The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1302 - Democrats Hold A Funeral For DEI

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, DEI is on its deathbed and now Democrats are holding funerals for it. I'll explain. Also, the corrupt DA prosecuting Trump in Georgia finds herself embroiled in yet anoth...er scandal. Liberals panic as Florida proposes changes to its child labor laws. Apparently the Left thinks that kids are old enough for sex changes but not old enough to work a cash register at Burger King. And a psychology professor writes a lengthy article condemning the "moral panic" over pornography. I will take his argument apart piece by piece.   Ep.1302   - - -    DailyWire+:   Watch the BRAND NEW series The Divided States of Biden on DW+ : https://bit.ly/4999W1e   Get 20% off your Jeremy’s Razors products here: https://bit.ly/433ytRY   Get your Matt Walsh flannel here: https://bit.ly/3EbNwyj    - - -    Today’s Sponsors:   PureTalk - Get 50% off your first month! Enter promo code: WALSH at https://bit.ly/42PmqaX   Grand Canyon University - Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University: https://www.gcu.edu/   ZipRecruiter - Rated #1 Hiring Site. Try ZipRecruiter for FREE! http://www.ZipRecruiter.com/WALSH    - - -   Socials:    Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3Rv1VeF   Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3KZC3oA   Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3eBKjiA   Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RQp4rs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Today in the Matt Wall Show, DEI is on its deathbed, and now Democrats are holding actual funerals for it. I'll explain. Also, the corrupt DA prosecuting Trump in Georgia finds herself embroiled in yet another scandal. Liberals panic, as Florida proposes changes to its child labor laws. Apparently, the left thinks that kids are old enough for sex changes, but not old enough to work at cash register at Burger King. And a psychology professor writes a lengthy article condemning the moral panic, quote unquote, over pornography. I will take his argument apart, piece by piece. All of that. And more today on the Matt Wall show. Well, if you're like me, there's not a day that goes by that you don't call or text someone you care about. I'm constantly on the phone, gabbing away. Everyone knows it. My friends at Pure Talk are making it easier and more affordable to connect with the most important people in your life.
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Starting point is 00:01:38 And right now you'll save an additional 50% off your first month. That's PureTalk.com slash Walsh to save on wireless with a company that you can be proud of and you can be proud to spend your money with and support. Again, puretalk.com slash walsh. Some of the few truly entertaining moments you'll find in politics are the times when activists who are extremely ideological, the total fanatics, suddenly have to confront the reality that they are losing. You'll remember that when Donald Trump, of course, won in 2016. We saw a lot of that sort of thing. Maybe we'll get a rehash. We'll do it again in 2024. HBO captured footage of Ben Rhodes, the Obama advisor sitting shell-shocked on a bench for several minutes when he realized that Hillary
Starting point is 00:02:18 Clinton wasn't going to be president. Of course, there's the infamous, the now iconic woman screaming and howling as Trump was inaugurated. It came an instant classic. These kinds of moments are great because if you are a sane person, it's a win-win. Your enemies aren't just being defeated. They're also providing some unintended humor along the way. Well, yesterday in the state of Utah, we were treated to another one of these moments. The state Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that will dismantle all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the government, as well as in the public education system. As the Salt Lake Tribune reports, quote, the wide-sweeping proposal requires that diversity equity and inclusion or DEI offices at the state's eight
Starting point is 00:02:57 public colleges and universities specifically be reframed. They can no longer be race or gender-based, but instead must cater to all students as generalized student success and support centers. The bill additionally bans schools and government employers from asking job applicants for a statement about their beliefs on diversity or inclusion, and schools and employers could lose state funding for violating that. And all entities will be required to eliminate any training on discriminatory practices while replacing that with instruction on free speech from all viewpoints. So this is by far the most sweeping anti-DEI bill that's ever been proposed in this country. And just for good measure, the Utah Senate also passed a separate bill banning men from entering women's restrooms.
Starting point is 00:03:37 The governor has indicated that he's going to sign both of those bills. So in all likelihood, very soon, they'll become law. Now, for DEI race hustlers, this is their Ben Rhodes' crazy ladies screeching at the inauguration moment. This doesn't just mark the rollback of their ideology in Utah. It's also virtually certain to inspire similar bills all over the country and create a kind of domino effect. Already states like Oklahoma, Florida, Texas have taken their own steps to end DEI, and now the process looks like it's going to accelerate. And here's the fun part. Democrats in Utah, as you might imagine, did not take this news very well. So they did what any mentally unbalanced crazy person would do in this circumstance.
Starting point is 00:04:15 They all dressed in black and solemnly held a funeral for DEI because, in their words, they are hurting. Now, there was no casket, as far as I could tell, but they did have a eulogy and a strict dress code for the occasion. Watch. Our party and we join our communities and most marginalized communities and vulnerable communities through this process as we just came out on the Senate floor that passed HB-267 and 18661 and there may move really fast to get to the governor's desk. I do want to thank everyone, thank my colleagues, the 20 Senate and House Democrats would stand together as a group and making sure that people know we're here and we will keep up fighting for good public policy and to stop any attacks on our communities. There it is. They all wore black, color coordinated in mourning.
Starting point is 00:05:12 You just imagine the process of arranging something like this. Like did they all get on a conference call and say, hey, everyone, it looks like that bill that bans racial discrimination is going to pass. So we're going to hold a funeral for DEI. Be sure to wear all black. And then no one thought that that was remotely unusual or weird in any way. Like all. All of them apparently thought that by color coordinating, they lend some gravity and seriousness to the situation. But of course, they did the opposite. There's not a single living creature who saw this press conference in Utah.
Starting point is 00:05:41 It felt anything other than amusement and secondhand embarrassment for everybody involved. Actually, the more you watch this DEI funeral, the more humiliating it gets. Now, you may have noticed that the Democrats didn't simply coordinate their clothing. They also coordinated their positions at the press conference. All the white guys are conspicuously located in the back. can barely see them. The women are up front. Now, the Utah Democrats didn't specifically call attention to that staging like they did with the clothing, but it's not hard to figure out the message. They're once again highlighting the fact that DEI means that white guys go to the
Starting point is 00:06:14 back of the bus. Even the white guys who are on board with DEI are subjected to this humiliation because they're inferior, I guess, solely by the virtue of their skin color. This is a fundamental principle of DEI, and they will continue to embrace it, even as the DEI scam collapses all around them, which is what is happening right now. Now, at the same time, there was one candid, slightly less choreographed moment from the Utah Capitol the other day. The Salt Lake Tribune captured this image of trans activists storming the Capitol, presumably because they're upset about the other bill, the one that keeps men out of women's restrooms. And you can see it's a shot of two very angry, at least in one case, heavyset individual,
Starting point is 00:06:56 one of them wearing a mask for some reason. A couple that looks. there are a couple masks there, and holding signs that say trans joy is power. But if you look closely at their faces, in fact, you have to look that close at all. You can't help but notice that trans joy looks a lot like blind homicidal rage. I mean, this picture actually deserves to be a new iconic woman screeching at the inauguration moment right there. Trans joy and then you just see them full, like just spittle-flecked rage. that's what trans joy is. And this is always the case with trans joy.
Starting point is 00:07:33 You know, we hear a lot about it. We hear a lot. They're always telling us about joy. We have so much joy. But nobody has ever seen anything resembling joy from any trans activists. Have you? I've never seen it.
Starting point is 00:07:45 So this photo went viral for obvious reasons. For one thing, it's like a Babylon B photo, except in real life. But the photo also does a great job of capturing the anger and bitterness of deranged activists who know they're losing. They don't have time for debates or logic or anything like that. All they can do is rage, and they know it. We're seeing a similar phenomenon play out in the journalism industry, or what's left of it anyway, faced with a very public and overwhelming rejection of everything they stand for.
Starting point is 00:08:13 Journalists are not pondering their failures. They aren't wondering why everyone hates them. Instead, they're wallowing in self-pity and frustration, just like the trans activists. This week, for example, as we talked about yesterday, the Los Angeles Times, laid off more than 20% of its newsroom. And this is the paper that in just the past couple of years has run headlines like these. Quote, Larry Elder is the black face of white supremacy. You've been warned. And quote, white drivers are polluting the air breathed by L.A.'s people of color. That's a real headline. And quote, mocking anti-vaxxers COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes,
Starting point is 00:08:53 but may be necessary. And remember, they get mad at. if we mock them for losing their jobs. These are the people who actually said that it's a moral necessity to mock people who die. And yet, we're supposed to be sad they lost their jobs. So we're not talking about principled journalists who are holding the powerful to account. These are ghoulish, sociopathic activists who want to cause a race war and dance on the graves of their political enemies. And you could say, well, not everybody in the newsroom may have agreed with those headlines. But the fact is that none of them condemned any of that.
Starting point is 00:09:30 None of them spoke out or reconsidered the wisdom of working for an organization that would publish garbage like that. And we all know why that is. The staff of the L.A. Times was openly racist and overtly hostile to anyone they disagreed with. That showed in their journalism, quote unquote, and most of the public found it to be completely repulsive. So the paper started losing something like $40 million a year, and now the newsroom has been gutted as a result. But in the wake of these cuts, there has not been a single L.A. Times employee, current or former, who has said anything like, hey, you know, maybe we shouldn't have wished for the death of our enemies. Maybe we did a couple things wrong here.
Starting point is 00:10:11 Not a single one, as far as I can tell. None of them have said that it was a bad idea to publish an article accusing white people of poisoning people of color in Los Angeles by driving their cars. In fact, the opposite has been happening. LA Times employees have been defending their coverage. One LA Times reporter, Sarah D. Wire, insisting the other day that the article about white drivers polluting the air was great journalism. Quote, ah, yes, how dare we inform people about a USC study that found pollution in Los Angeles disproportionately impacts the communities that highways run through, she wrote, in response to someone criticizing the headline. So she still doesn't get it or she's pretending she doesn't. Like she's not even trying to understand.
Starting point is 00:10:49 Even now, after everyone has pointed out to her that white drivers aren't the only ones driving on Los Angeles as highways, Sarah D.Wire at the Los Angeles Times doesn't see the problem with the headline. And keep in mind, this is one of the few people who was not fired this week at the LA Times. So this is like the cream of the crop, I guess, supposedly. That's how committed this organization is to fomenting race hatred by lying to the public. Just to be sure, I wasn't missing anything. I spent some time looking through the Twitter feeds of current and former LA Times employees, and I wanted to see if any of them were showing any introspection whatsoever.
Starting point is 00:11:28 I wanted to see, for example, if any LA Times reporter expressed regret for predicting that Twitter would implode a year ago, because you have to admit it's pretty ironic that the LA Times imploded and Twitter is still around. But, you know, I didn't find anything like that. Instead, the more I look, the worse it got. As Chris Ruffo noted, the post-layoff statement from the LA Times various diversity caucuses, didn't even attempt to defend their work on the basis of quality or merit or profitability. Instead, they all invoked various racial grievances. Quote, the announcement today has devastating implications for black, Latino, AAPI, and other journalists of color.
Starting point is 00:12:01 If these layoffs are allowed to go through, the Latino caucus will lose 38% of its members. The Black Caucus will lose 36% of its members. The AAPI in Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia caucuses will lose 30% of their combined membership. Also, presumably, there's a lot of white people that got fired, too, but, you know, who cares? They don't matter. So, you know, it's just, it's racial bean counting all the way down to the very end. And nobody at the LA Times seems to realize how normal people are perceiving all this. Yesterday, the LA Times, Noah Goldberg tweeted out this photo of an empty LA Times newsroom, apparently to garner sympathy. You know, he wanted us to look at this and see to see how empty it is and be filled with mourning and grief.
Starting point is 00:12:44 But, but, I mean, nobody reacted with sympathy to that photo. Tim Poole had maybe the best response, which was, quote, this is like taking a picture of a kitchen and lamenting, there are no roaches running around, which I think kind of sums it up nicely. Then after the post was completely dogpiled by thousands of people, Goldberg tweeted, well, I've gone viral, apparently among people who think the LA Times
Starting point is 00:13:04 is staffed by journalists who advocate for white genocide and are propagandists. They all believe that the layoffs were good. Yeah, you think so? You just noticed that? You just notice that that is how your publication is perceived rightly by the public? Well, I guess what he just said, you know, that does constitute some accurate reporting from the LA Times at least. But nobody was allowed to celebrate it. Goldberg very quickly locked the replies to that tweet.
Starting point is 00:13:26 This is what journalists have to do. They're hiding from the customers they're supposedly serving. Yet somehow, they're still in denial about why everyone has so much disdained for them. Even after so many publications have been conducting layoffs this year, including Sports Illustrated, L.A. Times, Time, Business Insider, Forbes, Condi Nast, the New York Daily News. these hacks are still convinced that they're irreplaceable. The remaining workers are even going on strike in many cases, if that's magically going to generate the money that these businesses need in order to pay them. But it didn't work for the LA Times,
Starting point is 00:13:57 and it's not going to work for the New York Daily News or Forbes either. That's because in the end, reality is non-negotiable. That's true for every industry, whether it's DEI or journalism. Reality is still there. We're all living in it, whether we want to or not. You can only sustain a fantasy for so long. and as journalists and DEI bureaucrats are discovering, sooner or later, whether you hold a funeral for it or not,
Starting point is 00:14:21 the fantasy has to end. Now let's get to our five headlines. Grand Canyon University is an affordable private Christian university based in Phoenix, Arizona. They're dedicated to making education fit into your already busy schedule, which is why they offer 270 of their academic programs online. From scholarship to academic support, GCU's graduation team provides you with the personal support,
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Starting point is 00:15:10 Private Christian Affordable, visit gCU.edu. That's gcc u.d.u. So I actually want to start here because I find this interesting, and there's a lot of outrage over this. Here's Forbes article. Two bills that could loosen child labor laws are moving through the Florida legislature, making it easier for teens to work longer hours in more dangerous jobs, as the state battles a labor shortage, which some critics say is made worse by a crackdown on undocumented immigrant workers. A Florida bill that was passed by a state Senate committee, Wednesday could allow 16 and 17-year-olds to work on construction projects in residential areas
Starting point is 00:15:45 as long as the projects are lower than six feet. A revision from the original text that sought to allow the teens to work on roofs. A separate bill called employment and curfew of minors is moving through the State House Legislature Committee and intends to allow 16 to 17-year-olds to work up to 40 hours a week. 30 is the current law, even when schools in session. The latter bill introduced by Republican State Representative Linda Cheney would force 60 and 7-year-olds to be given the same amount of breaks as adults, a change to the current law, which requires 30-minute breaks every four hours. So everybody would get the same amount of breaks in that case.
Starting point is 00:16:19 So that's kind of the law. And a lot of problems with the way that this is reported. I mean, we'll kind of get into it. But first of all, force. There's no bill that's forcing any. There's no bill forcing 16 and 17-year-olds to go get jobs. Like, that's not, that's not, it's not forced labor. But what the bill would do is it would make it a little bit easier for,
Starting point is 00:16:40 people under the age of 18 for kids to get jobs. And the media is lamenting that in large part. I mean, they give the game away right at the top. They're lamenting it primarily because it will take jobs away from illegal immigrants. Our kids getting jobs will take jobs away from me. We can't have that. That's not fair. It's not fair if our own children can have jobs because they're
Starting point is 00:17:10 then that means that, you know, some 35-year-old illegal immigrant who's not supposed to be here in the first place, won't be able to get one. Anyway, so here's a clip that went viral of one Republican talking about the need for the bill, and people were upset about what he says here. I mean, you tell me if this is upsetting. Let's listen. We've been weakening our society since before my time. You know, I started working at like 13 years old. A full-time job.
Starting point is 00:17:38 I wrestled. I played every sport. you can imagine. So the idea that they can't afford to have these kids do this is an anomaly for me in my mind. If there's an issue with inflation, we should address that with the federal government, not the state of Florida. So I appreciate you running this bill. You guys continue doing the great work and help change the youth out there to have them start working full time. Thanks. Great. Rat Barrington. You're up. Okay. So that's supposed to be some kind of outrageous statement from the Florida State Rep. The left is really mad about it. In fact, there's
Starting point is 00:18:10 been on social media, a general leftist panic recently over child labor, quote unquote, child labor in Florida and elsewhere. And they're very upset that child labor is making a comeback, according to them. And I put quotes around child labor because that obviously has a certain, like when they use that phrase, it brings to mind, even though it's technically, if a kid has a job, like a job, even if they're working behind a cash register, the job is labor. And they are kids, if they're only age of 18. But the phrase child labor is supposed to bring to mind like kids working in mines and on factory assembly lines for 18 hours a day. That's what that phrase kind of brings to mind.
Starting point is 00:19:00 And that's why they use it. But anyway, they're saying that child labor is making a comeback, very upset about it. Here's another video in this vein. So somebody posted this clip of a kid working at a Burger King. I don't know who took this video. I mean, the kid's just working there, and somebody comes in and takes a video of them. And this video got like 5 million views. A lot of people are very upset about it, saying, you know, this poor kid,
Starting point is 00:19:24 it's like he's basically a slave. This is terrible. And we blurred his face because he's a kid, but here it is. What are your specials? We have a two for seven on our... chicken sandwiches and a two for five on our Wapaginians and our BK raps. And also you can get six cookies for you fit. May I just have one cheeseburger to go please?
Starting point is 00:19:46 One cheeseburger, is that all for you today? That would be all. All right. That would be $2.11. $2.11? $1.99 plus cash, ma'am. I'm sorry. Cheeseburgers at McDonald's were used to be $0.69 when I worked there for my first job.
Starting point is 00:20:04 Hello. Hello. What? if you want to have things to rid of it. Wow, how horrifying. I mean, how terrible. This kid is better at his job and provides better customer service than like 99% of fast food employees. That's the only bad thing I see here.
Starting point is 00:20:26 It's that and also that the woman is hassling. What do you hassling the kid for about the price of the hamburger? What is he going to do about it? It's the only thing that's shocking and appalling about that video is that this kid, This is like his first job. He's probably been working there for, you know, it couldn't have been very long. And he's significantly better than almost everybody you encounter who's working at a fast food place outside of Chick-fil-A. That's Burger King.
Starting point is 00:20:56 Like, by Burger King standards, my God, this kid should be the general manager of that store. That is, that is, because that would be, that's above average customer service for a Chick-fil-A. But you put that at Burger King, I mean, we've talked about this before, but the customer service of Burger King is it's aggressively, it's like almost violently angry when you walk in. You walk in and they start throwing, they throw like shoes at you as soon as you walk in the door. They just may hate you so much for being there.
Starting point is 00:21:26 The fact that this kid's got smile on his face and he's interacting by Burger King standards. That is, he's employee of the year globally already. Now, so just a few things in general about this. Child labor laws were enacted back in the early 20th century. When you had, as alluded to, you had kids working in coal mines and doing dangerous factory jobs where they were getting fingers and limbs chopped off and that sort of thing. The idea was to protect kids from that. And we did.
Starting point is 00:22:02 It's good that we did. Well, here we are 100 years later. and the kinds of jobs that most kids do or would do are very different. Kids now, if they have a job, are standing behind a cash register in a temperature-controlled building for a few hours a day with lunch breaks and breaks and everything else. It's not the coal mines. You know, this is not a 12-year-old on the factory assembly line for 16 hours with no break. So what exactly is the problem?
Starting point is 00:22:29 What is the problem? Can someone explain to me? You watch that video and you say, well, it's terrible. Why is it terrible? What is wrong with what's happening there? You know, I had my first real job. I say real job, like my first W-2 job when I was 14. I actually started working when I was 12.
Starting point is 00:22:48 I was mowing lawns for cash, but I got an actual job at 14. I had a snowball stand. And it was great. I made money. I got free snowballs. I learned some basic skills. I got some work experience. I was doing something productive with my time.
Starting point is 00:23:03 What's the downside? How is that a problem? Keep something in mind here. Quote unquote child labor, which is like kids are doing labor, which is doing some kind of work of some kind. That's been the rule for human civilization since forever. Before the industrial age, it's something you get these dumb leftists who pretend that just look at what happens in capitalism. Meanwhile, over in China, which is not a capitalist system, they've got like they have seven-year-olds, you know, making iPhones. But this has been the rule for human civilization since forever. Before the industrial age, kids would work the farm with their families. They would do chores around the house, real chores, you know, real work. And now if they have a job, it's probably working a drive-thru or whatever. So this is not new. The only thing that's new is this notion, popular in some corners,
Starting point is 00:23:55 that kids should not do any kind of work at all until they are into adulthood, until they graduate college. Now you do have plenty of scenarios where you've got like a 23-year-old adult who has never done any kind of work ever. So it's not just like, that's not an outlier. You've got millions of people in their early 20s who come out of college and they've never done any form of work ever. That is what is extremely.
Starting point is 00:24:32 extraordinarily modern and Western, it's very, very new. And it's obviously totally counterproductive in every conceivable way. What would you rather have kids do? Like this kid at Burger King, what's a better use of his time? Is it better for him to be at home playing video games for seven hours a day? Is it better, would you, like, is it better if you're sitting on the couch scrolling TikTok? Is that, like, if you don't want kids to work any kind of job, what would you prefer for them to be doing instead? It's pretty clear that whatever they'd be doing instead, it wouldn't be as productive or as good for them, as good for the child as the experience he can get at a job, provided the job is safe and it's not, and you're not, you know, you're not treating the kids like slave labor. Provided that's not happening, which it isn't, that Burger King, then I don't, you know, it's absurd.
Starting point is 00:25:29 But something else to consider, too, is, like, why have kids always historically done some kind of work? Well, because it's good for them. It helps them gain skill and experience and maturity. But also because their families needed it. So if you lived on a farm in the year 1752, you needed your children to help. They had to. It was a necessity.
Starting point is 00:25:51 It was a survival necessity. Everyone had to contribute. You know? And the point is that part of the advantage of the advantage. of a child working is the child is then contributing in a real and valuable way to the family. So if we come in and say, no, no kid's allowed to work, makes us feel bad to see the poor little guy behind the cash register. Well, now in many cases, you've just created an additional financial strain on the family.
Starting point is 00:26:19 When a kid is 14, 15, and has a job, you know, makes some money. and if you know, maybe maybe that new pair of shoes that he wants he can buy with with the money that he's earned, that sort of thing. Like this really matters to families. It's a big help. And we've just got this idea now that it just, it can't be allowed. You know, you can't have anyone under 18 in a family who's contributing in any way financially to the household. It's a totally, it's just, it's the kind of thought process people engage in when they're when they're not thinking. There's actually no thought process at all.
Starting point is 00:26:56 It's just like this instinctive modern reaction to something. All right. This is from Free Beacon. Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis wants to treat her staff to brand new taxpayer-funded cars as she rides out allegations that she misappropriated county funds to enrich her lover. Willis on Wednesday requested $611,000 from the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to purchase up to 16 pursuit and special service vehicles for law enforcement and administrative purposes.
Starting point is 00:27:27 The board voted overwhelmingly to table the request after several commissioners noted Willis provided no justification for the proposed purchase order. The board said that it will take up the request after Willis addresses allegations of her affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. Wade, a married man, Willis appointed in November 2021 to lead her election meddling case against former President Donald Trump,
Starting point is 00:27:46 has earned at least $654,000 in legal fees from Willis' office funds that he then used to finance several vacations for the pair. Commissioner Bridget Thorne said during a Wednesday meeting, I don't know why she's requesting vehicles now. I met with the district attorney's office in December. She said that they had requested $5 million in enhancements last year, but she only needed $4 million because she had already purchased vehicles.
Starting point is 00:28:10 Okay. And so there's a lot of people that are confused. They don't know why. Well, why would she be making these requests? Especially now, of all things. Why would she do this? She's supposed to be prosecuting a case against a former president. president. She's at the same time in the middle of a scandal involving an affair with a guy
Starting point is 00:28:30 who was married and who she was funneling tax money to. He then turned around and used part of that money on lavish vacations with her. And in the middle of all that, she's asking for over a half a million dollars for new cars. And then she doesn't even explain why she needs it. Why would you do that? You know, it just seems so, uh, it's like egregious. You've already got all this heat on you. You're in the middle of this, again, a case against a former president. You're doing something that, uh, up until this past year had never been done before in history. Um, and you've already got a scandal. And now on top of that, you, without any explanation, you're saying, I need about half a minute. I need to buy some new cars. Well, why would you do? Well,
Starting point is 00:29:22 it's actually not mysterious. Um, there's nothing mysterious about it. it, she does it because she assumes she can get away with it. And she's probably right. She does it because she's a Democrat and she's a black woman who therefore belongs to the privileged political class being Democrat and also multiple victim groups, which is a privileged class. And so she assumes probably rightly that in her position she can do basically anything she wants. And it's not going to matter. She does it out of pure, unadulterated hubris. Although maybe we can't even call it hubris because it's grounded in a correct assumption. And the assumption is that she can do what she wants. And she is in her position and given the demographic boxes that she checks,
Starting point is 00:30:15 that she is above criticism. And again, she's probably right about that. All right. So you're not going understand why I'm telling you about this story, but I'll explain. It will explain, so bear with me. This is from Fox News. The Atlanta Falcons made a hard turn with their coaching search. The Falcons, despite interviewing Bill Belichick twice, hired Los Angeles Rams defensive coordinator Raheim Morris to fill their head coaching vacancy. The Falcons made the deal official later Thursday. Arthur Blank, the owner, said this is a historic day for the Atlanta Falcons. We're thrilled to welcome Rahe Mores back to Atlanta, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So you may be wondering why I'm wasting your time with NFL coaching news,
Starting point is 00:30:58 aside from the fact that I'm, we are going to the conference championships. The Ravens are my team on Sunday. I'm pretty excited about it. I cannot share my excitement with anybody outside of my own household. Nobody here cares about football. This is a Titans town. None of you people care, you know. So I have nobody I can talk to about it with. So, and anyway, don't feel, well, you should feel a little sorry for me about that. That's not the only reason. There's another reason to. And because this coaching news presents some, some fascinating problems for the left's narrative. And it kind of shows you how the left's narrative works. And here's why. Rahim Morris, who just got the head coach gig in Atlanta. He's been around the league for a while.
Starting point is 00:31:41 He's a relatively young guy, like 47, 48 years old. But he's been around. the league for a while, and he got his first head coach job like 15 years ago. He has a track record, and it's not good. He has a losing record as a head coach, thoroughly, a thoroughly losing record. So it's not even close to 500. He's probably 300 or something. He's never been to a Super Bowl. He has, I don't think he has any playoff wins. He has nothing. He has just, he has failed in his head coaching opportunities in the past. He has been poor to mediocre. Mediocre has been kind of his ceiling
Starting point is 00:32:19 when really he's been a poor head coach. And he's also a black man. Meanwhile, there is another head coach free agent on the market, as a reference in the article, named Bill Belichick, or you've probably heard of. He has six Super Bowl rings. He has more wins than any other coach in the history of the game, except for one.
Starting point is 00:32:40 and he's within striking distance of having the most wins out of any coach who's ever coached in professional football. He interviewed for this job twice, which is, I don't know if I can quite explain how, what that means. He took two interviews. This guy's a shoe in for the Hall of Fame, and he took two interviews. He not only interviewed once, like, you would think, right, if I was Bill Belich, I wouldn't take any interview. With the first place, I would say, I got an interview for the job.
Starting point is 00:33:14 Bill Belichick, what do you mean? I got an interview for the job. Like, you know what I can do. I'm not going to interview with you. Much less come back a second time. That's like, it's like if Daniel Day Lewis not only came into audition for your role in your movie, but actually came in for a follow-up audition.
Starting point is 00:33:32 And he was auditioning against just like guys who have acted in commercials. And then he doesn't get the gig. Like, it's like that. Now, I'm not saying that Rahim Moraes got the job because he's black. I'm not saying this is a diversity DEI hire situation. I mean, I'm legitimately not saying that, okay? Not being coy when I say it's like, I don't think that's what happened. The NFL, now they do have a ridiculous policy, the Rooney rule,
Starting point is 00:33:59 where teams have to interview minority candidates for head coaching gigs, even if they already know who they want. They have to go through the motions of interviewing minority. candidates. But I don't think he got the job because he's black. I think he got it because one of the quirks of the NFL is that, you know, you've got these guys, these kind of mediocre coaches who've never accomplished anything, who just sort of hang around for decades and they keep getting jobs. And this is black and white coaches, this happens with. Mediocrity in the NFL is colorblind. You've just got, it's, it's, no one quite, it's frustrating and
Starting point is 00:34:36 confounding for the fans, no one quite understand me. You've just got these guys, it's like Jeff Fisher, Coach for the Titans for many years is one of these guys. He's mediocre. All he ever did was he'd go 500 in the season. He kept getting jobs and no one could figure out why. All I'm saying is that the sports media and the left have claimed and still claim that the NFL is racist against black coaches, which is absurd on its face for a million reasons we talked about before. But if you actually believed that it was true, well, this event should.
Starting point is 00:35:10 should shake your faith in that theory to its core. Because if the NFL is racist against black coaches, how in God's name could a black coach with a losing record and no rings get a job over a white coaching legend with six rings who interviewed for the job twice? It's like impossible. If you didn't know anything about the NFL and someone told you, the first thing they told you is, look, first thing, you need to know about this league is there racist against black coaches. That's the that's you need to
Starting point is 00:35:44 know that. Okay, you would not predict based on that theory that there could ever be a scenario where a losing black coach could get a job over a white coach who's been to the Super Bowl and won it six times. Um, because it just doesn't make any sense. But will this event, um, uh, cause the, And by the way, it's not like Rahe Morris is the first black coach with a losing record to get a job. As I said, it happens many times. In this case, it's just it's even more noticeable given who he got the job over. But will this cause the race hustlers, the Jamil Hills of the world, to reconsider or recalibrate? Well, they look at this and say, hmm, okay, well, you know, that's not quite what we would expect,
Starting point is 00:36:37 given that the NFL is racist against head coaches we thought, black head coaches. Okay. Like, I'm not even saying will they abandon their theory of systemic racism against black coaches in the NFL and in society generally. Of course, it's not going to abandon it. But will they even, like, take it into account? Will it be a data point that they look at and try to factor into their equation? No, of course. Because this is why I say systemic racism.
Starting point is 00:37:07 in every aspect of life, including in the NFL, is an unfalsifiable theory. There is nothing that can happen that will ever cause the people who believe in this theory and who have postulated this theory. There is nothing that can ever happen that will ever disprove or discredit or even weaken this theory in their minds, unfalsifiable, which is why it is an illegitimate and false theory in the end. Let's get to the comment section. According to Forbes, January is the hottest month for hiring and business owners and hiring managers are on on the hunt for top talent, which is no easy task.
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Starting point is 00:38:28 This month, find the talent you need to fill all of your roles with ZipRecruiter. See for yourself why four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter, get a quality candidate within the first day. Just go to this exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter.com slash Walsh. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com slash W-A-L-S-H-ZipRecruiter, Smartest Way to Hire. Okay, a lot of comments on my monologue yesterday about the psychiatric industry and the medicalization
Starting point is 00:38:54 of normal human emotions and experiences. Read a few of those. Elon Musk says, interesting. I'm just reading that out loud to brag that Elon Musk thought my monologue was interesting. You know, no other real commentary, but he did leave that comment. Dr. Michelle says,
Starting point is 00:39:14 Hmm, not sure what you mean by the psychiatric industry, but as a psychiatrist, I will tell you that many patients' parents become irritated when I explain that I don't think they have a disorder diagnosis and suggest talk therapy for working out a difficult period in their life and or development. I've had parents fire me and threaten to report me for not prescribing a medication they decided their children need. For sure, we have problems with the pharmaceutical industry and direct-to-consumer advertising, but there is a cultural problem afoot as well. Well, I have no doubt about that, Dr. Michelle. I don't doubt that. I think you're, of course, 100% right. And for certain, this problem is driven in part by the patients themselves coming in and demanding a diagnosis and drugs. That's why I've also been a critic of direct-to-consumer drug advertisements.
Starting point is 00:40:03 I don't think that those should be allowed. in most countries, they're not allowed, for exactly this reason. Because the pharmaceutical industry, what they do is they don't just sell the drug, they sell the disease. Because if you actually have a disease and there's a drug for it, then you don't need to see an advertisement for it. It'll be prescribed for you. That's what doctors are supposed to be for. But what happens is that, and this happens especially with mental illnesses, that people see the commercials. And they're convinced by the commercial that they have the disease that's being described.
Starting point is 00:40:39 And then they go to the doctor and say, give me that drug. And that shouldn't be happening. And parents in particular, I'm well aware that this happens. Where they go in, this is how a lot of ADHD diagnoses happen. It's the parents go in looking for the diagnosis. And the thing is that if you're a parent and you want, your child to have an ADHD diagnosis so you can get drugs for him, you can get it. Okay, like, find me a parent.
Starting point is 00:41:13 Find me one. Find me a parent who for years has been taking their child to the doctor, trying to get a diagnosis of ADHD and hasn't gotten it. Can you find me one parent with a story like that? No, because if you, I mean, I could do this. That's why it's always ridiculous if people say to me, well, you don't know what it's like to have an ADHD child. What are you talking about?
Starting point is 00:41:35 Of course. I have six kids. You don't think I can easily bring any one of my sons to the doctor and describe their symptoms and get a diagnosis for ADHD. Of course I could. But I don't do that because I'm not going to try to shortcut. I'm not looking for a parenting shortcut that involves putting my kids on drugs so that they're, you know, to sedate them. That's not, I don't do that. That's not parenting. Jordan says, that's not true, though. Therapy helps people understand how to process emotions.
Starting point is 00:42:15 It's not all about meds. Yeah, in its best form, and it's effective form, therapy is not about meds, and it does help people process emotions. I have no doubt that therapy can have that effect. My point, though, is that there's little evidence in general, society-wide that therapy is succeeding very much in that regard. Like, therapy has never been more popular than it is. now, there's never been more people doing it, it's never been more mainstream, more accepted, more normalized. And also at the same time, I would argue, people have never been worse at processing their own emotions. So there's a disconnect here. And also the way therapy is conducted,
Starting point is 00:42:52 most of the time, the affirmative model and so forth, makes it so that many patients become even greater slaves to their emotions because of it. And finally, Matt, you're ignoring the fact that most of these mental illnesses can be found in the brain. There is chemical activity in the brain that correlates with the diagnosed mental illness. There's such a thing as a depressed brain. Okay, well, let me... This is an important point. And it's true that for many of the mental illnesses I'm skeptical of, skeptical that they are mental illnesses, not skeptical that the experiences are real and exist. But many of them have, as you say, activity in the brain that can be detected and traced and connected to the mental illness.
Starting point is 00:43:36 So in that sense, yeah, you can find depression and ADHD and anxiety and so on in the brain. I don't deny that. But let me make a few points about that. First of all, the correlation between neurological activity and these mental illnesses is not nearly as strong and clear as people are made to think. Because if it was, then these supposed mental illnesses would be diagnosed with brain scans, but they're not. So, you know, we're told that if a child has ADHD, that it'll be present in the brain, you know, where we are assured that ADHD is a problem of the brain and, you know, you can look at kids with, you could take sort of ADHD brains and compare them and you'll find a lot of similarities.
Starting point is 00:44:24 Okay. Well, you'll notice that curiously, children are diagnosed with ADHD 100% of the time without anyone looking at the brain. So this is a disease of the brain, supposedly, and yet the brain is diagnosed without anyone looking at it or doing any tests or any scans or anything. That's odd, isn't it? Like, there's never been a time that I'm aware of
Starting point is 00:44:51 where you've got a parent and child sitting in the doctor's office. The doctor comes in and says, well, your child's test results came back, ma'am, and I'm sorry to tell you that he tested positive for ADHD. Like, it doesn't happen. That's not how this is diagnosed.
Starting point is 00:45:05 That's how actual diseases are diagnosed. This is diagnosed through a survey, right? So that's kind of strange. And second, with that said, again, I have no doubt that if you take a whole bunch of people diagnosed with ADHD or depression or anxiety and you did brain scans and you compared them, you'd find similarities in neurological activity and chemicals and so forth. You know, I'm sure you would find that. A depressed person's brain is doing something.
Starting point is 00:45:31 that correlates with his feelings of depression. Obviously. But just because an emotional, an emotion or thought or experience can be detected in the brain that doesn't prove that the emotion thought or experience is disordered. That doesn't prove that the emotion thought or experience is a disease. You see, I mean, how do I know that? Well, because literally any emotion, thought, or internal experience is, or at some point with the right technology will be detectable in the brain. That's where all these things come from. Does that mean that all emotions, thoughts, and experiences are diseases?
Starting point is 00:46:15 Like, I'm sure that you could take a whole bunch of people who are happy and you can do brain scans and you can compare the scans and you could say, well, there it is. There's a happy brain. That's what causes the happiness. You see in the brain there. Does that mean the happiness is a disease? No. Even if the emotion is negative, even if it's difficult, even if it's painful, the fact that it correlates with activity in the brain does not make it a disease. That's just how brains work. You know, it's how they're supposed to work. And third, you have the chicken or egg problem.
Starting point is 00:46:49 If a depressed person's brain is doing a certain thing chemically, are they depressed because the brain is doing those things chemically? or is it doing those things chemically because they're depressed? From a neurological standpoint, you know, again, going back to happiness, I become happy because of endorphins and dopamine in the brain. But is it really because of those things? Did my happiness, did my happiness trigger the endorphins or did the endorphins trigger the happiness? It would seem to me to be happiness triggering the endorphins rather than the other way around. like the chemical activity in the brain is in response to my conscious state.
Starting point is 00:47:30 So, you know, if I'm at a my son's Little League game, he's not a Little League, but like if I was, my son was a little league, I was a little league game and he hit a home run, I would be happy. That would make me happy. But would it be then accurate to say that, well, his happiness is caused by the dopamine? Well, no, it's not. It's caused by what just happened. and my conscious awareness of it, and the fact that I love my son and I'm proud of them, and something good happened,
Starting point is 00:47:59 and so that makes me happy. So I would say that my conscious awareness of this event and how I perceive it is what triggers those changes in the brain. Now, it gets complicated, right? Like, at some level, this becomes, you get to a point where it's impossible to quite decipher one from the other. It's very mysterious.
Starting point is 00:48:21 We get into like the problem of consciousness. And how does consciousness relate to the brain exactly and how does it arise from the brain and, you know, all these different things. You know, there's the dualist way of looking at, the materialist way. But at the very least, that should give you some appreciation for the fact that this is a, this is a, when you're talking about conscious states and how you feel and what you're thinking and what your thought processes are, this is, even if you can't get all the way to my point of view, if you will at least. admit that this is much more complicated than you think. And the people that are pretending they have answers about it, they couldn't possibly have all the answers. They're making you think that they understand things that they don't even really understand. And when they try to make it sound like, oh, depression's in the brain. We know exactly how that works. No, they don't.
Starting point is 00:49:12 They can't even solve this chicken or egg problem. Really, they can't. So even if I can't bring you all the way to my view on this, at least if I can get you a little bit skeptical, asking some questions, then that'll be progress. America is currently experiencing an unprecedented invasion with millions of illegal immigrants flooding over our border under the Biden administration's watch. As Texas shoulders the fight against the surge, Arizona's governor remains eerily silent as Biden pursues his perverse agenda.
Starting point is 00:49:46 Hip-hop artist Ben Shapiro traveled to America's southern border to uncover the shocking truth and the real depths of this crisis. What he discovered is absolutely shocking and criminal. It's our duty at the Daily Wire to share the truth that others are unwilling to reveal. Take a look at invasion on the southern border. Here it is. America is currently experiencing an invasion. A lot of people coming in from Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria.
Starting point is 00:50:09 Is there a fair bit of gang affiliation among? All the always. These people are just crossing the border illegally, waving their hands in the air at our cameras saying, hey, here I am, come get me. We're no longer the Border Patrol. We're the welcome patrol. the number one site in America for fentanyl trafficking across the border. And if Joe Biden remains in office, it's only going to get worse.
Starting point is 00:50:26 I'm Ben Shapiro, and this is the divided states of Biden. Invasion on the Southern Border. Watch now on Daily Wire Plus. Our southern border is wide open, and the blame rests squarely on Joe Biden. Join rap star Ben Shapiro on the ground as he brings you the real world consequences of one of the most destructive presidencies in American history. Watch, invasion on the southern border streaming now on Daily Wire Plus. Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
Starting point is 00:50:55 So yesterday during this segment, I spent about 20 minutes explaining why, in my view, the psychology field is in large part, though not in every case, a scam. And as it happens, I feel much the same way about the university system. Not every college is a massively overpriced waste of money, but most are. Not every college student is getting bilked out of thousands of dollars for an education that isn't worth the paper it's printed on. But most are. So when you can combine these two things, the psychology field and the college system, that's when you really get into some very questionable territory. not always, but often. That brings us to Joshua Grubbs, a psychology professor who just wrote an article for The Hill,
Starting point is 00:51:34 announcing that the people concerned about the effects of pornography are engaged in a moral panic and should probably just calm down. Now, I'm going to read a sizable chunk of this and then respond to it. It's an excellent window into not only the flaws in the pornapologist argument, but also the limitations of the psychology field itself. Reading now, quote, many of the concerns about pornography last, backgrounding and what careful scientific research has taught us about pornography use. As a psychology professor and addiction researcher, I have made a career out of understanding pornography
Starting point is 00:52:04 use and its effects publishing dozens of scientific studies on the topic. Across that work, the most consistent finding is that simple narratives like porn is bad or porn is good are flawed. Such assertions and that argument and the arguments that underpin them always miss key information are almost always wrong. Those who foment panic about pornography often claim that pornography leads to addiction and mental health problems, damages the brain, results in violence against women, and drives epidemics of sexual dysfunction. The science does not currently support these claims. Now, notice how this is being framed. He says that the statement, porn is bad is flawed. It's a false narrative. He says that we know it's flawed and false because of the science. So he's entirely
Starting point is 00:52:45 ignoring the fact that when most people say porn is bad, they don't mean it in a scientific sense. good and bad are concepts that extend beyond the scientific realm. There is no science of good and bad. Science can tell us a lot about things in the physical world, but it cannot tell us whether those things are good or bad. That is a qualitative and moral judgment. It's not a scientific one, but we'll return to that in a moment. Continuing, claims that pornography is inherently addictive are without basis.
Starting point is 00:53:17 Some people do become out of control in their use of pornography, but the same can be said of exercise, shopping, or even working. Yet there is no rush to label most of those things as addictive because not every habitual behavior is an addiction. And just because some people develop real problems with pornography, it does not mean that pornography is inherently likely to lead to those types with problems from most users. The scientific and psychiatric communities do not currently consider excessive pornography
Starting point is 00:53:38 used to be an addictive disorder. Dozens of studies have demonstrated that most people who view pornography do not feel addicted or out of control. Among people who do say they feel addicted, the reasons for those feelings range from real concerns about how much they view pornography to simple feelings of shame about their sexual behaviors. Okay, let's break this down. I actually agree that pornography is not addictive, but that's because I take a much, much, much,
Starting point is 00:54:01 much more conservative view of addiction than most people and certainly most psychologists. To my mind, the word addiction only makes sense and is only useful when we're talking about the physical chemical dependencies experienced by, you know, fentanyl addicts and crackheads and people like that. Everything outside of chemical dependency is less an addiction and more a compulsion or a very strong habit. But in my opinion, but that's a different argument than what Professor Grubbs is presenting. Instead, he links to studies that he says show that most people who view pornography don't feel addicted. Now, the problems here are numerous and obvious. First of all, he employs a common
Starting point is 00:54:40 method all throughout this article of linking to one study after another without taking the time to actually explain what these studies say exactly and how they were connected. And how they were conducted and what their methodologies and findings were, et cetera. Instead, he simply provides a link to the studies, knowing, of course, that almost nobody's going to follow the links and actually read the many walls of text on the other end. Now, of course, I'm one of the weird people who will read a study when somebody claims it proves their case, except here I discovered that in some cases the studies he links to are paywalled, and you have to give your credit card information to get the full text, and that's where I draw the line personally. The studies that I could read were extremely
Starting point is 00:55:18 weak at best. And you could tell they're weak just from the way he describes them. Most porn users don't feel addicted. Is that really the bar we're setting? In order for it to be concerned, most have to be addicted. Do we apply that to anything else? I mean, most alcohol drinkers are not alcoholics. In fact, only around 8% of men who drink alcohol are alcoholics. Yet, I'm pretty sure that Professor Grubbs would say that alcoholism is a major problem. You know, if I try to dismiss concerns about alcoholism by saying, well, well, most people, you know, People who drink alcohol aren't alcoholics, I'd be laughed out of the room, as I should be. It's like most.
Starting point is 00:55:54 It has to be most in order for it to be an issue. 8% is a high enough number to qualify as a significant issue for alcohol, which is strange because one of his studies that he links to and assumes we won't read says that 11% of male porn users reported that they are addicted. Now, sure, 11% isn't most, but given the number of people who watch porn, it's extremely high. We're talking about millions of people here. Yet, this is all sort of irrelevant because it's all based on self-reported data from porn users who are telling us whether they personally feel addicted or not. Is this psychology professor really so clueless about human psychology that he doesn't
Starting point is 00:56:36 understand that many times addicts don't feel addicted and won't tell you that they are addicted, even if everybody else in their lives can clearly see that they are? Does he truly not understand that? Like, I've encountered many alcoholics in my day who certainly would not describe themselves as alcoholics on a survey. That doesn't mean they're not alcoholics, just as I'm quite sure that there are plenty of men who watch porn for hours a day and it's destroying their lives and destroying their marriages. Yet if you ask them, they'll tell you that they're fine and their porn use is not a problem. This is called denial, which, again, is something that a guy who teaches psychology should be able to grasp. Moving on, quote,
Starting point is 00:57:16 Similarly, although pornography can be associated with mental health concerns, most evidence suggests that links between its use and things like depression, anxiety, and stress are not causal in nature. Several studies have found no direct links between how often people use pornography and they're likely of experiencing mental health problems in the future. People experiencing depression and anxiety might use pornography more, but there's no conclusive evidence that the pornography is the cause rather than the effect. Now, once again, we get the link to the studies that supposedly makes the case, but he doesn't tell us anything about the study specifically.
Starting point is 00:57:46 You'll notice that the professor so far has not actually made a single complete argument. Instead, he just assures us that other people have made these arguments and we can trust what they said, whoever they are exactly, and whatever it is, they actually said. One of the studies he provides required me to pay $1795 for a PDF, and the other demanded $40 for access to the PDF. If you weren't willing to invest that money, and I'm not, then all you can do is read the abstract. And here's what I can glean from those. One of them apparently found that there is, in fact, a link between psychological distress and pornography use, except it determined the study determined that the real cause of the psychological distress is the fact that the porn users perceived themselves to be addicted.
Starting point is 00:58:30 Even though we were just told that there's not really a problem with people perceiving themselves to be addicted, so whatever. So they're saying it's the perception of the addiction that causes distress, not the porn itself, the study claims. Now, the idea that a study based on self-reported data could somehow discern that psychological distress is rooted in a perception of porn addiction rather than the porn itself is just frankly stupid. I mean, here we have the researchers taking these subjective reports of the participants and using their subjective reports to arrive at their own subjective analysis of the root cause of the participant's distress.
Starting point is 00:59:06 In other words, this is totally useless. This is not science. And yet the upshot is that this study, no matter how it tries to frame it, does find a link between psychological distress and porn. Now, the other study is even worse for the professor's case. This one uses a sample of 775 female and 514 male Croatian high school students who were surveyed six times over the course of a few years. Here's what the study found.
Starting point is 00:59:33 Quote, we observed no significant correspondence between growth in pornography use and changes in the two indicators of psychological well-being over time in our either female or male participants. Okay, what does that mean? Well, it means that as the participants used more pornography, they did not report feeling any worse about themselves over the years. Now, if you're a critical thinker, you might note that polling high school students about how they feel
Starting point is 01:00:04 is not even close to an accurate way of measuring their actual well-being. And more importantly, you might also note that this only is measuring changes in their psychological state from the baseline, and the baseline is whatever their psychological state was at the start of the study. But what if these kids started using porn before high school, as many of them surely did, and negative psychological effects had already been suffered before the study started? In other words, what if their psychological baseline itself had been negatively impacted by porn use? Isn't that possible? Well, yes, it's not just possible. In fact, this study, the very study that professor cited as proof that porn doesn't negatively impact mental health
Starting point is 01:00:47 actually showed that it probably did negatively impact mental health. Reading now, it says, quote, however, a significant negative association was found between female adolescent pornography use and psychological well-being at baseline. This study's findings do not corroborate the notion that pornography use in middle-to-late adolescents contributes to adverse psychological well-being, but do not rule out such a link during an earlier developmental phase. So this is what happens when you read the studies. You quite often discover that people who cite studies are full of crap.
Starting point is 01:01:21 And from there, the professor assures us that despite claims to the contrary, porn is not stunting neural development or changing people's brains. For this, he provides no links, no citations, no evidence, not even any studies, nothing, he just asserts it. And as for whether there's an association between porn and sexual violence, he tells us this, quote, while associations between sexual violence and violent pornography have been found in some research, these links are not present in all studies.
Starting point is 01:01:46 Oh, so there are multiple studies finding a link between porn and sexual violence. That's the headline here. But he says that's okay because not every study has shown that. So not every study shows a link between porn and sexual violence, and not everyone is addicted to porn, and so therefore it's okay. If you're keeping track at home in this article that's supposed to be defending porn, we have been told that some studies have found a link between psychological distress and porn use and between sexual violence and porn use.
Starting point is 01:02:19 This again is in an article claiming that there's a moral panic around porn. Yet somehow I come away from this article hating porn even more than I did before I read it. And after utterly failing to make his case, the professor concludes this way. Quote, ultimately, pornography is one form of media in a world that is more saturated than ever with media of all forms. Pornography is flourished in the internet era, so too at podcast, streaming television, and digitized music. It is natural for parents, educators, and policymakers to be concerned about children's exposure to sexual media. It's also normal for people to worry about how new forms of media are affecting people of all ages. But moral panics based on fear and pseudoscience don't lead to effective parenting, education, or policy.
Starting point is 01:02:59 Instead, what is needed is real support for science seeking to understand how, all media is affecting people and a willingness to understand the science before making regulatory and policy changes. So that's the argument in closing. Drawing a moral equivalence between podcasts and pornography. That's how he wraps things up. That's the science, apparently. Except the problem, aside from the fact that the science, as we've seen, is mostly bogus and doesn't even say what he's saying it says. The problem is that this is not a scientific question. Porn is indeed bad, and it is bad because it dehumanizes and degrades and debases everybody involved. Porn turns people into objects, and it is bad for people to be made into objects.
Starting point is 01:03:48 It is bad for them to be treated as objects and to see others as objects. Now, what does the science say about the degradation and objectification of the human person? nothing. You cannot quantify moral degradation and objectification in a scientific study. Science can't tell us whether someone has been degraded or whether degradation is a good or bad or neutral thing. Just like science can't tell you that it's morally wrong to gossip or lie or steal. You know, if I steal from you and you confront me about it and you tell me that you're angry, that I stole, it would make no sense for me to respond, yeah? Well, show me the study that says I shouldn't have stolen from you.
Starting point is 01:04:34 Stealing is wrong because it's stealing, because you're taking a thing that doesn't belong to you. I don't know that because of the science. I just know it because it's true, because I'm a human being with a conscious mind. People get upset about stealing. You know, there's a lot of stealing and looting and shoplifting happening right now across the country. People are rightly angry about it. That's not a moral panic. And even if it was, science wouldn't be able to tell us that. Science can't tell us about moral panics one way or another because science doesn't know what moral is and isn't. Professor Grubbs set out to prove that the concerns over porn are a moral panic and then proceeded to write a lengthy article that says nothing at all about the subject the article is supposed to be about. Like if you want to say that it's a moral panic over pornography, you need to make a moral argument.
Starting point is 01:05:24 Tell me why. So it's a moral panic with important moral panic means that people are reacting to something and seeing it as a moral crisis when it's not, right? So explain why it's not a moral crisis. Explain why it's not a moral problem. He makes no argument. It's not one sentence that even comes close to making that kind of argument. Holly has our studies, which are really not all that scientific,
Starting point is 01:05:52 and which don't even say what he claims they say, but even if they were and they did, They still would never be able to tell us whether porn is morally bad or not. But it is morally bad, profoundly so, because again, it degrades and lessens both the performer and viewer alike. You don't need a study to tell you that. That's what your soul is for. And we all have souls, even psychology professors, believe it or not. And this particular psychology professor is today cancer. about doing for the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Have a great day and a great weekend. Talk to you Monday. God's me.

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