Piers Morgan Uncensored - Piers Morgan Uncensored: Rap Battle, Tech Giants Grilled

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

On Piers Morgan Uncensored: Ben Shapiro's anti-woke rap song is tearing up the charts - but now he’s being accused of cultural appropriation. Do his critics have a point? We'll have an Uncensored rap battle with Tom MacDonald, DJ Vlad and Talib Kweli... Tech giants are being grilled over their deadly failure to protect children - if they can censor opinions they don’t like, why can’t they keep vulnerable users safe? Piers is joined by Seth Dillon, Mario Nawfal and the godfather of virtual reality Jaron Lanier. Watch Piers Morgan Uncensored at 8pm on TalkTV on Sky 522, Virgin Media 606, Freeview 237 and Freesat 217. Listen on DAB+ and the app.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tonight, I'll Piersbork on censor tech giants and grilled over their deadly failure to protect children, but they can censor opinions they don't like. Why can't they keep our vulnerable users safe? Benchabiro's anti-woke rat song is tearing up the chast. Now inevitably, he's been accused of cultural appropriation and racism. To his critics have a point, I'll share an uncensored rat battle. And the top vegan restaurant says falling sales and empty tables are forced it into a rather significant change. is going to sell meat.

That's the penny finally dropped, but nobody wants to eat gruel on their big night out. Live from the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored. Good evening from London. Welcome to Piers Morgan Unsensored. Every so often, the West Coast tech giants

are hauled over to the east coast of the United States for a ritual humiliation at the hands of the US Senate. They land a few punches, they get punched a few times, a few headlines get generated, and you end up, with some very powerful people looking pretty uncomfortable, but nothing normally really changes. When it comes to an issue as serious as child abuse,

it surely has to. Yesterday, the head honchos of tech giants, including Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and X, appeared in Congress to face questions on the serious harm their products are causing to children. Some of the exchanges were toe-curling, none more so than the moment Mark Zuckerberg, who runs Meta, which is Facebook and Instagram,

attempted to explain why some content flagged as child abuse, on Instagram somehow remains available to view. This material wasn't just living on the dark corners of Instagram. Instagram was helping pedophiles find it by promoting graphic hashtags, including hashtag ped-hore and hashtag pre-teen sex to potential buyers. Instagram also displayed the following warning screen to, individuals who were searching for child abuse material.

These results may contain images of child sexual abuse. And then you gave users two choices. Get resources or see results anyway. Mr. Zuckerberg, what the hell were you thinking? All right, Senator. The basic science behind that is that when people are searching for something, that is problematic, it's often helpful to, rather than just blocking it, to help direct them towards something that could be helpful for getting them to get help.

In what I understand get resources, in what sane universe, is there a link for C results anyway? Well, because we might be wrong. Well, yeah, you might be, but really, that's the excuse. Surely if there is any risk whatsoever that images of child abuse are being shared, they must be instantly removed. How can any same person argue otherwise? Senator Lindsey Graham was loudly cheered by watching parents when he said this. Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the company's before us, I know you don't mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands. You have a product. You have a product that's killing people.

Well, he has a product that's incredibly popular, and it's made him incredibly rich. A lot of people use Facebook very safely, and there's no problem with that. It's one of the most successful companies in history. But the people that were cheering there were parents whose children had been victims of horrific exploitation on those platforms, or whose children had taken their lives. Well, Mark Zuckerberg made this apology. Would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been harmed by your product? Show them the pictures.

Would you like to apologize for what you've done to these good people? I'm sure. Everything of you have all done through. It's terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered. And this is why we invest so much and are going to continue doing industry-leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families have had to suffer. Well, despite his rather unfortunate tendency to look and sound like an AI-generated lawyer,

I do believe Mark Zuckerberg wants his products to be a force for good in the world. and at least he had the decency to turn around and apologize to those parents. He wasn't by any means the only tech giant boss there. They were all there. But he was the one that did that and credit to him for doing so. This is the way the modern world communicates.

It's where we're entertained and educated social media. It's integral to our lives. It's not going to go anywhere. It's going to get bigger and bigger. That's exactly why we need to trust that the people in charge of it know what they're doing and do it properly. One thing they're very,

very good at is keeping a safe from content they find distasteful. We might remember the scandal of the Hunter Biden laptop, which disappeared from your Facebook news feed, disappeared from Twitter it was called then, deliberately censored by a big tech. And as a result, Joe Biden won the election and we'll never know whether the scandal, had it been properly allowed to permeate through social media because it was all true, might have tipped the balance towards Donald Trump to serve a second term. And yet, ironically, Facebook, along with others, moved quickly to ban Trump himself from their platforms for three years. Well, currently, the Pierce Morgan Uncensored Facebook page appears to have been shadow banned too.

This is a regular occurrence where if they don't really like the look of some content, they just downplay it for the audience so that people don't see it. I don't think that's right. I think that's the form of censorship too. Meta makes $100 billion a year profit. It's time to invest less of it in sanitising opinions and more on keeping children safe. And that applies to all those other platforms too. Well, to discuss that and more, I'm joined by Seth Dillon, CEO of the satirical news site Babylon B. The computer scientist and author of arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now,

Jaron Lanier, and the entrepreneur and host of Roundtable, Mario Northall. Well, welcome to you. It's a pretty star-studied tech-packed this, actually. Let me start with you, Seth. CEO of Babylon be hugely successful digital platform. When you watched all these guys like Zuckerberg yesterday squirming away and being held to account by people who've suffered serious harm, lost their children in some cases, what did you feel about that? Well, you know, I don't take pleasure in them suffering through a moment like that.

I mean, obviously I don't think that they feel good about the fact that there are kids who have committed suicide or have dealt with bullying and harassment or who have had exploitative material of them shared online. I don't think that they feel good about that. But they do bear some responsibility for it in the sense that their platforms are doing a very poor job of policing themselves and taking these things down. They care a lot more about jokes that they don't like, apparently, than they do about content like this because they catch that stuff and take it down right away.

And sometimes this content, this really offensive or unlawful content, stays up for an extended period of time and it's difficult for them to get it down. So they do have some explaining to do. But I don't feel good about seeing them raked over the coals for it. I'd like to see some actual solutions rather than just these conversations where they show up and we throw some punches at them and they leave a little bruised and battered, but don't do anything about it. Yeah, I mean, Mario, I follow your stuff on X and you're a relentless tweeter. You tweet a lot of exciting stuff and a lot of it's very interesting. All of it's pretty full on, and I would argue as well, probably more for an adult consumer

than I would feel comfortable with a child following some of it because you know you cover wars and everything else. Do you think there's a line? I mean, is there a limit to what should be put on these platforms? There is, but who's to decide those limits? Like that hearing was a circus.

You got the same people behind... So someone just called me, I apologize. You got the same people behind a lot of these... Focus mode. A lot of this censorship. Yeah, yeah, so sorry, I just put it on, do not disturb. So the same people behind the censorship. So censoring information about COVID that they call misinformation,

censoring information when it comes to election interference and what they consider to be misinformation again. And now they're using a topic that is the right thing to censors, illegal content, but suddenly they care. And you've got senators, Elizabeth Warren, Mark Warner, Amy Klobuchar, they were behind a lot of that censorship over the last two years, but now suddenly they need. need to censor certain content. It's illegal and social media companies need to do more.

I just find it ridiculous. Do you self-censor? I mean, is there a lot of stuff you don't post because you think actually younger people shouldn't see this? Our audience is not younger people. So if you want to hold me as... But how do you know that? Exactly. So it's difficult for me. So my content is out there. How do you prevent young people from seeing that content? Obviously, banning children from getting to social media companies, which some people propose is a stupid idea. You've tried banning children from porn websites. All you do is get a disclaimer. Are you about the age of 18? Yes or no? That's it. That's not going to work. So the solution,

in my opinion, is a lot trickier than what these guys make it out to be. We've got these senators essentially using this as an opportunity to show that they care. But the bigger agenda is not child exploitation. They don't care as much as they show it. They care about there are specific agendas, yet they're trying to sneak in under the umbrella of censoring content like child porn, which should be censored. Right. Let me bring in, Jaron Leonard.

Jaron, you're a computer scientist, he's done a lot of research in this kind of thing. I've been struck by that there's been an epidemic of anxiety amongst young people around the world, precisely the same period of time in society when there's been an explosion in social media and the ready availability of what I would call dopamine hit material of all kinds, whether it's pornography, whether it's warfare, whatever it is,

it's constant. And they're sharing it and they're being exposed to it. You know, I get exposed to it and I'm 58 years old and I know it has a bit of an effect on me sometimes. You know, during the Israel-Hamas war, it's been really harrowing to see this stuff just bombarding my senses. So God knows what it's like for an 18-year-old or 19-year-old. Do you think there's a link here between this eruption of anxiety that young people are suffering and this constant feed they're getting of dangerous or unsettling or illegal imagery? Almost all researchers, whether they're coming from the left or the right,

have come to the conclusion that it does do damage. And by the way, I want to say, I'm kind of more from the left than you guys, and I'm kind of happy we have an issue where we meet here. I think that's healthy, and maybe that's a gift tech is bringing to us. In my view, the root problem here is actually just one law that could be changed that's not serving anybody, and it's called Section 230. And what it does is it treats Internet hubs as if they were phone companies instead of publishers.

And the problem with that is something nobody saw. I was around when we started this. So I share part of the blame, perhaps. But if you remove enough liability from the Internet platforms, it means that their competitors can kind of put out the same stuff that they put out. So the only business model they have is to gain what we call network effect, which is a kind of monopoly, and then to sell influence and routing of information, or basically to sell virality through algorithms. And then the problem with that is virality runs on the fight or flight mechanisms of the human brain, and it tends to make everybody a little

more nervous and cranky and vein and, you know, all of those things. We see it more easily in our ideological opponents, but the truth is it affects all of us pretty equally. So what I'd like to see is just simply to change that law. And I think what you'll see is the good side of social media, which is very real, have more of a chance and the incentives for the stupid stuff to be reduced. And I think all of us will be happy. And by the way, to my co-panelists, I think you'll do better in business in that world. You might not agree, but I think if it happens, you'll discover that.

So I really want to encourage everybody to look at this win-win scenario, which is just getting rid of one stupid law. It's very rare we have such an easy path. Yeah, but I actually think my observation of the extremities on social media is that the extreme left and extreme right can be as bad as each other with the clip making and the way they go about it.

I don't think there's much difference from what I've seen. Oh, my God, yes. Seth, let me bring you back on another point, which is how much should parents be taking responsibility for enabling their kids to have the phones to get access to all this stuff? Well, I think this is where the problem starts.

It starts at home. It starts with how parents raise their kids and what they put in front of them. My comment on this, when I first saw the hearings happening was that, you know, certainly these are dangerous platforms. They're dangerous even for adults to be on these platforms. And it's okay for us to have exposure to some dangerous things because we're adults and we know how to deal with it. But what are you doing as a parent putting something dangerous like that into the hands of your own child and then just setting them free to go use that device while you, you know, do your own thing

and don't have to worry about parenting your child because they're entertained on this device for hours. That's having very damaging effects on kids. Kids are getting cell phones in their hands when they're 7, 8, 9, 10 years old. They're not prepared to encounter the content that they encounter there. The algorithms are designed to suck those kids in

and make them addicted to that content. It has very, very damaging effects. So parents, that's the first line of defense is parents. There are plenty of apps that enable parents to control that stuff. Parents shouldn't be putting the devices in their hands in the first place. But they feel pressured to because all the other kids have them.

But that's just parenting 101. Mario, what do you think of that? They're finding ways around it. It's a lot more complex, Seth. Like, you know, it's always easy to blame the parent, but there's only so much they could do this. There's apps to block certain websites to block certain apps,

but there's ways around it. And these children are smarter than their parents in finding ways around it. So I think social media companies, well, I think that... It's the first line of defense. It's not the whole answer. I agree, agree. But what's happening here is that this hearing

is focusing on on the social media companies, censoring the children, which I think there should be some level of censorship. But I think censorship isn't the solution. I think focusing on the source is the solution. I remember Elon Musk was talking about this when no one was, and he was being criticized for it.

We did a space about it in the early days, and no one really cared about it. The media barely covered it. Now suddenly it's a big deal, great. Finally, they're paying attention after Wall Street Journal and other publications, did hippie, or not hippies, I'd say, did analysis on this.

But now starting to talk about the only solution being social media companies censoring further, more than the censorship than we have now, rather than focusing on the source itself, is, I think, going to lead to bigger problems. We're just thinking it's like everything is solved through censorship, and I think that's dangerous. Yeah, I think you can make a good point.

Jaron, let's talk about one social media platform in particular, because it's the biggest news source now for young people in the world. It's TikTok. And, of course, it originates from China. A lot of concern about what may be going on there, what the Chinese may be up to, a lot of concern about the effect it's having on society and on young people in particular.

What do you think of TikTok? Oh, my God. You know, look, I'm about to trash TikToks. I want to put in one positive sentence. I actually like a lot of the stuff on it. I like TikTok dance culture. Hate me if you want for that. So I'm not anti- Youth culture.

But, I mean, my God, look at the difference between the version of TikTok in China. and the version externally. One is obviously designed to improve society, and one is designed to harm society. Because we don't get access to the data, because of things of black box ultimately, it's almost impossible to really, really know what's going on,

what's intentional, what's sneaky and what's not. I have talked to prominent people in Chinese government and industry circles who bring up their century of human beings. The Opium Wars, and I get the impression that for some in China, this might be viewed as kind of fair play of a kind of reflecting back to us what was done to them in what was for them a very recent memory, even though for us it feels pretty obscure. But I can't know. You know, this is the thing that's the frustrating is that there is really no way to know for sure what's going on, except we can say that uniformly people who study it think that TikTok is mostly doing harm. Obviously, it's a mixed story. There's some good stuff on it.

But I just think it's intolerable. I think it's a horrible, a horrible, horrible thing, and something has to be done about it. I don't like censorship anymore than my fellow panelists do. But I also think we can remove the business incentives for the worst content, which is a different issue, and at least that ought to help a lot. Well, one thing I think that does help is talking about it, and I appreciate all three of you joining me for a really interesting panel.

Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Thanks, really good to meet you all. Unsensored next Ben Shapiro's anti-woke rap song is tearing up the charts. Now inevitably, he's been accused of cultural appropriation and racism. Do his critics have a point? Well, the rapper behind the hit joins me next with two men who then don't disagree with it. It's been a year since I sat down with the Prime Minister at No. 10 Downey Street.

It was charming. It was challenging. It was revealing. And Rishish Sunak made some big promises, including this one. including this one to meet. I'm confident I can deliver for people, and at the end of the year, we can sit and say, well, how have you done?

I know you'll keep holding me account for doing it. That you can absolutely rest assured. PM and the PM round two. Welcome back to Oncensor, rapper Tom McDonald, top of US charts with his anti-woke anthem, entitled FACTS, which features a verse and popular conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. While the song's been the number one a hit,

critics have called it offensive, accusing Tom and Ben of cultural appropriation and indeed racism. Let's take a listen. heavyweight yesterday. And today I'm joined by the artist who actually crafted the song, Tom McDonald. So Tom, well, first of all, congratulations on this runaway smash hit. You were actually entitled to celebrate it because you are a bona fide rapper. Ben, I'm not quite so convinced by, maybe a one-hit wonder. First of all, are you surprised by the backlash

or did you predict the backlash? And that was one of the reasons you did the song in the first place? Well, I've made a lot of sort of anti-woke anthems over the years, and there's always a certain degree of backlash that comes with it. So this one was sort of, you know, a lot of my relationship with the audience is call and responds. I make a song, people respond in the way that they do, and then I respond again with the next song. So, you know, Facts with Ben is sort of the cap on a long line of anti-woke anthems that have been met with pretty heavy criticism. People in the black rap community have come out and said, look, this is just blatant cultural appropriation racism

because you're accusing all their music that they produce of being about selling drugs, pushing guns, stripper poles, turning as sons into thugs and so on. What do you say to that criticism? I think that there's, you know, there's all types of rappers out there. there's black rappers and white rappers and Asian rappers and Indian rappers, all types of rappers. And I don't think that criticizing sort of the status quo of the genre or criticizing the prevalent content of the music, I don't agree that there's anything racist about that. What struck me is that there seems to have been more outrage over you guys lampooning this style of rap music than there is about the actual rap music, which,

often to me gets an extraordinary pass from criticism. And I said to Ben yesterday, when you have John Legend rewriting Baby It's Cold Outside because it's so offensive, but doesn't rewrite any of the lyrics of any of his rap friends, there's an obvious double standard. Yeah, absolutely. I think that sort of in general, over the last 10 to 15 years,

there's been very prevalent themes in hip-hop, you know, sort of objectify, women and glorifying violence and romanticizing drug abuse and stuff like that. And I think that hip-hop likes to think of itself as quite a woke genre. And none of those things seem to quite align with what the woke mob is standing up and being vocal again. So I think it's a little bit hypocritical, but, you know. Do you think you can be number one on the Billboard chart or do you think you may get

subtly shadow banned to stop you getting there? Well, it's happened before. I've had Billboard refuse to count my album sales. I'm completely independent. There's no record label. There's no distribution. There's no marketing team. Nothing.

I make all of my beats. I write all the songs. My girlfriend shoots the music videos, entirely independent of the music industry. So censorship, suppression, shadow banning. Very familiar with all of those things. Like I said, Billboard's refused to count my album sales before. They've removed me off trending charts on YouTube.

My distribution company, TuneCore, which is supposed to be the alternative for artists who don't want to sign a major record deal, they are supposed to be able to go to TuneCore and independently release their own music. So I had TuneCore deny release of this song and say that they will not host it in any form because of, quote, unquote, lyrical content. So, you know, I think the buzz is there And I think the press is there And I think that the proof is in the pudding I have access to the sales numbers As do many other people

So I think it would be pretty hard for Billboard At this point in time To just blatantly Snub us on the Billboard charts Can you make one promise finally Tom Which is if you do get there You don't make as part of your celebration A decision to do a whole album with Ben Shapiro

I don't think any of us could stomach that. I can absolutely make that promise. I can absolutely make that promise. Tom, congratulations on a success. I love the record because I see what you're doing with it and I applaud you for it. It's sending up a lot of double standard and I think that's important.

Thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Pierce. Okay, we heard from Tom, and now let's hear from the hip-hop establishment. Joining me now from New York, who's a highly respected rapper, Tali Kuali, who also co-hosts The Midnight Miracle, podcast of Dave Chappelle, and the DJ and Digital Media Mogul, DJ Vlad.

Well, a very high-powered panel to respond. So let me start with you then, Talley. You and I have locked horns before on Twitter as it used to be. Yeah, you used to try on Twitter. I think we both like to express ourselves forcefully, and absolutely no problem in doing that. What is your objection to this song? Well, first of all, forgive my voice because I'm coming off tour.

My voice sounds a little scratchy. Forgive it. Sounds pretty cool. Okay, cool. I want to congratulate Tom McDonald on his journey and sobriety because that's very important to note that part of his story is about his journey and sobriety. I do think it's very cowardly and very racist to blame hip hop for his addiction as if white people don't have addiction issues. That's first and foremost. But if we're going to talk about the song, Facts with Ben Shapiro, let's have a facts versus feelings conversation, which is something that Ben Shapiro. always says. The hook of the song is, this ain't rap, which I agree with. It's not rap. It's not hip-hop. Has nothing to do a rap. Pierce, you're wrong. The song is not, has nothing to do a rap.

This song, he says, money cars close. We ain't selling drugs. We ain't going to overdose. We ain't pushing guns. We ain't promoting stripper poles. We won't turn your sons into thugs and your daughters in the hose. This is not facts. He completely erased all-conscious hip-hop. You see, I got this shirt from Tribe Call Quest, one of the greatest rap groups of all time. He erase what I do. He erased what my people do. And most of my friends don't rap about those things. Tom is lying about rap. Well, hang on. Okay, all right.

Hang on, hang on. Hang on. I don't think he's saying all rappers do. He made a point of saying he doesn't mean all rappers or all hip-hop does. But there's no doubt some do. There's no doubt some do that stuff. He made a point, of course. Of course. And there's some country music artists and heavy metal artists that participate in violent and sexual content. But I would never make a

You know what I'm saying? Like he didn't specify that he meant some rap in the song. He specified that on your show when you question him. But on the song, he's saying, I'm trying to be offensive, and I'm hoping to upset people. So guess what? As a black man who does hip-hop, I'm offended. If you were trying to offend me, well, then you did a good job.

To claim that rap or art is a cause of violence, or cause of addiction in his life is irresponsible and hypocritical. When a bomb drops in a nation, it falls on the just and the unjust. I watched a movie called Oppenheimer last night. About a white man who made an atomic bomb that dropped on Japanese people because another white man, genocide is 6 million Jewish people. Killers at a Flower Moon is a movie about a great movie, about a white men who go and pillage and steal from Native American people.

Yesterday, a Trump fan from Philly decapitated his father because his father was voting for Joe Biden. That's like vanilla ISIS. You can't tell me that in the culture that he claims that he stands for, that there's no violence and sex. You can't tell me that. Anyone who supports Trump, like Tom McDonald does in his music, after Trump's mugshot, after January 6th, after this man has been indicted for rape and has 91 felonies, you can't tell me about Blue Lives Matter. You can't tell me that you're about law and order. You're being a hypocrite. Okay, powerful words. DJ Vlad, you've been sitting there patiently. What do you make of all this? I mean, I agree someone with Tel Avqualee, who's also a friend of mine.

The problem is that when you talk about rap and you want to talk about the gangster lyrics, the violent lyrics, the drug lyrics. When you look at rap as a whole, when you look at the biggest rappers in the world right now, Drake, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, these guys aren't rapping about drugs. They're not talking about violence. They're not talking about, you know, beating women or whatever else. And I think a lot of times when you have these songs that try to generalize these types of things, you know, kind of, it oversimplifies things and it gives rap in general a bad name. You know, so it's kind of annoying. You know, listening to the song, you know, on face value, it doesn't sound like he's really saying anything wrong.

But a lot of times when you have these sort of white supremacist type of sayings, like, for example, all lives matter, you know, from the outside looking in, of course all lives matter. But it's really a shot at Black Lives Matter and kind of trying to undermine that type of thing. So I really don't like, you know, what we call in hip-hop sneak-dissing. And I feel this song has a lot of sneak-dissing. Telling, would it be fair to say that hip hop has moved to a, you know, for one of a better word, a better place that it, the biggest stars no longer want to rap about stuff that caused all the offense? And actually, it's changed. Is that, is that accurate?

See, I don't think that this should be a conversation with three white people and one black person about the state of hip hop and a referendum on hip hop. I think that's the wrong direction to go. One more thing I'm going to say about Donald Trump is that Tom McDonald is an immigrant. Donald Trump just said immigrants are poisoning our blood here in America. Donald Trump uses white nationalist rhetoric from M.K.K.m., Hitler, all the time, and this guy is a supporter of his. This is all this is called facts. Hang on. Listen, you can never give views about Donald Trump. That's fine.

And by the way, you can say... No, no, I'm done with that. I'm done with that. I'm done with that. That's why I'm going to... I get it. But the idea that I'm not allowed to, or DJ VATism allowed to comment about hip-hop or rap is ridiculous. I didn't say that. He basically said it. No, I didn't.

Let me be clear. DJ Vlad is a controversial figure in our culture. A lot of people accuse him of being a culture vulture. That is not a criticism that I personally agree with, although I do understand the argument. I work with, unbeknownst to a lot of people, I've done more songs with white rappers than any rapper you can name, any black rapper you can name. My next single is feature Mac Miller, rest in peace. I work with MacLamore. I work with R.A. the Ruggin Man.

There's no problem with white people in hip-hop. There's a problem with racist white people in hip hop. And Tom McDonald's song is racist and is factually incorrect. And I could break down what's factually incorrect in the song, Facts, and I could break down how Ben Shapiro started his career by saying, rap isn't music. So you got somebody featured on your song who tweeted in 2019, fact. Rap isn't music.

And if you think it is, you're stupid. Well, that person is clearly not an anti-racist, intelligent person. Tom McDonald owes the hip-hop community an apology for putting someone on a song that in 2009, writing for a white nationalist site, Breitbart, wrote an article saying rap is crap. These people don't respect hip-hop. Tom McDonald's making rap for people who don't like that. Look, I played some of this stuff back to Ben Shapiro yesterday. I think you're slightly missing the point. He's lampooning the world of rap and hip-hop. Oh, I'm not missing the point. He thinks there's a lot of hypocrisy and double standard there.

I'm very clear that Ben Shapiro is lampooning hip-hop. I'm very clear. about that. I'm not under any misconception. But even you must admit, when John Legend goes out of his way to rewrite the lyrics to baby it's cold outside because of the Me Too campaign, because he thinks it's about sexual assault, but doesn't

rewrite any lyrics from any hip-hop or rap song in the last 50 years, you've got to admit, there is a ridiculous double standard there, isn't it? I totally, I couldn't disagree more. I completely disagree. Really? Because I think you're removing all social, I think you're removing all social,

political and historical context that goes into creating hip hop and equating it with the social political context and goes to creating a Christmas song. You genuinely think Baby is more offensive than anything that the hip-hop... I didn't say that. Well, you implied it? I didn't say that. I said no, I didn't apply it. I said you are removing

context to make a false equivalency. No, the context is very straightforward. John Legend chose to rewrite the lyrics to Baby It's Cold Outside. But he didn't rewrite any of the offensive, misogynist, violent lyrics of his friends in the rap world. Pierce. I get I get that that's how you feel, but you're feeling.

It's not a feeling. It's a fact. And the facts is, oh, no, that's not, well, it's not a fact that it's a problem. It's a fact that John Legend hasn't rewritten any lyrics of people in the hip-hop world. And it's not a fact that. Pierce Morgan, John Legend is not your slave. He doesn't have to do what you know. He's not my slave, but he can be a hypocrite. Then let's stop talking about John Legend because this is not about John Legend.

Let's talk about the strong facts. All right, but you stop deflecting. Stop deflecting. Stop deflecting. And let's talk about the song facts. Okay. Okay. Okay.

So can we get back to that. Hang on, let me bring in DJ Vlad. The first, Thadadad, there's three of us here. Let me bring in DJ Vlad. You apparently DJ Vlad, you're a culture vulture. What does that mean, first of all? I mean, from my point of view, I think that's a slang for pretty much any white person in hip-hop. I've seen every prominent white person in hip-hop being called a culture vulture from Steve Rifkin to Lear Cohen to Eminem to Mac Miller.

Also black people get called culture vultures. Also black people get called culture vultures in the social vulture. culture. So it's not skin color specific. You can be a black or white culture, right, okay. It's not. Absolutely. Am I a culture of culture? But white people do get it. White people do get a little heavy than others. And I've never minded being

That's right. That's exactly right because white people are the dominant group. That's how it goes. Racism is not logical or convenient for anybody. Sorry. White people are the dominant group in Hang on. White people are not the dominant group in music anymore. I would say most of the biggest stars in the world right now are not white.

White people own all of the record companies. White people own all of the record companies, Pierce. That's true. Well, I had that conversation with Kanye. I had that conversation with Kanye, and he felt very strongly about it, and I had that conversation with him. And he may have a point about that.

White people own all of the money. But it doesn't change the fact that many of the biggest and most successful and richest music artists in the world right now are black. That is also true. All right, well, let's change places. How about we get all the money and y'all get to tap dance? How about that?

I don't think you're short of a few, Bob, are you? What'd you say? I don't think you're short of a few Bob, as we'd say in England. You've got a few dollars up your sleeve. It doesn't. The money is not about whether or not one individual makes it. I am an exception to the rule. The vast majority of my people are not rich people.

And that's a fact. And I'm exception to the rule because I make money doing conscious underground hip hop. I'm not doing pop hip hop. I'm not appealing to a maga fan base. I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I want to I want to I want to say that Ben Ben Shapiro has a history of racist comments. Okay, it's good to have you said that for Tom McDonald's come back. You know what? Well, then y'all should acknowledge it. Okay, you've said your bit. DJ O'Ve, thank you for coming back on. Please come again soon. I enjoyed that debate. Thank you very much.

Unsense, the next. A sixth of all British young men say feminism does more harm than good. Will my all-female super panel agree? Well, that's next. Welcome back to Oncense. I'm joined by my PAC. Talk to the contributor lawyer, Paul O'N, Adrian, the political journalist, Ava Santina,

Talk TV's international editor, Isabel O'Sho. Three Women with wonderfully long titles. Welcome to you. I couldn't think of a better panel for this today. actually. So is feminism harmful is the headline in The Guardian and various other places today? Boys and men from Generation Z, Z, are more likely than older baby boomers to believe that feminism has done more harm than good. One in six British men, age 16 to 29, say that feminism has done more harm than good. Isabel. I feel like I'm probably going to be on my own with this one.

Feminism, I think, achieved incredible, marvellous things, but now I think it has probably gone too far, and we're veering into the realms of too much victim culture at a time when actually most of the ideals of feminism have been achieved. And feminism shouldn't be at the expense of masculinity. And what we've now got in response to radical feminism is toxic masculinity.

Do you know how I know feminists? Has worked, by the way, is if we have three blokes sitting here debating this, there'd be all hell breaking loose, right? We'd be, probably all be fired. Where are the women? No one is saying that because there are three women. Well, there you go. You're presenting the show, aren't you?

That's all. And you're a man as far as I remember. Are you sitting there as a lesser mortal? No, but look, I'm just saying, you know, you are presenting the show. And so that's why there is a, you have plenty of female presenters at this channel. That's why there is an upset that there are three women on your panel. What do you think about this? See, here's my theory about why people like Andrew Tate have got such traction.

with young men. They all feel a little bit put upon. They feel like it's now a new culture, it's gone, the pendulum's gone too far, and that, yeah, a lot of bad guys got done in with, rightly, by Me Too, and times up. But actually, this culture developed where all men are awful until they can prove otherwise, and young guys are like, gee, what do I do? Right, okay, it is hard to be a young man at the moment. There is enormous pressure on young men, but that's not because of feminism. Women have not caused that pressure to be put on young men.

We've got a huge issue. I don't agree. I think so. I think a lot of radical feminists have. What are you talking about? Radical feminists exist. I know you find this hard to believe. But what are radical feminists? We've been on hit for. Man hating women who lead a charge to hate men.

They do exist these people. I mean, come on. How many of those do you really know? I'm conscious that I don't want to interrupt my felicity. Feel free. But look, radical feminists exist, radical, you know, toxic masculinity.

And we know that we still need feminism because we have people like yourself in these great positions who will go on to X and say, for example, that our female footballers were over-emotional in the finals of the women's world. Who said that? I didn't say that. Over-emotional?

I think you'll find you... Why, were they all blubble? And so... I didn't say over-emotional. What I said was that one of the lioness... I think that was the lioness... No, I said one of the lionesses shouldn't have won the BBC Sports Parliament of the year this year.

one of the one it'll ask you when they won something. You said they got one for losing. I didn't get it. I'll send you across the article. Here's one. Here's one, truth, about emoting. I don't, by the way, I don't like it when male footballers emote too much. I don't like the blubbing culture.

Full stop. I'm a stiff upper-lip guy. And I know he's gone out of fashion. I know I'm not allowed to be. But I like a stiff upper lip. I like the old way. I like the old Pathy news footage where people going, go, pull, get a grip.

And we've got... And we've got... Male suicide. I'm not... We've got the male suicide rate. No, I know, it was a totally separate thing. Which I take very seriously. And it's the same with feminism.

It's the same with feminism. And I worry that this feminism and the definition of feminism has been overtaken in the same way that the definition of woke has been overtaken. Feminism is about the striving for equal rights. And that strive is by men and women. It's not about hating women. And yet funny enough.

Hating men, forgive me. Funny enough, having won so much fairness and equality quite rightly, and I applaud that, the moment the transgender lobby come along, I want to erode those rights, you two, oh, that's fine, that's fine. We'll give them all back, Isabel. We'll give them all back, Isabel. Ava, I want to know, because you did acknowledge that it's extraordinarily hard to be a young man now. So what do you put that down to if it isn't radical feminism?

I would say a lot. I mean, if you look at some of the reports that are created by right-wing think tanks, lot of that to do the struggles of young men is to do with finance and it's to do with the economy. So you'll have poor white young men who are in areas who are defunded and they're not being offered mental health treatment, they're not being offered good teachers, they're not being offered, you know, good finance, in the good economy in their schools. Generation Z, we're talking about 16 and above is my understanding. And we are, and I agree with Ava, we are in a world now where we're expecting the 16 year old, 18 year old, 21 year old to go into a place of work where

work no longer pays. We are in a generation where we are... Of course it is. When you have a situation where you have a young male who is looking around and trying to understand

do I be going to crime, do I become a drug dealer, do I become an ex-Y or Zid or do I sit back in my chair and say, well, I can't do the job I want to do because of her. I can't do the job I want to do because of an immigrant.

I can't do the job I want to do because of wokeism, whatever that means. He's just got anything to do is what we're talking about. It's hard. It's going on. It's going on. It's not going to blame on. It's not going to go way off.

Because young men. Young men. I have a teenage son. I'm going to trump you both on this. I have a teenage son. And he's pretty interested. It all certainly was before he got himself into so much trouble in Andrew Tate. Like a lot of young men are.

And what did Andrew Tate? It's nothing to do with them not worrying about money. The problems with young men on young women. When it was nothing to do with young women, look, you know, young men used to have a social contract. They would go to school, they would go to diversity, and they would be able to get a job that provided for their family. The economy now doesn't offer them that opportunity,

and they are angry about it, and they're rightly angry. And they're also being told all day long, all men are awful. Prove otherwise. By who, Andrew, too. By who? By who. By who. Men are saying that this is where this message comes from, whereas we know. If women just stopped hating men a little bit,

it would be really helpful to the self-esteem of young men. If we started treating each other equally, And perhaps there wouldn't be this problem. You know what? You've got to leave it there. And I can leave it there because I'm a man and I'm in charge of this show. So thank you ladies.

I'm saying so next a top vegan restaurant takes drastic measures to arrest slumping sales. It's going to sell meat. Well, who would have guessed it? Nobody wants to eat gruel. That's the debate we're going to have next. Welcome back a top vegan restaurant in Chesh's and ours is going to have to start selling meat to survive.

It follows mass closures of vegan restaurants down the country. So is veganism dead? Do you want to mean now? Is animal rights? acting as Jamie Logan. And the Outkick Coast of Tommy Leran is fearless. Tommy, well, Tommy, it doesn't surprise me this.

Why would anybody want to eat this, gruel? It's my first question. Plus, it's not healthy to lead a vegan diet. Most science now has established that. And now it turns out nobody wants to eat it in restaurants. I mean, it's a triple whammy for the vegan world. What do you think? Well, I'll tell you this.

I come from a ranching family in South Dakota here in the United States. So I firmly believe that a meat big. diet, in addition to plants, is important for your overall health and also the overall economy. So I'm a big advocate for that. But I also tell you this period, a couple weeks back we had a major snowstorm here in Tennessee, and the grocery stores had pretty much nothing left. Everybody had taken everything. But you know what was left? The fake meat, the impossible meat. Turns out, nobody wanted that. The real meat, though, that went pretty quickly. So I think people are finally starting to understand that, well, I understand animal rights,

and I understand that nobody likes factory farming. That's something we can discuss. But when you talk about eating meat, in addition to plants and having an overall balanced lifestyle, you got to include meat in that because otherwise you're going to be weak, fragile, and frail. And science proves that. To bring in Jamie, by the way, that's what animals do.

Go to the jungle and they all eat each other. Yeah, well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the show to offer another perspective. Some of the top athletes in the world, such as Kyrie Irving, Novak Djokovic, Chris Paul are on plant-based diets. Would we say to them, oh, well, you guys are not healthy? I mean, they're exceeding, they're winning championships in their respected sports. So the top scientists also at Oxford University, Harvard University,

are claiming that we can live and thrive on a plant-based diet. So I don't know. Here's the thing, Jamie. Nobody wants to. Nobody wants to. The reason these restaurants are going into business, nobody likes vegan food apart from die-hard vegans. and I never meet a healthy, I never meet a healthy looking vegan, and I never meet one who doesn't yap on and on and on about being a vegan.

You know, I like state, but I don't talk about it 24-7. Yeah, and, you know, I definitely feel for the financial insecurities some of these business owners are facing. It's terrible, I agree. Well, that would be fine if we put meat back on the menu. I feel for the animals that are forced into gas chambers who have their lives taken from them. I'd say maybe get a new chef, add some seasoning on there.

There's amazing plant-based options and alternative. that can give you that same taste satisfaction, pleasure. No, that's the thing you see. It doesn't taste as good, Tommy, does it? I mean, I've looked at this stuff. They call themselves like vegan sausage rolls. It doesn't taste like a sausage roll. No, and, you know, if vegan and plant-based food was so great,

they wouldn't go out of their way to try to make it taste like actual meat. So I think that proves the point in it of itself. But I would say this, if we can find some common ground here, I think that that would be excellent. I'm against factory farming as well. I don't believe in cruelty to animals, as far. far as shoving chickens and cages or having animals live on feed lots their entire lives. So there's a solution to this.

We can go back to American or maybe UK base for you guys, farmers and ranchers that raise their livestock in a humane way. And if you're able to, instead of buying the stuff in the grocery store, go and find somebody that has a ranch or a farm and get your meat from that source. Maybe that way we can be sustainable. We can be strong and healthy. Jamie, you've got 30 seconds, Jamie. We've reached a point of agreement, I think maybe.

I don't think so. No, vegans are not against farmers. We're against animal cruelty. And at the end of the day, these animals still end up at the slaughterhouse with their throat slit. And so that's really where the problem lies. We make plant-based options taste like meat because we didn't give up meat because we didn't like the taste. We gave it up because we didn't want to see animals suffer. And that's what veganism is. It's about showing kindness and compassion for all living beings. Okay. Listen, I hear you. I don't, I mean, I'm not, Tommy, I don't like a lot of the animal cruelty that goes with the meat, business and that can certainly be worked on. But boy, I love eating meat and no vegan's ever going to change my mind. Sorry. Tommy, great to see you. Jamie, thank you very much. I appreciate it. That's it from me. What are you up to?

Eat your vegan gruel if you like. Eat meat if you like. Whatever you do, though, keep it uncensored. Good night.