Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews - 4/27/21 - The Great Hamburglary

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Tonight we discuss one of the sillier completely made-up right wing conspiracies in recent history: Joe Biden’s all out assault on Republican Cheeseburgers. Also a conversation with embattled college professors Andrew Smith and Julia Gruber, who are currently under fire for hurting the feelings of a conservative colleague at Trae’s alma mater. And more!Support the show

Howdy, everybody, welcome back. Today's Tuesday, April 27th, 2021. I'm Trey Crowder, and that there is Mark Aegee. What's up, Mark? What's up, Trey? This is a sad diversion, but did you watch the end of the UFC fight this weekend? No, I actually purposefully avoided watching clips because I know from Twitter and from the group tax and stuff.

Apparently, it was extremely gruesome, and I'm not great with that type of thing, so I didn't look it up. Me neither. That's why I actively avoid combat sports, but I didn't even know it was UFC fight night. I was trying to watch a basketball game, and I'm there. And like 98% of the TV is on this new sport, which I didn't even know what's happening. And two consecutive matches had guys where their legs just fell off, basically. And I did not need to see that.

and it's a horrific I feel like it's not really niche anymore, right? I mean, that's why they're, I mean, I know they're showing it because of the sensationalist gruesome nature of the particular thing that happened, but like ESPN covers all those things and stuff now, right? It's like, I mean, it's big shit at this point. I mean, ESPN televises bowling and poker too.

Like, like, so, I mean, I don't know where to, I don't know where to like rank it, but I do say, like, I live in Los Angeles, the home of the world champion Los Angeles Lakers who are playing a very important game against my team, the Dallas Mavericks on national television. And out of 20 TVs, we had to beg to get that on one. And that seems unbalanced to me. Yes, I agree with you.

But hey, if it bleeds, it leads, right? If the leg falls off, it's going off. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, you get what I mean. I took a swing. All right. Well, with us as always, is producer Matt doing the thing.

This right here is weekly skews tonight. Where's the beef? Well, I'll tell you where it's not, in the cards for American conservatives if Joe Biden has his way. That's right. Not content to merely take their guns and bibles. We on the left have set our sights firmly on their cheeseburgers. We will talk about. Cows are canceled track.

The cancel. Finally got to the cows. Also, it may surprise you all to hear that it seeming more and more as though conservatives in this country contend towards being a little hypocritical. I know. Also, overly sensitive, easily offended. It's hard to believe, but mounting evidence seems to support the hypothesis. For that conversation, we will be joined by our guest tonight. Two embattled professors for my alma mater, Tennessee Tech University in Cookville, Tennessee,

Dr. Andrew Smith and Dr. Julia Gruber, who are currently under fire receiving death threats and facing possible disciplinary action for putting up flyers that hurt the feelings of a conservative colleague. No, poor guy. All that and more on tonight's skews, but first, as always, we begin with the Daily Dumbass. Matt, graphic, please. Tonight's dumbass is, I believe, for the first time, and boy, are we honored to have him. Rick Santorum, who has a interesting perspective on the state of this country when the first European settlers arrived. Matt, play the clip please we came here and created a blank slate we we birthed a nation from nothing i mean there's nothing here i mean yes we have native americans but but candidly that that there isn't much

native american culture in american culture it it was born of the people who came here pursuing religious liberty to practice their faith to live as they ought to live as they ought to live and have the freedom to do so. You know how racist you have to be to use the phrase birth of a nation in this sentence? And it wasn't even the real... It wasn't even part of the racism. I know, right, exactly.

That was like an offshoot of the main shitty thing he was doing. He also used the phrase birth of a nation while erasing the presence of Native Americans when the settlers arrived. It's just, you know, like, look, there was nothing here. We came here and built all this. I mean, there were some things we had to take care of, sure. But mostly, there was nothing here.

We built this Jesus theme park up from nothing, and here we are today. It is extremely hilarious to me, just to say that there's no Native American culture in American culture in front of an audience exclusively rich enough to have where all their kids play lacrosse that was like it's fucking funny to me I don't understand I mean I don't know like it's like they'd be like they we're gonna get to like talking about like conservatives versus American history later a little bit I think but if you just remembering stuff is anti-American right right yeah why you're just bringing up old shit like like Americans went through marriage counseling and now we're not supposed to like, like, we're just supposed to bring up fights we had before 2011 or something.

It's like, it's just, we're not saying you, Rick Santorum slaughtered some natives. We're just like, it fucking happened, you know, I don't know. Right. Well, the natives have always been for the Rick Santorum's of the world, you know, a real inconvenience. They were an inconvenience back then. And then now in the narrative, they're an inconvenience. But I like what you said about lacrosse. We haven't planned on doing this, but I googled it real quick because I love this.

You said he did this in front of an audience. who's, you know, children have enough money to play lacrosse at a high level. There was a thing that went viral about a year ago that was a list of actual top-tier lacrosse players' names in this country from places like Johns Hopkins and the Rhode Island Institute of Technology and places like that. And I want to read you a couple of these actual names here. Shackleford-Stamwick Sr., Quinn Commandment, Command, Quinn Commandant, Holden Rosen Grup, Dar Sleeper, Sky Dupree, Taggart Eimer, Dallas Creamer, Colby Hamway, Jr., Wheaton, Jackaboyce, the first, Tanner Elwood, Caden, Kightlinger, Con Curry, Gage Barber, Rain, Rain, Schamberger, and Hampton Brannon, among others. So, yeah, get a good, get a good glimpse of who's playing lacrosse.

Decades, decades before Becky from Full House figured it out, the northeastern white rich people have figured out how to backdoor their kids getting athletic passes in the colleges they don't deserve via lacrosse, which is exclusively basically what that voice sport is for. But it looks like it may be fun to play. You hit people in head with a stick, you know, which hits. but I don't really understand the point of it. Otherwise, it's, yeah, I went to us,

I never knew what lacrosse was until I got to college. I went to a school that had pretty good lacrosse team for a D3 school. And I had all these kids from like, from Long Island who were probably huge disappointment to their parents who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach them to play lacrosse to get into, you know, the Ivy League and up sitting next to me in fucking English class. So congrats to that. Yeah, for everybody that doesn't know, and I'm sure all of y'all do, but lacrosse is a med of american sport they have uh one of the tribes i'm forgetting it now

because it's been a long time so i saw this but they still compete at a high level in lacrosse as their own nation like and do really well at it um but the representation at the uh big schools and everything is a little bit different you got old shamblford dick and so the third or whatever i said how is that not a movie because like it seems it like they always make a movie about the first, you know, the first black NCAA team that won a title, West Texas, State, I forget, I'm blank on the name of the university or whatever. They'd be Kentucky in a fairly famous game or like, there are a bunch of made-up versions, like the first all-black swim team or whatever,

but like here you have like the people that originally this sport kick an ass of the people who stole it, which is where flips the paradigm, I want to see that movie. Yeah, hell yeah. I think we've lamented recently. There's not enough sports movies in general anymore. Bring them back. Start with that one. That would hit.

But let's do some honorable. mentions here for our dumbasses, first honorable mention, anybody who wouldn't drive 19 hours to work just to avoid wearing a piece of cloth over their nose. So there's a Alaskan state representative or state senator, Laura Reimbold, who has been banned from Alaskan Airlines because she refuses to wear a mask. And as a result of that, she had to drive across. all, you know, the Great White North, the wilderness, I ain't been up there, but, you know, I understand. It's a whole thing. Look, you and me don't really have a conception of how big Alaska is, or I don't at least,

but this lady should have, she's from there. And so, just by the way, because she wouldn't put on a mask, they're going to play in this video of it, but it's just boring. It's just her harassing an airline employee and taking, filling them, and ask a cop what his badge number is, whatever. So to get to the legislature, she had to drive 750 miles, including. a four or five hour a ferry ride

and she had to go through a couple Canadian border checkpoints. This idiot, I wanted to call her a worst name. This fucking idiot

had to drive through Canada to get to work because she didn't want to wear a mask. Yeah, I mean, dude, like,

the links they will go to to harm themselves, which I believe this will also be relevant when we get to the beef talk later, just to like prove a point or, you know,

not to prove, but to own us, to own the libs. is just something else, dude. Like, I've driven across big chunks of this country, both in moving to California and doing the tour and driving between cities and stuff. And if you told me, like, you can avoid this 10-hour drive

if you just wear this piece of cloth over your face, that's a no-brainer, man. Like, that's the easiest proposition in the world, but not for these people. They got principles, Mark, and they stand on them. I mean, Tray, imagine a slightly different universe where COVID was spread exclusively through farts, and the public health measure was to ask people to wear pants. Like, what the airports would look like right now?

Yeah, that's hilarious. It's also like the just, there's this sort of general lack of empathy with their side, it seems like, because it's been, you know, proven multiple times at this point that the wearing of a mask really protects everyone else, right? So going to those links to a few, to refuse to do that is just such a dick move, but they don't see it that way. It's their own personal freedoms that they've got to protect. It's like basically no downside and unlimited upside. I mean, like I said, no downside. I don't like wearing a mask.

No, nobody. Dude, I wear glasses. You wear glasses, too. Dude, it fogs on glasses up. Dude, I can't stand wearing a mask, but I still do it. But it's an inconvenience, but it's a fairly minor one in the grand scheme of things. And the upside of it is maybe someone else gets to still be alive. So it's a very small trade-off.

So I just, but like, imagine, like, it's a fun, always a fun intellectual experiment to think about, like, what if something didn't exist and lives proposed it right now? For how, like, for example, try to imagine if there were no public libraries and you pitched a, public library at a city councilman. Oh, dude. Oh, my God. Even fire departments and shit would be no-goes. Imagine, I think we've done this one before, but imagine if they're like police didn't exist and Obama suggested them. Yeah. Obama wants to put an armed agent of the state on every corner to police your thoughts, right?

But since 2020, I mean, since 2016, it's gotten so dumb. It literally could do that with pants now. If pants didn't exist and someone sewed them and suggested you were, had to be, they'd be acquired to enter a 7-Eleven. Imagine. No pants. We don't have to imagine.

We don't have to imagine. There'd be people carrying guns around San Am I wearing pants in the 7-Eleven. Yeah. Pantsless people with guns. That's, that's what we need right there. Like, as if they,

as if they didn't look ridiculous enough, they'd have the, like, the sort of like, mall ninja body armor and everything on up top. But no pants. an AR-15 at a fucking R-B's or whatever. Well, they, that makes more sense than those mall ninjas.

They like to get tactical pants, but they get them like, they're like quadruple X-L and they get them baggy, right? Tactical pants are supposed to be tight so you can move it, so you can see you can fight in them, right? So like they're already wearing, they're already wearing pants wrong. It doesn't matter. They're wearing pants wrong. They're wearing pants wrong. No, I'm with you. You're right.

All right. Our next honorable mention, this is a hypothetical dumb ass hair. anyone who broke into Kevin McCarthy's bathroom during the January 6th insurrection. That's House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy. Why would that have been a dumb move to break into McCarthy's bathroom? Because waiting inside the bathroom is Arkansas Representative Bruce Westerman, who was standing there with a Civil War sword. He pulled off the wall, crouched on the toilet, defending himself from the insurrectionist.

So, yeah, you don't want no part of that, Mark. Yeah, first of all, I don't believe the Civil War cover story. This motherfucker's a Highlander. I'm well with that. But it's just things, but I'm saying, this kind of gives me sympathy to Lauren Bobert, like she complains about not being able to carry her handgun around the Capitol complex. Like, this dude gets to carry around a sword. I think she should get her handgun.

It's only fair. Sure. Yeah. But this guy, by the way, a week later, voted to not convict Trump of impeachment. Because, of course, he did, because the kind of guy was a Civil War sword in his wall. But he almost thought he thought he was going to die to the point. He armed himself and sealed himself off in a bathroom and still thinks Trump's a hero of the story. Yep.

Producer Matt says, you know that was a Confederate sword. And yeah, absolutely. You know what? He wouldn't, he wouldn't besmirch himself with a Yankee sword, Matt. Unless his grandfather captured it off a dead Yankee, in which case he would absolutely have it. Right. Okay. Our next honorable mention, anybody out there who's ever doubted the artistic capabilities of Texans. Mark, you're a Texan. Not fair. You've got a lot of artistic capabilities, right? Yeah. Well, I only lived in Texas. I lived in Texas from when I moved there when I was 21, 20. 21.

Yeah, but yeah, we've got a lot of ingenuity and a lot of creative spirit. And this doesn't manifest itself. Yeah, as Matt points out, I'm wearing a Gettie museum shirt, love art. I went to my mom, I got a T-shirt. Let's show people what we're talking about. Matt threw out there. Look at this. True artistic masterpieces found around San Antonio recently. I kind of apologize to y'all for showing y'all this, but at the same time,

the other part of me is like, look, I had to see it. You all had to see it too. For anybody that's just listening, first of all, bless you for not having to see this. But it's a Photoshop picture of Ted Groh. who's in a BDSM get up. It's like wrapped around his bobs and his gut sticking out really far. And he's got gloves on. And there's a tattoo that says Proud Boy across his stomach.

And it is truly upsetting this picture. But I'm glad that people are doing it. Yeah. Somebody put up from the pictures, I can't tell whether it's like merely dozens or hundreds. But the like fathead size stickers are basically human size or Posto basically put a wall all over San Antonio. Ted Cruz is not popular there that Beto had run.

Ted Cruz won the Republican primary, like 30% of the vote, has been barely winning majorities. Like, he's very, very beatable. Beto almost beat him. If it had been a presidential election year, like, with Biden on the ticket, he would have won. And I look forward to that. I mean, I'm not sure what Ted Cruz would do in his post-Senate life, but I look forward to seeing what that is and I hope it's painful and miserable.

Yep. All right, our last honorable mention for Daily Dumbass today, anybody out there who doesn't understand the nuance of American history. And that'll make sense in just a second. Matt, play the second. But what is a larger course of academic instruction? If you're teaching, if you're having a discussion on whatever the case may be, on slavery, then you can talk about everything dealing with slavery, the good, the bad, the ugly. There's no good to slavery, though. Well, then whatever the case made.

You got to cover it all, Mark. You got to be fair. You got to talk about all the good parts of slavery, you know, just to be even-handed. I actually, I love that the other representative, rep, Hepherty there just immediately came back with the appropriate response to that. You know what I mean? Because so many times, I feel like you're so, when something like that happens and somebody like that says it, you're almost so kind of blown away that they actually said that thing that you missed the opportunity to come back at them the way that she did.

It's like with the obvious response, there's no good to slavery. You're like, well, you know, whatever the case may be. There is a, that was a legislative hearing on some sort of legislation that would, in reaction of the 1619 project and all that and stuff like that, Republican legislators are trying to throw away to ban teachers from telling people. kids that America did bad things so that's ostensibly what this hearing is about and it is funny because like what's happened is they've lost just just like everything else with the internet they've lost control of the narrative because kids can look up what slavery was like and so they're

tried so and teachers feel less bound to like you know myth making bullshit so their kids are hearing more orange varnish truths it's like but like this is their version of combating Q&ON is kids getting on the internet and finding out slavery is bad they're trying to like Instead of, but they're not trying to stop disinformation. They're trying to stop information. It's just really fucking funny. Yeah. Yeah.

No, they're, you're right. They're trying to halt information and propagate the shit out of disinformation, which leads us to our top story tonight, the great hamburglery. Joe Biden, coming for your cheeseburgers, Mark. Will you set this up for us, please? Joe's going to hamburger, tray. So out of nowhere seemingly last week, it became this ray-wing meal. that Joe Biden is going to steal your fucking hamburgers.

All right. So this first video is a pretty good sample of the straight news version of the coverage. If you throw that up, Matt. Say goodbye to your burgers if you want to sign up for the Biden climate agenda. That's the finding of one study. In order to help hit the Biden administration's climate goals of reducing emissions by 50% from 2005 by 2030, researchers say you'd have to cut about 90% of red meat from your diet. For Americans, that means a limit of four pounds of red meat per year,

or break that down further, a single average-sized burger every month. Let's tuck in some more here. Larry Kudlow joins us now. I can hear the refrain from Clara Peller from the grave. Larry going, where's the meat? So right after that, by the way, Cudlow says he doesn't even eat beef. then they go on to talk about the evils of this.

But yeah, like you said, seemingly fabricated out of thin air, which, I mean, it literally was, right. It kind of had to be because it's based on nothing, actual nothing. So a series of things happened. One, Biden said he's going to release, like they change their climate emissions target to be 50% cut by 2030, which is like the bare minimum we need, but it's also extremely aspirational, which is sort of like, The handcuffs rid of how fucked humanity is. It's like, the scientists tell you what you need to do, and they go, well, that's actually impossible. It's like, okay, well, I guess we're just going to, like, go through this now.

So anyway, so they released the climate targets. And then somebody dug up an old study talking about hypothetically what we could do to curb greenhouse gas emissions through just changing our eating habits. And one of those things from a two-year-old study from the University of Michigan was suggested, like maybe we could cut like red meat consumption. like 90%. That was like, and so the daily, the daily mail conflated these two things.

Right. Yeah, there's the daily mail article. It suggests some things that could cut, but like these are like, this is like just taking random things and cutting them by 50% or a picket of percentage. This is nothing to do with actual strategies to attack climate change. Like, so, like it doesn't take any fact.

Like, what if the trucks hauling the cows to the slaughterhouse were electric? He doesn't like vector and stuff like that. Yeah, right. So it's just nonsense analysis. So, um, you said that you said, you said they conflated the two, but yeah, the, the study from the University of Michigan, this is based on has literally nothing at all to do with the Biden administration or the Biden climate plan or any of that. It was literally a completely separate study on here are some things that we could do if we wanted to that would result in the. these positive effects where climate change is concerned.

And they took that and combined it with Biden announcing this just sort of blue sky plan to reduce climate emissions and just straight up said, this is what he's saying when they had nothing to do with each other. Yeah, it'd be like if hypothetically your wife was like, let's get romantic tonight. And your head you go, well, that includes the possibility of group sex. And you go, I'm having group sex tonight. It doesn't like, it doesn't quite work that way. Uh, so anyway, the two, this, the two bullet point subheadlines under the headline literally say, um, uh, but he has yet to release any firm details of the plan. And while Biden has released the details, experts and studies have laid out what we need to change. They're doing hypothetical. It'd be like, uh, hey, we got to come back on household spending. You go like, I can't buy food. Like, wait, I didn't. This two things didn't, you know, I don't. It's just like, it's like, it's a lot. Right. And we've talked about before how it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's. It's like, it's. It's like, it's like, it's. It's. It's like, it's like, it's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's

It's maddening and comically absurd and all that, but it's almost kind of like nostalgic for me when these type of scandals going on, meaning like, you know, whereas when Trump was in office, it was some crazy shit that legitimately happened every other day, right? You know what I mean? And but now from the opposite, the opposing side with a Democrat in office, they literally have to just. make things up, which is what they did, you know, Obama with his mustard stain and the tan suits and all this shit and that type of thing. Like, they have to just make shit up. And it is infuriating, but it's also, to me, like, kind of reassuring that we're back to that as opposed to like an existential crisis every other day or whatnot because of who the president is. Yeah, I mean, I do live in less day-to-day fear of, you know, nuclear dying in a nuclear Holocaust. but I mean look

there is there is stuff legitimately criticized Biden for it's just from the it's from the left for the most part they can't the only thing they have to come at Biden for is stuff like hypothetically the green like they can't even like criticize it when taxing and spending anymore because of how Trump

spent like a like a fucking idiot so they got nothing they so like they will have complaints about the details of the green energy plan but there are no details released yet they're making up hamburger shit So, but the way of manifest itself, so are you going to say something? Well, I was just going to say it also, it gave them, it gave conservatives an opportunity to do their favorite type of protesting, which is being fat in protest.

You know what I mean? They love that, dude. It's like when all the chick-fil-a shit was going on, they got to line up around the block and eat four chicken sandwiches at once just to show the gays, you know, or whatever. And that's also happened with this, because Donald Trump Jr. tweeted about it and said, I'm pretty sure I, I ate four pounds of red meat yesterday. So it's going to be a hard no for me on the subject of cutting back his red meat consumption. And this led to a swath of similar posts from conservatives who started posting the, like, garbage meat. They were eating to own the libs.

It's like, you know. Just giant hunkes of burnt fucking pot roast. Yeah. And they're like, what do you think about that? Libs? None of these people can cook for shit. It's like, that looks awful. Dude, look at that.

Yeah. They're getting the gout to own the libs. And I got to be honest, if you want to give yourself a stroke to make me mad, I promise to be furious right after you die. I absolutely promise. Yeah, for sure. Hey, it's working. I can't stand it.

Keep going. Yeah. Keep your arteries up. That's fine with me. I'm, I'm real, I'm feeling real owned right now. This got real. Silly, if you have a Soiling Green video, Matt, hit it. Now, of course, this is the kind of big government foretold.

And in 1973, this dystopian movie classic Soiling Green, it was written actually in 1966. Here's the thing. They saw a future world, it was in ruins, it was in squalor, a world that ran out of food. They were relegated to eating this food substitute called Soiling Green. Of course, that is. Except for the elites, they lived in luxury condos and they still had access to things like fresh strawberries and meat. In fact, in one of my favorite scenes that sees the main character is played by Charlton Heston, he gets a rare chance to taste meat. And the joy on his face, it expressed pure delight.

You know what's really spooky about this whole thing? That film is set in the year 2020. Mark. Oh, shit. I mean, I don't, I literally don't even. follow what that was supposed to be. What does that mean? Are they saying like once Biden takes all your burgers way,

then you're going to start eating people or whatever? Like, what's that even supposed to say? I think you're just saying, just because if it's heavily regulated, rich people will still get to eat steak, which yes, that's how America works.

Rich people still get stuff the rest of us can't get. They're probably eating fucking pandas right now. I don't know. But like, what that's a point about American capitalism and the which you're for. I don't fucking understand. Exactly. Yeah, right. That's y'all's fault that that happened.

Yes. And they probably, this went a little too far when they started getting reversed trolled is when Larry Cudlow on his show did this fucking stupidity. No stakes on the Barbie. I'm sure Middle America is just going to love that. Can you grill those Brussels sprouts?

So get ready. You can throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts and wave your American flag. Call it July 4th. What kind of... Do you see a problem with that? Has this motherfucker been drinking?

Has he been drinking blood? What has he been drinking? Probably, yeah, just fermented blood, very popular. He doesn't realize that regular people drink plant-based beers all the time because that's what beer is. Does he think red wine's adrenachron in his old time?

Also, dude, ain't a damn thing wrong with some grilled brussels sprouts brussels hit you know what i mean have on with your burger that's fine but yeah just uh the horror of having a plant-based beer my goodness um yeah yeah they did we should say at least note that they did they being fox news they did uh walk it back uh at a certain point they did admit that it wasn't you know true but that was after four days of the fear mongering or whatever and then there was like a 10 second clip where they were like that wasn't maybe entirely accurate and then they moved on i mean just how willfully stupid like if you want to talk about unintended consequences for how stuff works you could be like well if you hit these targets you're going to eat less red meat maybe that would fearmonger people a little bit but like do you really think the president of the united states has any sort of power to regulate your hamburger consumption like i i i know during war two meat was rations but so we have a like i i just don't understand But what mechanism they think this would actually happen?

It's just ridiculous to me. But, like, this daily mail, by the way, daily mail is a garbage rag, and we don't, even we don't use it as a source. I think we used it once for like a relationship thing for a daily dumbass about the my pillow guy dating Jane Kerkowski. But that was, but that's, that was, I remember it because I'm like, this fucking police is this, this is a garbage publication. It's owned by Rupert Murdoch, but it's the owner of the more tabloy side.

And what they're doing, they started like a disinformation pipeline where they make up a story, and then other Rupert Murdoch publications and broadcast outlets cover the fallout from it, right? For example, if you might have seen another right-wing meme that the Biden administration is giving children in camps, Kamala Harris' children's book, the children in the migrant detention camps. That was based upon a book library from which some locals gave books, one person gave Kamala's book, and they made it sound like the federal government's buying a bunch of copy of Kamala's book to hand. out to migrant kids, which I'm not sure what.

So is it good or bad to keep kids in camps? And what are we, we're doctorated to love common like we're, we're starting at Hitler's youth for conflict, starting at Kamala's youth army in the detention camps or something. I can't figure out what the actual conspiracy theory is supposed to be. But anyway, the report of the New York Post, they made the New York Post, excuse me, post reporter right about it. She resigned in, uh, and, uh, protest today. So that, so this, uh, this phenomenon exists where they're making, I got to make up

stories and it's going to be on your uncle's Facebook. It's, uh, in like two easy steps. Yeah, like you said, it's hard to make sense of it all. It's like, you know, well, is it this or is it that? And it's an ongoing question where they are concerned. And with that, we'll lead into our guest tonight. So a little background. Every single week, my little sister, who lives in Cookville, Tennessee, will send me some article or some Facebook post from the area with rage emojis telling me how full of shit everybody is and how furious she is at the place.

in which she lives and how she just she's so upset. Every week there's some new bullshit that comes out of my home state. And last week she sent me one that had to do with my alma mater and two professors there who are coming under fire right now for some flyers they

put up. And I read this and it upset me and I wanted to share it with you all and talk about the larger implications of it. So with that said, let's bring them out here. We've got Professor Andrew Smith and Julia Gruber from Tennessee Tech University. Go, Gold, Go! Go! old needles. But yeah, bring them out here, Matt. We'll talk about it.

Trey! My brother! It's Mr. Smith, Matt. You just can call me Mr. All right. Troy Smith's from the history department as Dr. Smith. It's so good to be here. Well, let's a bit of wings. Thank you all for being here. So I guess I just want to start with just kind of tell us what has happened. Julia, why you talk about the school board meeting and Yes, that's kind of where it started. On February the 4th, Thursday the 4th of February. Yeah.

All right. So back in February, I went to a school board meeting. And I have been trying to advocate for the replacement of the racist all-good school mascot, the R-skins. Right. And we had been in discussion with the school board for months. And then at that February meeting, they shut the conversation down. And when they said that Allgood could keep their racist mascots, someone in the back jumped up, started clapping and cheering and whoop-whoop.

And it wasn't that happy of a whoop-wop. It was kind of aggressive. And there were some indigenous. friends of mine in the audience with their minor children who are part of the school system and my daughter was there and there was some racist air breathing down my neck and later on I found out that this was county commissioner AJ Donadio who's also a professor a nursing professor of all professors at Tennessee Tech and he was very happy when the school school board announced that the racist mascot was going to be kept in place.

And so I went home and I was angry and disappointed. And I wrote my good friend Andrew Smith that, guess what? Donario was at the school board meeting and he also is the advisor of the newly formed chapter of Turning Point USA at Tech. And so Andrew in his sleepless state of professor mind came up instead of a poem, which he usually does, he came up with a flyer. And so he sent me the flyer, and I thought, hmm, that's a pretty harsh flyer, but I'll put it up. And so the next day, I teetote into the nursing building where AJ Donario works. And I put it face down, which tells you how confident I was about this flyer, on some tables. and this is where

history took place. Right. So, okay, so this guy, Danario, who, like you mentioned, is not only a professor at Tennessee Tech. He's a county commissioner in Putnam County, where Tech is located.

He was at this meeting. They opted to uphold the continued use of the racist mascot. And when that happened, he jumped up and just, like, started twerking in front of some indigenous peoples who were there. I know you didn't say that.

Those are my words. He got excited about the result. and sort of rubbed it in the face of an indigenous family that upset you, you told Andrew about it. And then Andrew told you, hey, also he is the Faculty Advisor for Turning Point USA's chapter at Tennessee Tech. Everybody listen doesn't know, that's Turning Point USA of Charlie Kirk and Candace Owen's fame. They've had countless scandals, whatever you want to call it,

with officials they have literally yelling white power, all kinds of generally undersized. undesirable situations they've gotten himself they've gotten himself into go ahead mark i was going say uh this racism scandal is one thing but who is responsible for letting tray have a degree that's another that's a big consider line well actually i need you to know that i went through i went in some old emails tray and you were on the distribution list for the college democrats so when they ask you at the tribunal were you ever a college democrat of course and i might have even been the advisor and all my good, you know, Antifa friends hate that about me that I would work with the

college Democrats. I mean, I'm such a lib-tart. I mean, you know, I had to make sure that I had the Bernie Sanders sign, you know, before the Joe Biden sign, which we got hate mail about your sister. We got hate mail stuffed in our mailbox from a teenager saying, you know, just horribly racist and homophobic things. Just because we had a Biden sign, it's really messed up. So, but I want you guys to picture this. This is me on on expresso at 4 a.m. You know, I had one of those sleep sleepless nights and I'm like pounding the caffeine and I'm like

you know, up in Photoshop and you know, in design and I'm making this flyer and I never thought I was going to share it with anybody and I emailed the you know, little JPEG of it to a couple of people and I think when I found out that Yulia had hung the

flyer, I would be very amiss if I didn't also hang the flyer. So I went to the University Center building the next day. And it was the day of teacher on the radio. And just so you guys know, they pulled police surveillance footage of us. And I wasn't expecting that. I happened to be wearing. That was a news week. Yeah, I've got a store from Mississippi, a blue store, cathead here. But I was wearing my, my IWW hat, trying to be Tom Morello, the international workers of the world. And I was wearing this like very gay rainbow scarf that I

actually got at a church gathering where we were advocating for gay marriage in my church because I'm one of those like liberal Christian dudes. So in any event, leaving the UC, I look like I might have been shoplifting from the school bookstore. I mean, it's really, it's really bad. But I hung one flyer. And I figured they were ripped it. We should say, I think we should cover the, the flyer itself essentially what it's, it was a picture taken from the other guy's Facebook of him. sitting on the Game of Thrones, sword thrown, like with a sword or whatever. And it essentially said, like, we're not down with your racist stuff here. And as part of that, and he's hinged a lot of the argument on this, you guys said, you are on our list and we don't, you know, we don't support you.

That was a direct reference to what Turning Point USA does, which is they keep a running list of liberal professors so that they can be harassed and that type of thing. thing. They literally maintain a list, which is what you were referencing. But what he has said is that that was a direct threat to his person and he feels unsafe because of it. And because it was a physical threat, you all should be fired and dealt with because you threatened his safety. And that's what this all hinges on. And to me, again, literally, he's the faculty advisor for a chapter that maintains a running list of liberal professors for that exact reason. But, but. But apparently is extremely sensitive to being put on any kind of list himself, which isn't even what you were doing. It was just a reference. But again, the hypocritical nature, the overly sensitive nature of the whole thing, it's a bit much. I do want to like, because all this seems like, all this seems like deeply, turning points seems like a deeply silly organization, right? But just just for people to understand, they have an $8 million a year annual budget. And while Charlie Kirk and Ken of someone's are clowns, they've been caught funneling.

dark money, which they get from Petroleum Institute and fossil fuel money and probably some Cook Brother money in there, too, into campus elections illegally to try to rig campus elections. Now, like every right-wing scandal, this seems so stupid

cartoonish until it starts working. And what it means when it starts working is you start seeing, you know, like free speech control on campus, stuff like professors getting run out for posting flyers about racism. So here we go.

Sorry. I just wanted to say why they suck. I just took him off my Christmas card list. Yeah. You got like, so I'm going to read at least a little bit of an example of the hate mail you guys have been getting. Julius sent me this. So yes, a guy did some racist stuff. You called him a racist in a flyer.

And that has resulted in all this shit that's come down on your shoulders, including all this hate mail you all are getting. Some of it physically comes to your houses, I found out, but this is an email here that you got. It says, well, look at you, cancel culture, fascist in action. You're showcasing your university as yet another cesspool of far-left oppressive assholes. Did you really think this wouldn't get out? Did you really think you wouldn't be found out as a fascistic pile of shit? We all know who you are, princess. And when I say we, I'm talking about Americans, not the oppressive little fascist cowards that you run with.

The majority of Americans are not with you. but that's because we are not self-loathing U.S.U.S. like yourself. You can lamb base me all you want because I'm the white prior military and law enforcement. Dang, dang, dang, buggy man, you little cowards love to shit on while never having done a fucking thing for this nation or the people yourself, other than cry and wine and suck each other's titty in the corner. Fuck you.

So that's a fair representation of the kind of response you've gotten from the community. Trey, some of my hate, some of the hate mail has been worse. And I love this. I love this one. I keep getting, he's supposedly a Christian, supposedly a pastor. Like, you can't love Jesus and hate lynching black people. Like, you can't love, you know, Jesus and hate, you know, punishing transgender children in front of, like, their peers. Like, you can't, you know, love, you know, Jesus and want to end global climate change.

And this, you brought up the veteran thing, and I don't know why I didn't think of this further. I'm pretty sure, now, there's probably some veterans on the show, including the guy who wrote that email, but didn't they take an oath to defend my right to call them a racist if I want to? I mean, isn't that kind of the deal? Well, you know what? Actually, since you said that, I saw a quote from Donadio earlier where he said he was talking about the First Amendment. And this is another example of that hypocrisy where he said, you know, freedom from. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. That's what they're facing is freedom from consequences.

But of course, obviously, the same thing applies to what you all did to him, right? Like, you say some racist shit. That doesn't make you immune to other people calling you a racist for doing it. Those are the consequences, which is exactly what happened here. But he's flipping that around and trying to use against you all where he's like, yeah, these are the consequences of their actions. So the hypocrisy is just multi-layered here because he's trying to make a First Amendment stand on this while persecuting you all for the thing you said. Yeah, exactly.

He's like putting it on a First Amendment foundation while trying to cancel y'all for what you said about him. Also, to point out that someone is a racist is apparently worse than being a racist. Right, right, yeah. And that is, there are policies or not for that, because that's, you know, that's what we ran into, that they couldn't find the right policy to come after us because nothing fits. They tried one about, you know, him being a protected group. Well, white males aren't a protected group yet. didn't they land on the safety thing they're trying to hinge it on you all like threatened his safety he feels threatened by what you did and that's what they're trying to hang on tray to be completely honest with you we're not supposed to talk about tech because we love tech and i want to keep my job but the investigation was handled by human resources and i'm an academic and i have tenure and so my boss is my chairperson my dean and the provost those are the people who have authority over me so

they took this out of our normal chain of command and placed it into human resources. And my understanding is that other universities that does not work that way. And so one of the protections of tenure would be that I should have been adjudicated purely by my peers, other colleagues and other professors and definitely my dean, my chair. You know, there is hierarchy, right? But having this up, there's a police report, there's police surveillance footage, there's an HR memorandum, there's the vice president that oversees the HR department. There's all this language out of the policy book, except for the free speech policy. They didn't mention free speech policy once. Get this.

The number for the free speech policy is policy 007. And they didn't quote that at all because it basically says you can be a total jerk and it's protected. They have those anti-choice people where they would have those gigantic zygots, you know, fetus pictures, the size of like Derryberry Hall. And they line Dixie Avenue. Oh, it's called Dixie Avenue, right? So you would, to walk from, like, I used to work in New Hall North as a faculty mentor to students who lived in the dorm, to walk from New Hall North to the UC or to Henderson to one your classes, you have to walk through this kind of like gigantic, you know, anti-abortion,

you know, media assault. And those groups have sued. Did you get the hate preacher, Trey, the guy who would yell at you and you're a, you're a harlot, you're a Jezabelle, you know, don't smoke pot, you know, and they would scream at these children. That guy has no affiliation with tech. He won a lawsuit to come and yell at us whenever he wants. In the name of Jesus. Can I say in the name of Jesus on this show? I don't know. Well, okay. Listen, thank you all for coming on and telling your story. I want to give you an opportunity. If there's like any sort of like parting thoughts you have

about what's going on here, obviously I'm going to be keeping up with it. I think I think y'all will be okay ultimately. It's still bullshit what's going on. But certainly, I hope the bullshit doesn't get worse, but if there's anything you all want to leave us with? I really want that mascot replaced at the All Good Middle School. There are 88 racist mascots in Tennessee alone. Some states who are further along, you know, at becoming decent, are passing laws to get rid of those. But this is what this is about. It's we're standing up for, you know, our indigenous and black and brown friends in Cookville, Tennessee, and it's not about us. You know, we have, we're very privileged university professors. We will probably keep our

job. And, you know, it's been a bit stressful, but this is nothing compared to the stress that our very few brown and black and indigenous people experience in this area. Right. Yeah, and I just want to, I just want to amplify. I, I, I got involved in this movement overall to support my indigenous friend to change that mask up. But I also want the police to stop killing unarmed black people like in Knoxville where that young man bled out in a school bathroom. I want the state legislature to stop criminalizing transgender folk, especially their parents who want to give care to their transgender youth and their doctors. They're criminalizing the caregivers of trans and queer folk. And so I'm going to keep wearing that rainbow scarf.

I'm going to keep wearing the IWW hat because we don't have a lot. of workers' rights in Tennessee, but I still belong to the union, and I encourage you to organize in your workplace like they did down in Bessner, Alabama. There's a lot of power in organizing. So just because we're in the South doesn't mean we can't go old school and sign a union card and lock arms and walk down the street and say, Black Lives Matter, still matter. They always matter. Absolutely. Yeah, like I said, not a lot makes me feel positive about my home state recently, but knowing that y'all and your ilk are there doing it goes a long way. So, yeah, I appreciate it.

Keep doing the damn thing. And thank you all for coming on here and sharing your story. Professors Andy Smith and Yulia Grubber, everybody. Thank you all very much. Thank you very much for doing your best to try to teach Tray to read. That was. I crushed it at Tennessee Tech, just so you know. Truly remarkable student.

it's a fact it's a fact mark you may not like it but it's a fact but um yeah producer matt just says let let now we cut the tray reading trying to read people's last names this is the good the Q&A segment yeah fair enough whatever um but yeah no it's weird like when I was in school there and I've told this story it's true on election night 2008 I drove around campus with all my windows down blasting my president is black right? Because I was so, I was so pumped or whatever. And I didn't think, I remember at the time in my head, I was like, yeah, this will hit for a lot of people. And I'm sure it did hit for some people. I didn't have a perception of it being the way that it clearly is in Cookville. Because I came from a much more rural town and a much smaller town. And Cookville, to me, was like the city. And I was like, this is where the enlightened people are because I was in college. But like some wild shit goes down there. And people are, uh, pretty intense and um yeah i'm just glad that you know somebody's on the other side of it still yeah i mean i remember thinking like uh like in 2010 yeah j wanlin just said such hope for the

future of the south thank goodness for people like them yep yeah sorry go ahead uh i just remember thinking in 2010 11 12 when people like they're they were they're they were like polling data showing like 70 percent of like uh republicans thought that obama was the literal antich yeah and just like like I it wouldn't I wonder if you could give a bomb a truth serum he'd ask I'd ask him if like him getting elected was worth it because I don't think anyone like even me being from small town from the south I had no understanding of how crazy it would drive white people to have a black president I did not see it coming I it's just like I think most of them never conceived of it happening do you know what I mean like I remember knowing rednecks that were

like in Solana when Hillary was just starting to run and Obama was just starting to run, and then being like, it won't never happen. Look at me, I'm going to tell you right now, it won't never happen. And so I think that's how a lot of them felt. They never considered it as a real possibility. And when it happened, they were thrown for a major loop and did not react well. I think about, I'm pretty cynical about America, but like Trump getting elected really did fuck with my whole image like forever with my image of what America is and who lives here.

Yeah, honestly, yeah. I felt that I was in that exact same position, but reverse for Donald Trump. I didn't think it would actually ever come to that. And then it did. I literally, maybe I was too single about America because I, I just assumed that the CIA wouldn't let him hold power. I just, it's like he's too erratic. Like, they can have any other right winger and Obama will still let them drone people. So why wouldn't they just make it look like hard?

attack. I don't understand. They, they, they, uh, they had, they had a thousand ways cooked up to kill Fidel Castro and make his beard fall out and shit. I don't know why they wouldn't, uh, be able to make Trump go to sleepy time. But, uh, but, but I remember, did you say Salina bless you, Cookville is the big city? Yes, Salina's my hometown. Cookwell's where I went to college at and Cookwell was the big city to Salina. And just so people know, cook was a town of like, I mean, I don't, I think there's a college there. And I think when school is in session, it's, and I'm probably, going to get this wrong, but I think it's like 30, 40,000 people, something like that when

school was in session. So it's not a city. But coming from Solano, we ain't have no traffic lights or Walmarts or nothing. It was a metropolis to me. I was just thinking about how crazy people got. I remember, when was it was Bin Laden killed? That was 2011, right? Somewhere around there, yeah. I was doing a bar show. And of course, you see, you get the news, the tweets, you see the tweets pop up. The president's called. an emergency address at 9.30 p.m. on a Saturday night or whatever. And you're like, well, the president doesn't talk

a weekend nights, and it's nighttime on a Sunday. So, like, this is going to be some fucking real. It's going to be zombies get head shots. Everybody's on your own. It's going to be when the president comes on TV that particular time. And now Bin Laden's killed. And everybody's like, you know, there's like 15 of us in a dive bar. People are like, yeah, fuck bin Laden or whatever.

This guy is like one of those projection screens, TVs. This guy is up this close to the screen. flipping it off yelling fuck you at Obama it was like after during the news of Osama bin Laden being killed yeah that was his immediate response

is fuck you for fuck you for taking down the 9-11 guy I don't even think he heard what Obama said it didn't matter just like I'm sure he didn't yeah and I wanted to be clear here I have no evidence

that this guy personally knew Obama or anything just like just yelling at a two-dimensional image of him with every fiber of his being just hating motherfucker and it's I'm betting it wasn't over his tax policies or whatever yeah do you think there's

this like sort of philosophy with the oh wait hang on let's do this first assuming you know about it mark brandy brandy ray cheffy hope i got that right says what's up with this audit in Arizona so a bunch of like wing nut legislators and uh random media personalities have managed to do a ballot. They're auditing the election in Arizona. They're going over ballots with UV lights and different kinds of pens and all kinds of shit. I don't really understand the details of what they're trying to accomplish. But people have been able to sneak in back doors. They left everything unlocked. So I have no idea of the, I'm fairly certain the election wasn't rigged, but this audit can very easily be rigged. So it's going to be, whatever comes out of it, it's going to be funny.

So this headline that producer Matt just sent us from The Guardian says, Arizona Republicans deploy cyber ninjas in pro-Trump election audit. So, yeah, I didn't know about it until it was brought up just now. But, I mean, that all checks out. Cyber ninjas. Yeah, this is going to be one of those things that I don't think they're ever going to just like let go of, you know, it's the new. no matter what, it's going to keep being a thing for them,

and that's just going to have to be fine for the rest of us, I think. It's going to be, you know, you've got the lost cause, southern mythology. Exactly, exactly. We would have won, we would have won Vietnam if the hippies hadn't turned the people back against. It's like all this shit. We're just like, they can never. The last cause thing, and that's still a thing amongst racists in the South and everything, you know. going over 150 years later, it's still a thing.

And, yeah, this most recent election will 100% be one of those things for that same amount of time, I think. Yeah. Not that we were in a literal civil, antebellum civil war place when Trump was in office. I'm just saying it, yeah, they ain't letting it go. Nope. It'll always be that Trump won and he got stolen. and they never they can never explain why liberals don't just keep stealing elections like why would there ever be a republican president or like or in this which we talked about on the show like we made we made ourselves we made liberals the daily dumb ass that night for not thinking to also steal all the senate races at the same time like we just didn't think about that we were so busy stealing the presidential race that we left the senate up for grabs for a while but yeah none of it Like, if we could do that, like you said, why wouldn't we just always do that?

You know, maybe you've got a couple races here and there that you make it so, you know, it's not so obvious. But we would never let them be in a position to actually retain any power if we had the ability to do what they're saying that we do. It's ridiculous. Here's like, last thing. Like, here's what drives me crazy about conspiracy theories of all types is usually you have to ignore a bunch of real world evil shit to getting mad about the secret shit, right? Like, for example, we talked about earlier in a text thread where Drew some, I don't want to throw out names, but somebody in social media had this insane conspiracy theory about

the, the Oklahoma City bombing being covered to blow up evidence against Hillary Clinton because she was about to be indicted for white waters. They blew up a whole federal building with 300, some people, whatever. But, like, you know, if you want to be concerned about evil shit going on in the world, look how proprietary drug companies are being about the vaccines. that's causing a lot of deaths and around the country and not first world nations, right? So, like, the evil shit, elections are rigged in America. They're done in advance by gerrymandering and redistricting and voter suppression.

Stuff just generally making you sad about politics is a voter suppression tactic. This stuff happens on the front page, the goddamn newspaper. If you want to accuse liberals of stealing elections, trying to get felons, the right to vote is our version of doing that. But it happens in public. You can read about it in the newspaper. There's no secret shit going on. That's where Republicans get mad when you call them racist for doing it, because you're pointing out the shit they're doing.

They don't want you pointing it out. But it's not secret. It's not hidden. It's never hidden. It's like it's very, it's too hard to hide. Buddy, preach. You just said it all as far as I'm concerned. Natalie Nickel, hey, Natalie, good to see you again.

Friend of the show. I says, any thoughts on Tucker Carlson's newest stunt pushing mass confrontations? How can such a moron be so dangerous? so yeah, apparently Tucker Carlson on his show encourage people to confront mask wearers or people saying you should wear a mask.

Yeah, he told people to flip the script on mask wears by telling them that wearing a mask makes you uncomfortable. Like you wearing a mask makes me uncomfortable. And then he also said it's like if it's, if children aren't at risk for the virus of dying of it for the most part, which is technically true, they do spread it though, that

why is it like isn't making them wear a mask a form of child abuse and Shouldn't you call CPS on them? So he's encouraged his viewers to call Child Protective Services on parents or the children wearing masks. Heads up, don't do that. False reports of child abuse are a crime and you will go to jail if you bug social workers and cops with frivolous calls about dumb shit. So he's trying to get his own viewers arrested, apparently. Well, if they're reliably going to go to jail for doing that thing, then I mean, yeah, do it.

Call them on me. That's fine. You've seen mine out with a mask on. I mean, you know, here in Southern California, I have young children. They go to school and everything. And like, they're literally required to wear masks. You can't, you know, it's a rule. So please call the cops on me and tell them that I'm abusing my children by making them wear mask.

You know, Tucker Carlson's always been wild to me because I can remember, like, when I first became aware of him, which is, I mean, shit, man, at this point, probably over 10 years ago. When all that shit went down with him and John Stewart, you know. That was the first time I ever kind of became aware of him. And at the time, he was like, he was the bow tie guy, you know. And he was just such a caricature. And it's not that he's not anymore, but the idea that that dude, if you had told me then that that guy would become a genuine, like, powerful voice in American political discourse, I would not have believed it. You know, John Stewart just dunking on his ass. And again, he's wearing a bow tie and everything.

Bow ties are fine, but you all know what I mean. I've never taken a person less seriously than I did Tucker Carlson when I first found out about him. And the fact that he's become this big power player like he has is just so discouraging. And you fall in through the years, it's seeming clearer that he means anything he's saying, except that if you don't know anything about Tucker, he's heir to the Swanson chicken And he grew up in a wealthy neighborhood in the Bay Area and went to a nice private school. And someone dug up his private school yearbook last week. And under his like this joke he put in the yearbook under his clubs that he was president of the

Dan White Society. Dan White is the guy who shot and killed Harvey Milk, the gay city councilman who was a civil rights figure in the 80s. So that's the clearest evidence that he's always been a piece of shit. Because he did moderate himself because out of that show you're talking about, I was crossfire on CNN. He was a CNN personality for a while and was very mildly right wing at that point. It was just very

the most right thing to wing, think about him was his bowtie. But apparently he was a monster the whole time. He was pretending not to be. So he's a piece of shit. Yeah, Tucker Carlson's a piece of shit. You heard it here last, everybody. That's us. That's it for us on this episode of Weekly Skews. Thanks for joining us. We'll be back

next week and we'll have a good time. See, you love you. Bye.