the stump, like with three fingers.
Guys, I'm doing this again.
Don't talk about my boots, please.
God.
Yeah.
So we've bid adieu to both of them and yeah, moment of silence for our four new patrons.
And they said, I don't know what that meant, you commies.
Well you skipped the most important story of the month.
What?
Well, uh...
They call me offensive, controversial.
Oh, God!
They can't cancel my message 'cause I'm the biggest independent rapper in the whole friggin' world.
Think that I'm racist, y'all right.
I'm not ashamed because I'm white.
If every Caucasian's a bigot, I guess every Muslim's a terrorist.
Every liberal is right.
I don't wanna talk to folks who don't get it.
Go, woke, woke, broke.
No hopeless.
Pathetic.
Pro-choice pronouns.
Pro-love, you're progressive.
But you ain't pro-gun, no one to protect it.
Where the American flag's at?
Remember when people would hang those?
It's insane.
It's hard to stop because it's the best.
But can you go to Ben Shapiro's?
I know, I kind of wanted to do that too.
And then I was like, can I listen to this long enough to get to that?
But then I had to stop at it.
Remember when people would hang those?
It might as well be like as big as Big Ben clock.
It's like the same.
Yeah.
Now I have to find that so people know what I'm talking about.
Uh-oh, uh-oh.
K to the N to the O-P-E.
She's the dopest little shorty in all Pawnee, Indiana.
Why didn't you stop at Pawnee?
Let's you know, seriously, I get sexier every day.
And that is not a lie.
That is for real.
R to the O to the N.
And then I say, Swanson's got swag at the size of Big Ben Club.
You got it.
Pawnee, Indiana.
and Ben Clock.
Oh, best character in the history of television.
Anyway, that rap is better than what we just heard.
Do we have to go to the part where Ben Shapiro... We have to.
Yeah, you're right.
If I brought it up...
You know, because not enough people watched it when I put it on Facebook and I, you know, said they had to.
Yeah, we've been punished.
Enough people said that they weren't going to watch it.
The best part is, I don't know if people know, this is, you know what, people are not as online as we are and they don't hate themselves as much as we apparently do.
This is some rapper who seems to be a real guy.
It's depressing.
I think he's some sort of real person.
Yeah, I think I joked, I was like, is this an Andy Samberg character?
Yeah, yeah, it should be.
Oh, that'd be the best.
Oh, what if he just did a reveal and it was Andy Samberg?
Oh my God, that'd be amazing.
And he did a rap featuring, you're not going to believe this when we say it, featuring Ben Shapiro.
And we're going to go to that section just for fun.
But I should note, because this is audio, you're not seeing that for a while before Ben says anything, he just stands there in a sweatshirt.
That says facts.
Yeah.
And the rapper is like, this is awesome, man.
I've got Ben Shapiro just standing there.
That's the least cool thing I've ever seen in my life.
Like twerk or something.
Do anything.
Yeah.
Oh, so yeah, that's the part where I guess Ben Shapiro is just there for the chorus.
He just like backs up the chorus.
When does he actually say anything?
I don't know.
Maybe here.
Let's look at the stats.
I've got the facts.
My money like lives in my pockets are fat.
Oh yeah, epic.
Don't be a whap.
Dog, it's a yarmouth.
I'll hold me no cap.
Look at the graphs.
Look at my charts.
You're blowing money on strippers and cars.
You going to prison.
I'm on television.
Dawg, no one knows who you are.
Keep hating on me on the internet.
My comments section all woke Karen.
Then I make racks off compound interest.
Y'all live with your parents.
Nikki take some notes.
I just did this for fun.
All my people download this.
Let's get a billboard number one.
That's real, everyone.
Insane.
This really happened.
God, it's actually genius, I'll tell you.
It is business genius, because it's so dumb, I find myself wanting to watch it for how dumb it is.
They found the perfect line between parody and seriousness.
Where you could actually, you could be a Ben Shapiro fan apparently and watch this, but you could be a me and be like, that's so bad.
I just want to, I don't normally do that.
Normally I'm not like, I don't like watching bad things.
It's unpleasant to me.
That's not funny, but this is parody of itself.
So it's like self-parody.
So I'm like, oh, that's, I like watching parody.
It's that bad.
It's incredible.
I actually marvel at it.
It's got millions of views, 8.6 million views over four days.
One of the top songs on something, I don't know what, iTunes, I don't know.
Yeah, I think it was like iTunes or something.
It's probably made, it's gonna make a zillion dollars.
Just the video, I mean, it's gonna make hundreds of thousands of dollars at a minimum, but probably way more.
How depressing is that?
This is the worst thing anyone's ever made.
And it's the best, it's also the best.
And so, with that.
So forget all the crap Lydia said, that's the important story.
All the work I did.
Thomas pressed play on a YouTube video.
I pushed a button.
Yep.
By the way, I didn't even find, you found the video.
I did find it.
I still did the research.
It's Barbie all over again.
Oh, hey, I just found out I got nominated for an award for this podcast.
Did you get your nomination?
No, not me.
Not this time.
Well, try harder.
Yeah.
Put a little work in.
All right.
It's been a great month.
Seriously, though, that was amazing.
I actually really love that roundup.
Maybe we do that every month because actually it's good to be able to get some of these stories that are, again, it's not a deep, deep, deep dive, but it's stuff that I want to hear about and I want to keep up with.
So we might.
Yeah, like those mini debunks.
Let us know how you feel.
Maybe it'll be a monthly feature because I had a good time.
My vote is yes.
But, you know, we'll see what the audience thinks.
