Speaker 1: It's interesting how the psychology of the left is that
Speaker 1: they're still the ones who are rebelling against older conservative parents.
Speaker 1: They're still the ones who are in the position of rebellion.
Speaker 1: There's still the ones who are the put upon little guy,
Speaker 1: and they continue to carry this attitude into times when
Speaker 1: they are in fact the ones in charge, when they
Speaker 1: are the ones culturally dominant, and then when someone criticizes them.
Speaker 1: When they get into the position of cultural dominance, they
Speaker 1: don't see their own youthful rebellions in the people who
Speaker 1: oppose them. They want to crush any resistance with as
Speaker 1: much authoritarianism as their parents tried to crush their authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: A lot of liberalism can be explained as continual continuing
Speaker 1: the rebellion against your conservatives parents. There's this piece in
Speaker 1: GV wire that is somewhat infuriating in that light. The
Speaker 1: problem is not stuff anyone in public schools is doing.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that you noticed conflict over race LGBTQ
Speaker 1: issues cost schools more than three billion dollars last year.
Speaker 1: Conflicts between parents, teachers, and school leaders over parental rights
Speaker 1: policies focusing on LGBTQ plus students. I notice the identity.
Speaker 1: This is a this is a big thing. Hey, for
Speaker 1: all you young parents out there, little childhood psychology tip, stop
Speaker 1: assigning static labels to the human beings who, more than
Speaker 1: any other group of human beings, are in a state
Speaker 1: of wild change, development and fluctuation aka children whose brains
Speaker 1: are exploding at a rate far surpassing anything that you're
Speaker 1: going to achieve when you're an adult LGBTQ plus students,
Speaker 1: we're talking about twelve year olds. You don't think some
Speaker 1: stuff might shift around in there so that that label
Speaker 1: might not necessarily be helpful to give a child a
Speaker 1: static identity that this is no, this is the kind of.
Speaker 2: Person you are.
Speaker 1: By the way, you can you can apply this to
Speaker 1: far less critical questions, things that are far more innocuous,
Speaker 1: like you're when you're eleven year old says to you,
Speaker 1: I'm just not good at math. I'm just not someone
Speaker 1: who's good at math. Don't know, don't put that identity
Speaker 1: on yourself. You're having a hard time with math right now.
Speaker 1: Let's fix it. Let's work on it. You're not bad
Speaker 1: at math. You're struggling a little bit right now. Let's
Speaker 1: work on it. Get those times tables out, let's go
Speaker 1: work the problem anyway. Conflicts between parents, teachers, and school
Speaker 1: leaders over parental rights policies focusing on LGBTQ plus students,
Speaker 1: limitations on teaching about race and racism.
Speaker 2: They're what limitations.
Speaker 1: And book bans.
Speaker 2: Book bands.
Speaker 1: When liberals say book bans, what they mean are parents
Speaker 1: complaining about books that are obviously inappropriate for children, asking
Speaker 1: that they be banned, asking that they not be shelved
Speaker 1: in a public schools library. That's what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: or utilized as part of the public school curriculum, have
Speaker 1: come with a cost, both socially and financially. So this
Speaker 1: is written by this woman, Diana Lambert, for some publication
Speaker 1: called ed Source, which is obviously the whole tone of
Speaker 1: it is obviously showing her. The whole framing of this
Speaker 1: issue is obviously showing a huge bias. This is a
Speaker 1: huge bias in favor of lgbt stuff, in favor of
Speaker 1: the party line among.
Speaker 2: The NIA teachers' unions, et.
Speaker 1: Cetera, that we want to teach super left wing ideology
Speaker 1: when it comes to race, We want to teach super
Speaker 1: left wing ideology when it comes to sex and sexuality.
Speaker 1: We want to be able to keep from parents a
Speaker 1: child's gender transition if they don't want the parent to
Speaker 1: know about it, and we want you not to complain
Speaker 1: about it. That's the real tone, that's the real message
Speaker 1: of this piece.
Speaker 2: Let's keep going.
Speaker 1: The conflicts i e. Parents getting mad about this stuff
Speaker 1: are disrupting school districts, negatively impacting schools and classrooms, and
Speaker 1: costing district's money that could be used to better pay
Speaker 1: off teachers, i mean better serve students. According to quote
Speaker 1: the Costs of Conflict, the fiscal impact of culturally divisive
Speaker 1: conflicts on public schools in the United States are report
Speaker 1: released last month put together by researchers from UCLA, University
Speaker 1: of Texas at Austin American University, and UC Riverside. These
Speaker 1: universities conducted a national survey of k through twelve public
Speaker 1: school superintendents from forty six states, four hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: seven superintendents in all, and found that these conflicts are
Speaker 1: prevalent since the twenty twenty twenty twenty one school year.
Speaker 1: Uncivil discourse parents being upset and getting a little over
Speaker 1: the top of a school board meeting, and hostile political
Speaker 1: rhetoric OOH at school board meetings and on school campuses
Speaker 1: has been an ongoing problem. Hostile political rhetoric at school
Speaker 1: board meetings. Forgive me, how are most school board members
Speaker 1: picked in this country?
Speaker 2: Oh, they're elected, so ergo.
Speaker 1: The power they wield is a kind of political power.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when people are talking to them at a school
Speaker 1: board meeting, they are talking to a politician.
Speaker 2: So the kind of.
Speaker 1: Rhetoric they use could very well be political rhetoric.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: Two thirds of the school superintendent surveyed for the studies
Speaker 1: said they have experienced moderate to high levels of culturally
Speaker 1: divisive conflict in their district. Well, once it goes from
Speaker 1: moderate to high, they.
Speaker 2: How are we measuring this?
Speaker 1: Superintendent surveyed for the studies said they have experienced moderate
Speaker 1: to high levels of culturally divisive conflict in their districts,
Speaker 1: including misinformation campaigns. Who is defining this as a misinformation campaign?
Speaker 1: Does this mean a campaign that is accurate but that
Speaker 1: you don't like, Because that's very often what liberals mean
Speaker 1: when they say misinformation. They mean information that may very
Speaker 1: well be true. Misinformation campaigns, violent rhetoric, okay, and threats.
Speaker 1: Cultural conflicts cost us school districts. About three point two
Speaker 1: billion dollars last school year, according to the study. Now
Speaker 1: you may be thinking, wait a minute, Okay, I can
Speaker 1: understand superintendents having, you know, a burr in their butt
Speaker 1: about parents complaining about stuff. Okay, I get that. I
Speaker 1: understand that they'll be upset. How is it costing school
Speaker 1: district money? Also, three point two billion dollars spread over
Speaker 1: how many school districts are there in America? Okay, there's Gazille,
Speaker 1: all right. How many school districts are there all over America?
Speaker 1: And for context, let's remember Fresnoe Unified just this year
Speaker 1: is getting a five hundred million dollar bond. Okay that
Speaker 1: we just voted on Measure H to get Fresne Unified
Speaker 1: a five hundred million dollar bond just for Fresno Unified
Speaker 1: School district located in Fresno, California. So forgive me for
Speaker 1: noticing that three point two billion dollars spread across every
Speaker 1: school district in the United States of America is kind
Speaker 1: of a drop in the bucket relatively speaking, But it
Speaker 1: sounds like, obviously it's more money than I'm ever going
Speaker 1: to see. People are supposed to read this and think
Speaker 1: that's impressive. But how are they even calculating that parents
Speaker 1: being angry over LGBT stuff, or parents being angry over
Speaker 1: critical race theory stuff. How are we calculating that that
Speaker 1: has a cost?
Speaker 2: You may ask, let us continue.
Speaker 1: Researchers estimate that districts with high levels of conflict spent
Speaker 1: about eighty dollars per student. Okay, well, they're already spending
Speaker 1: like twenty thousand dollars per student in California, so I
Speaker 1: can't say that I'm crying over eighty dollars per student.
Speaker 1: Districts with modern moderate levels of conflict spend fifty dollars
Speaker 1: per student, with districts with low conflict spend twenty five
Speaker 1: dollars per student. Which, again, how we're coming up with
Speaker 1: these numbers. We'll see this is first we just take
Speaker 1: that as a given. This is costing US general fund
Speaker 1: dollars set a superintendent from a mid size school district
Speaker 1: in a western state in the twenty twenty three twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four school year, the district spent an additional one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars on security, hiring armed playing clothes off
Speaker 1: duty officers because people coming to the board meetings are unpredictable.
Speaker 1: And sometimes violent, such a grotti.
Speaker 2: Assari tour gratti snigatu or moment.
Speaker 1: Okay, gratis assi to a grotti snigata is this fun
Speaker 1: little Latin phrase. If you're just asserting something freely with
Speaker 1: no evidence, I can deny it freely with no evidence.
Speaker 1: What school district was having, like police arrestable violent threats
Speaker 1: being made, we probably would have heard of it. That
Speaker 1: just wasn't happening, that police were arresting people who were
Speaker 1: making threats in school board meetings. Look, I remember at
Speaker 1: the Bakersfield City Counts there was a protester who made
Speaker 1: an actual threat. She didn't realize just how serious her
Speaker 1: conduct was. She made an actual threat. She was arrested
Speaker 1: right there. If that was actually happening in school board meetings,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Okay, so you need more security at
Speaker 1: school board meetings because you have a ton of parents
Speaker 1: who are all really upset. Okay, I'm very sorry that
Speaker 1: you had to spend a little more on that. Maybe
Speaker 1: parents should be more polite. But allow me to retort.
Speaker 1: If someone on a street corner showed my kid a
Speaker 1: picture from one of the books that these public schools
Speaker 1: liked to use for like to stock in their libraries
Speaker 1: for sex related stuff, sex ed related stuff, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Some of these books that are by that, you know what,
Speaker 1: we dealt with this issue here in Fresno, with the
Speaker 1: whole Presne County Libraries controversy. Steve Brandau's I think heroic
Speaker 1: efforts to do something about it. Some of the books
Speaker 1: that are in the Presne County libraries that are clearly
Speaker 1: designed to be for public school districts. If some random
Speaker 1: guy on a street corners tried to show a picture
Speaker 1: of that to my kid, I would knock that guy's
Speaker 1: lights out, Like, yeah, you need to physically restrain me.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's because what public educators think is good is
Speaker 1: so radically out of step with people, and so radically
Speaker 1: out of step in leading their children whom they love
Speaker 1: astray that it makes people pretty darn angry. So yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe if you need that much security, maybe it's a
Speaker 1: reflection of you on what you are teaching and doing,
Speaker 1: rather than some rising of parents being awful. So they're
Speaker 1: saying it's because of security, but what they really say
Speaker 1: it's because of superintendent turnover. That's really what it. Finally,
Speaker 1: when you boil it down, what they're saying is superintendents
Speaker 1: are quitting and other school personnel are quitting because parents
Speaker 1: are so upset all the time, and it's stressing these
Speaker 1: people out and they say, I want another job. That's
Speaker 1: actually what's happening here. Which if that's the case, good good.
Speaker 1: I hope people feel uncomfortable when they propose, like pornographic
Speaker 1: material to be shown to twelve year olds in a
Speaker 1: seventh grade health sex ed class. I want people to
Speaker 1: feel uncomfortable if they allow that, I want them to quit.
Speaker 1: I want them to be afraid of not physical violence,
Speaker 1: but be afraid stressed out about parents being really freaking furious.
Speaker 1: They should be that way, because it's horrible. It's evil.
Speaker 1: It is diabolical. And I'm using that not in the
Speaker 1: I mean it is involving the diaboloose, involving the devil
Speaker 1: that I literally mean. It is diabolical to show kids
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. I think it is diabolical for
Speaker 1: a kid confused about his gender to keep that issue
Speaker 1: from parents, to play this elaborate shell game in which
Speaker 1: three thousand people at Clovis High School are going to
Speaker 1: call this biological boy. She call Michelle instead of Michael.
Speaker 1: This student will come out to three thousand people at
Speaker 1: clubs high school, but we don't tell the parents about it.
Speaker 1: I want superintendents to feel really stressed out about that.
Speaker 1: I want them to be subject to extreme anger from
Speaker 1: parents at school board meetings. I'm not saying anyone should
Speaker 1: burn anyone's house down. I'm not saying anyone should beat
Speaker 1: anyone up, but this woe is me act from school
Speaker 1: officials like you're especially from school board members. You're elected
Speaker 1: by the people. Deal with it like that. It comes
Speaker 1: with the territory. People are gonna disagree with you really strongly.
Speaker 1: If that's too much heat for you, get out of
Speaker 1: the kitchen. We'll talk about this more after the break.
Speaker 1: This is the John Girardi Show here on Power Talk.
Speaker 1: Reading this piece in GV Wire, originally published by It's
Speaker 1: called ed Source kind of an education based publication written
Speaker 1: by Diana Lambert about the costs of culturally divisive issues
Speaker 1: within public school districts LGBT stuff, racial stuff, et cetera.
Speaker 1: That the idea, the whole tone of it being pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: It's bad that parents are angry and objecting to the
Speaker 1: extreme liberal ideology that public schools are promoting. It's the
Speaker 1: parent's fault for being upset. Parents should shut up and
Speaker 1: let school districts teach what they want to teach. That's it.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: And the study they put together to show this is
Speaker 1: the biggest shambolic nonsense ever saying, oh, culturally divisive issues
Speaker 1: are costing three point two billion dollars to public universities. Okay,
Speaker 1: three point two billion dollars spread over every k through
Speaker 1: twelve school district in America. It's not a lot of money,
Speaker 1: all right, in the grand scheme of things, It's really
Speaker 1: not a lot of money. Secondly, the biggest costs they
Speaker 1: identify is turnover. That superintendents are upset and that there's turnover,
Speaker 1: and the costs associated with people quitting, which good. I
Speaker 1: hope people quit. I hope people feel uncomfortable when they
Speaker 1: try to show pornography to twelve year olds and call
Speaker 1: it sex. I hope they feel uncomfortable. I hope they
Speaker 1: want to quit because parents are so flipp and outraged.
Speaker 1: And this piece starts bellyaching and whining about the mental
Speaker 1: health status of school superintendents. The relentless demands of leading
Speaker 1: a school district can easily overshadow their own well being, which,
Speaker 1: if neglected, not only affects their personal health, but also
Speaker 1: the health and stability of students, educators, and the families
Speaker 1: they served, said Rachel S. White of the University of
Speaker 1: Texas at Austin in a statement. Reducing the extent to
Speaker 1: which superintendents experience warranted divisiveness is an important step to
Speaker 1: change the trajectory of increasing superintendent sure by the way,
Speaker 1: the increase over the last four years, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: do you think there was something other than culturally divisive
Speaker 1: issues that may be caused more stress for superintendents over
Speaker 1: the last four years? Obviously COVID the increase was two
Speaker 1: point nine percent fourteen point two percent turnover to seventeen
Speaker 1: point one percent turnover for K through twelve public school
Speaker 1: district superintendents. That's not that big of an increase. The
Speaker 1: probably margin of error there is such that it's not
Speaker 1: even I don't know, the turnover doesn't seem that much higher.
Speaker 1: And also, let me, you're the superintendent of a school district.
Speaker 1: You're getting paid a lot of money, you have a
Speaker 1: big job. Yeah, you're gonna be stressed out. Put your
Speaker 1: big point, put your big boy pants on, put your
Speaker 1: big girl pants on and do the freaking job. Don't
Speaker 1: belly ach to me about oh my mental health state.
Speaker 1: Then quit, Then quit, get a different job. Sorry. When
Speaker 1: you're managing an entity with a budget of at least
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars, I guess I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the what framework I'm looking at
Speaker 1: here for a mid size school districts annual budget, I'd
Speaker 1: have to look up, like what's Resident Unified's budget? I
Speaker 1: know they got five hundred million dollars in one shot
Speaker 1: from a school bond measure. You're managing hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars. You're managing dreds and hundreds and hundreds of personnel.
Speaker 1: You're you're managing multiple schools. Yeah, you're going to be
Speaker 1: stressed out. That's what the money is for. Okay, you
Speaker 1: get paid a lot to be overseeing all this stuff. Sorry,
Speaker 1: you're appointed by politically accountable, a politically accountable board of
Speaker 1: directors whom they need to hear it from voters. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going to be stressed out. Superintendents who were surveyed
Speaker 1: expressed concern that the time they spend managing cultural conflict
Speaker 1: include and this is all this is a great line
Speaker 1: including responding to Freedom of Information Act requests and unsubstantiated
Speaker 1: rumors and misinformation is keeping them from focusing on improving instruction. Oh,
Speaker 1: those damn pesky freedom of information requests. So what this
Speaker 1: is for those who are maybe scratching their heads here?
Speaker 1: Foyer the Freedom of Information Act was this piece of
Speaker 1: federal legislation that basically says, hey, government should be transparent
Speaker 1: if something isn't like classified or sensitive material, the public
Speaker 1: has a right to know. Public has the right to
Speaker 1: know about communications between federal employees.
Speaker 2: It has a right to know.
Speaker 1: About blah blah blah blah. And so people can file
Speaker 1: a Freedom of Information Act request, a Foyer request for
Speaker 1: information about Hey, we're personnel within the Department of Transportation
Speaker 1: discussing blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. So if
Speaker 1: you're a federal employee, you need to, you know, send
Speaker 1: your emails carefully because they could be the subject of
Speaker 1: a Foyer request. Similarly, state governments have mandated similar things
Speaker 1: for state institutions, patterned off of the federal FOYA law.
Speaker 1: So school districts are subject to this. I've done this
Speaker 1: with President Unified globes unified, and I've said, hey, can
Speaker 1: you show me I'd like to submit a public records
Speaker 1: request for I want to see what information you have
Speaker 1: about bump up Bah bah bah.
Speaker 2: They give it to me.
Speaker 1: I've done this with the City of Fresno. I said, hey,
Speaker 1: I'd like information about this grant, this pass through grant
Speaker 1: that the city is giving to Planned parenthood, got information
Speaker 1: about it, talked about it on the radio, so that
Speaker 1: they're bellyaching about the fact that they have to be
Speaker 1: transparent to the public. You're a public official, and this
Speaker 1: is the.
Speaker 2: This is the longest short of it.
Speaker 1: Your whole job is spending the public's money, and you
Speaker 1: complain about the public. Your whole job is receiving the
Speaker 1: public's money, and you complain about being accountable to the public.
Speaker 1: Just this culture.
Speaker 2: Attitude among educators.
Speaker 1: That they are that they should just be immune to
Speaker 1: criticism from parents who don't like them, that they are experts,
Speaker 1: and therefore, how dare you criticize their curriculum decisions, their
Speaker 1: pedagogy decisions. How dare you criticize what they think about race,
Speaker 1: what they think the highly disputed philosophical ideas they have
Speaker 1: about human nature, as if because they got to teaching
Speaker 1: credential that they're somehow an expert on whether a boy
Speaker 1: can become a girl or a girl can become a boy.
Speaker 1: You need to shut up. And the fact that you
Speaker 1: make me stressed out about it. It's actually you're You're
Speaker 1: the one at fault here, not me, for trying to
Speaker 1: show your kid pornography and calling it sex head. That's
Speaker 1: the attitude of so much of the education establishment in
Speaker 1: this country. And at the very least the federal government
Speaker 1: needs to cut off money. State at least red state
Speaker 1: governments need to cut off money. They got to resort
Speaker 1: the whole thing. And God help us in California when
Speaker 1: we return the news about jay Z and how me
Speaker 1: too missed some obvious targets. Next on The John Gardy Show,
Speaker 1: I remember when the story about p Diddy came out.
Speaker 1: For those who don't by the way, for I want
Speaker 1: any of you boomers listening to this to hang in
Speaker 1: there with me, all right, Just hang in there with me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be mentioning a story involving rappers whom you
Speaker 1: probably don't care about. Those of you who don't care
Speaker 1: about rap also will probably not care about these people.
Speaker 1: They have stupid stage names. I'm going to talk about them,
Speaker 1: but it's gonna be interesting, Okay, So hang in there
Speaker 1: with me. I'll bring it around, Okay, I gotta explain
Speaker 1: it first, all right. A couple of months ago, Sean Combs,
Speaker 1: who has gone by various rap stage names over the years,
Speaker 1: Puff Daddy p Diddy, was arrested in connection to sex trafficking,
Speaker 1: being charged of sex trafficking. Word came out about these
Speaker 1: notorious parties that Shawn Combs would host at his home
Speaker 1: in I think it was in New York, which were
Speaker 1: just basically orgies. I think that's a fair characterization of them.
Speaker 1: Of what these parties were. They were orgies, and that
Speaker 1: basically there were the women were being trafficked for these parties.
Speaker 2: Also that he was engaged in all kinds of same.
Speaker 1: Sex sexual activity. He turns out he was an enormous deviant.
Speaker 1: When the Feds went into his home to arrest him,
Speaker 1: they found like thousands of bottles of baby oil. Not
Speaker 1: sure what all that's about. Sounds pretty gross whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Now for context, Sean Combs is like a gazillionaire and
Speaker 1: was a titan of the hip hop music industry. Especially
Speaker 1: sort of the New York based sort of region of
Speaker 1: hip hop, if you will, has been for decades, for
Speaker 1: about thirty years. I'd say he was a big time producer.
Speaker 1: He did a bunch of songs himself. He dated Jennifer Lopez,
Speaker 1: he was hosting these huge parties at all these celebrities
Speaker 1: would go to. Another person in the New York hip
Speaker 1: hop scene is Sean Carter, who goes by the stage
Speaker 1: name jay Z. You may have heard of jay Z
Speaker 1: because of his coziness with the Obamas. Jay Z is
Speaker 1: married to Beyonce Knowles, who's a very popular R and
Speaker 1: B singer, pop singer, and jay Z was himself a
Speaker 1: very popular rapper. There's now been accusations that jay Z
Speaker 1: and p Diddy, that Sean Carter and Sean Combs raped
Speaker 1: a thirteen year old girl in the year two thousand.
Speaker 1: Now Jay Z has released a public statement about this.
Speaker 1: It looks as though he was denying this charge. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about this though in light of.
Speaker 2: The Me too movement.
Speaker 1: Now, the idea behind the Me Too movement was that
Speaker 1: there are a lot more women who have suffered some
Speaker 1: form of sexual harassment or sexual assault than we would
Speaker 1: imagine and the idea of being me too.
Speaker 2: I also was a.
Speaker 1: Victim of an act of sexual assault, and whether that's
Speaker 1: an actual act of rape to some slightly lesser form
Speaker 1: of sexual assault to just sexual harassment. I think one
Speaker 1: of the criticisms people have made about the me too
Speaker 1: movement is sort of this conflating of you know, what
Speaker 1: Harvey Weinstein was doing on the one hand, which was
Speaker 1: like actually.
Speaker 2: Raping people.
Speaker 1: All the way to on the other end of the spectrum,
Speaker 1: you know, making a you know, slightly over the line
Speaker 1: comment to someone. Obviously, making an over the line sexually
Speaker 1: laced comment to someone is inappropriate and bad. I'm not
Speaker 1: defending it, but it's you know, ten miles different from
Speaker 1: raping someone. And the thing that I was always so
Speaker 1: you know, surprised about is the the only kind of
Speaker 1: ethic that liberals have when it comes to sexuality is consent.
Speaker 1: If someone consents to it, it's okay. If they don't
Speaker 1: consent to it, not okay. Now I am not saying
Speaker 1: consent is not important when we're talking about the ethical
Speaker 1: calculus of sexual activity. Obviously it's quite important, but I
Speaker 1: don't think it's sufficient. Furthermore, I think just focusing on
Speaker 1: consent leads to a blurring of lines very easily. What
Speaker 1: constitutes meaningful consent? And should we care? Some people pointed out,
Speaker 1: and some people on the left sort of started to
Speaker 1: figure this out and made them re look at certain
Speaker 1: kinds of historical things that liberals completely defended at the time,
Speaker 1: and now they're like, hey, you know, now we feel
Speaker 1: a little icky about it, okay. For example, Monica Lewinsky,
Speaker 1: Monica Lewinsky was a twenty year old college student, twenty
Speaker 1: one year old college student intern at the White House
Speaker 1: and Bill Clinton comes on to her where, you know,
Speaker 1: he's the most powerful man in the world. There's this
Speaker 1: enormous power imbalance, power dynamic imbalance, where you know, what
Speaker 1: do you get out of a White House internship? A
Speaker 1: wreck letter from the President looks pretty damn impressive on
Speaker 1: anyone's application for anything. So what am I going to
Speaker 1: get fired if I don't, you know, accede to this
Speaker 1: guy's demands. I'll use some FCC compliant language here, am
Speaker 1: I gonna? Am I gonna get fired if I don't
Speaker 1: sexually pleasure this man? What are we doing here? And
Speaker 1: people have you know, thirty years too late, twenty something
Speaker 1: years too late, I've started to say, hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: that was really messed up what Bill Clinton did, and
Speaker 1: it kind of raises some questions about just how meaningful
Speaker 1: the consent Monica Lewinsky could have possibly given in.
Speaker 2: That context was.
Speaker 1: I think that's a real thing. I think. I think
Speaker 1: that's a really important thing to think about. Like, I
Speaker 1: don't think consent is the end all be all, because
Speaker 1: I think consent is very flimsy. This is why you
Speaker 1: have these liberals and libertarian types are like, oh, we
Speaker 1: could legalize prostitution, and that's fine. Legalized prostitution. Really, someone
Speaker 1: who's in such a desperate situation that they resort to
Speaker 1: selling the only thing they have left to them, their body,
Speaker 1: You think that's free and meaningful consent. Then liberals will
Speaker 1: try it, Well, this person's a sex worker and that's
Speaker 1: dignified work and we should really respect. No, no, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't sex work. In one nanosecond, can go from oh,
Speaker 1: i'm then you know, fully consensually engaging in an act
Speaker 1: of prostitution too, Oh my gosh, I'm being raped in
Speaker 1: one nanosecond. So the idea of consent being the end
Speaker 1: all be all of sexual ethics. Obviously it is a
Speaker 1: necessary element of sexual ethics, but I do not think
Speaker 1: it is a sufficient element. I think the only way
Speaker 1: to look at sex in a way that is sexually
Speaker 1: ethical is to look at it for what it ought
Speaker 1: to be, a free exchange of life giving love that
Speaker 1: has long term consequences to it. Then long term consequences
Speaker 1: that should be good and should be appreciated and should
Speaker 1: be positive, and can only meaningfully be a good thing
Speaker 1: in a context of a probably ideally lifelong, committed relationship
Speaker 1: i e. Marriage. The contraceptization of marriage and sexuality that
Speaker 1: our culture's experience, the contraceptionization of sex that our culture
Speaker 1: has experienced, has led us to forget. No. Sex is
Speaker 1: supposed to be something that has lifelong consequences. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be something that inherently requires commitment, and commitment of
Speaker 1: a lifelong nature, you know, because a new human being
Speaker 1: can be produced by it. I think contraception is completely,
Speaker 1: in an unhealthy way, warped our whole perception of sex.
Speaker 1: And for the left, because they assume they think of
Speaker 1: sex as a consequence three free activity, the only thing
Speaker 1: they care about is consent. But if consense your only thing.
Speaker 1: It provides such a weak defense against non consensual activity. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So the me too movement wound up taking down some
Speaker 1: richly deserving targets, the Harvey Weinstein's of the world, the
Speaker 1: Bill Cosby's of the world, but it seems like it
Speaker 1: missed a whole category of other people, rappers and rock
Speaker 1: and roll guys, probably a lot of athletes too. Basically,
Speaker 1: I would always laugh at how like liberal like pop
Speaker 1: culture journalists would like glowingly talk about, Oh man, what
Speaker 1: a cool ladies man. You know, either Wilt Chamberlain was,
Speaker 1: or you know, these guys from this rock and roll
Speaker 1: band who are doing tons of drugs and sleeping with
Speaker 1: all kinds of ladies and having you know, twelve girls
Speaker 1: come backstage after every show on the tour bus. And
Speaker 1: you know, rappers celebrate this kind of thing constantly all
Speaker 1: the time in every single hip hop song, especially as
Speaker 1: gangster rap has kind of receded a bit since the nineties. Well,
Speaker 1: what are rapper's going to talk about that? Well, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about money and girls, and we celebrate these people
Speaker 1: for their women. But we just think, yep, this guy's
Speaker 1: a cool guy. He's having tons of six and doing
Speaker 1: lots of drugs, and every time he has sex, he
Speaker 1: receives clear, meaningful consent from a sober woman that she's
Speaker 1: willingly and meaningfully having consensual sex and that she's definitely
Speaker 1: not seventeen because he checked her ID beforehand. No, obviously,
Speaker 1: any guy who's living that kind of lifestyle probably had
Speaker 1: non consensual sex with somebody. So the fact that jay
Speaker 1: Z and Sean Combs are being at least acute of
Speaker 1: Seawan Colmbs pretty credibly. Jay Z seems to be one accusation.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 1: The fact that people are finally being accused of these
Speaker 1: things is like the least surprising thing in the world.
Speaker 1: Probably a reckoning on this should have come a long
Speaker 1: time ago. When we return prizingly great movie A Muppet
Speaker 1: Christmas Carol. My review. Next on The John Girardi Show. Well,
Speaker 1: this weekend my house was a house of sickness. Four
Speaker 1: of my five children threw up, so Holly and I
Speaker 1: were up late taking care of all these people. We
Speaker 1: felt completely fine. I still feel completely fine. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: my that's the death sentence right there. So everyone was
Speaker 1: just a bunch of sickies. Was no good and this
Speaker 1: is why we don't let them watch a lot of TV.
Speaker 1: We sort of reserve it for weekends like this when
Speaker 1: everyone is sick and we turned on a Muppet Christmas Carol. Okay,
Speaker 1: was not expecting it to be that good. Was phenomenal,
Speaker 1: was very funny. And Michael Caine, who plays Ebenezer Scrooge,
Speaker 1: plays it one serious, gives it everything. Michael Caine's got.
Speaker 1: It's the performance of a lifetime. Do yourself a favor.
Speaker 1: Go watch them up at Christmas Carol. You will laugh,
Speaker 1: you will cry. Holy cow, what a great movie. Thirty
Speaker 1: you know, forty years too late here, but what a
Speaker 1: great movie. That'll do it. John Girardi show, see you
Speaker 1: next time on Power Talk