Charlie Kirk (19:40)
He's exactly right. I will give the audience credit. They at least laughed at that in some self deprecating way. He finally, he finally short circuited the leftist audience that they had in front of him. And he's exactly right. It should upset him. Because when you hyper focus and hyper fixate on just people's skin color and not actually on their character or their worldview, then you are racializing America and all this comes off the story. And the reason we're talking about this is how Facebook has demonetized the satire site the Babylon Bee. And every major totalitarian movement in the last hundred years always suppresses comedy. Always. Especially comedy that makes fun of what they're trying to do. The ruling class, the power class. There's so much hypocrisy, there's so much wrong with what they're trying to do to our country that humor is one of the only mechanisms that we have left to hold them accountable. This is one of the reasons why they hate Donald Trump. He's abundantly funny. He's very funny. And if you are a country where you can't make fun of yourself, where you are a person that cannot engage in self deprecation and you take yourself so incredibly seriously, then you do not live in a free society. And that's what's happening with these tech companies. These tech companies have now made it a position of their policy engagement that mockery, self deprecation will not be tolerated. If you go after the left now, the Onion, which is pretty funny, goes after mostly conservatives and Republicans, 90% of it. They do not get demonetized by the tech companies. They do not get challenged. Their brand of anti conservative mockery is perfectly permissible by the ruling class. And so people say, well, what we don't have enough of in our country, we don't have enough comedy. We really don't. I was mentioning earlier the Office, and it's probably the most popular television show of my generation. And you can look at the early episodes in the Office. They made fun of race, they made fun of sexual stereotypes, they made fun of any. Every third rail of American life that you're not supposed to touch. The Office went after, same with Seinfeld, unapologetically push the boundaries. That's what comedy is supposed to do. Comedy is supposed to push the boundaries of what is allowed to be discussed. And then within that space you're able to differentiate between what is good, what is bad, what is true, what is not, and maybe a little reprieve from the seriousness and the madness that is happening around us. One of the reasons why the totalitarians and the collectivists and the ruling class don't want this is because it's incredibly effective in challenging their power. Is that when you have a string of comics that engage in that line of cross examination, that engage in being able to bring a light hearted approach to things, all of a sudden it's a lot harder to take those people in power as seriously as they want you to take them. You take Saturday Night Live. Saturday Night Live is not funny anymore because Saturday Night Live is just making fun of Republicans and conservatives. And again, some of their jokes are funny every so often. I think they had a skit about a year ago that I think they did a pretty good job of. But SNL is nowhere nearly as funny as it was 15 or 20 years ago. 15 or 20 years ago where they had their core Cast where they would make fun of everyone at all times, where they would go through the news cycle. I mean, Seth Meyers used to be a legitimately funny person, and then he turned into a political mouthpiece. Some of the greatest American comic talent has gone through snl, Will Ferrell, for example. And so what is the broader point of this and what does it actually have to do with the election that is just coming in 13 days? That the fact that the American comedian class, the fact that most of these comics have been completely silent and in fact they have been supportive of not just the silencing of opposing ideas, is so unbelievably telling. And it is a warning sign. Everybody, there's a fire alarm. You lose comedy, you lose speech. It is that simple. Where are the comedians coming out and making fun of Joe Biden? Joe Rogan, God bless him, he's done it plenty of times. Joe Rogan, for good reason, has become the most popular podcaster on the planet because he does actually do the free speech thing. He has opposite ideas. I don't agree with him on everything, but he's very good at what he does. And he is a standup comic, one of the last and yet the entire American comic class, from even Chris Rock to Dave Chappelle, the standup comedian class, they have decided that they hate Trump more than they actually want to make people laugh and question. And that's what comedy is supposed to do. It's supposed to ask the questions and be inquisitive towards the people in power. And the left did this unapologetically and relentlessly during George W. Bush. That's where, when I grew up, I remember every Saturday Night Live episode, every late night comic would go after George W. Bush and Republicans. And it was very effective. It was incredibly effective. And to a lesser extent, many comics went after Bill Clinton in the 1990s and Jay Leno before he retired. And boy, do we need Jay Leno back into kind of the American cultural landscape. He would make fun of everyone. He'd make fun of Republicans, he'd make fun of Democrats. And has there. There has never been a greater opportunity or a greater need for comics to stand up and challenge the madness in our country. The double standard of the virus and the lockdowns, the ruling elites that say it's perfectly fine to celebrate the Los Angeles Lakers winning the NBA Finals and BLM incorporated to march through the streets, but there's something wrong with you going to church. There's endless material for these very talented comedians to engage in this space right now, but they're one of two things. They're cowards and they're afraid or they're being held hostage by the scriptwriters, by the future movie deals, by the Netflix deals, by if anyone dares speak out against the power class, they might not get that next deal. They are being held hostage by the people in charge that if you actually question the Democrat party and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and every single one of them, you are considered to be on the other team. You're considered to be opposition media. You play this out over a couple years and a decade, eventually you will have an entire generation of people that is incapable and unprepared to question anyone in power. And that's exactly what's happening. You have the most powerful people in our country that control the multi trillion dollar corporations with the most talented comedians partnering together, all as one in lock stock unison being. We no longer believe in a pluralistic society. We no longer believe in neoliberal free speech. Instead, we take ourselves so unbelievably seriously that we're going to make America in our image. And if you get in the way of us doing that, we are going to insult you, we are going to follow you, we are going to punish you, obey. And so as we see the demonetization of the satire site Babylon be as we see comedians self censoring or being censored by others, this is a fire alarm because this is the first step towards cultural tyranny. If you cannot have the most talented people that engage in the space of questioning via humor like every great comedian has in the last 40 to 50 years, then other speech will disappear like that. The great comics of the last couple decades were unapologetic in speaking out against the decisions of the political and governing elite. Now the left takes themselves so seriously because they do not believe in self deprecation, which is the root and the heart of all humor. And they want it to disappear. And the reason they want that to disappear is they've always been after freedom of speech, which is at the heart of good comedy. In our fast paced world, it's time to make reading a priority. At least it used to be. A new app called Thinker. You guys have heard me talk about it. Thinker.org Charlie T H I N K R has solved that problem by summarizing the key ideas for from new and noteworthy fiction, giving you access to an entire library of great books in bite sized form. Read or listen to hundreds of titles in a matter of minutes, including old classics like Dale Carnegie's how to Win Friends and Influence People. If you want to challenge your preconceptions, expand your horizons and what? Become a better thinker, go to thinker.org charlie that's T-I N K R.org charlie to start an extended free trial and put your mind in motion. The left will not tolerate anyone that does not agree specifically with everything that they deem to be important. Chris Pratt, who of course is from many different movies and TV shows, Guardians of the Galaxy, Parks and Recreation, Jurassic World and more, has been deemed by the Internet, whatever that means, according to fox news.com that he is the worst Hollywood. Chris goes on to try and cancel him. This is Amy Berg, whomever that is. All because Chris Pratt allegedly goes to a church that is anti lgbtq. Some support of a church that is anti lgbtq. Ellen Page has regurgitated this for quite some time. Chris Pratt said at an award ceremony before that people need to get back to Jesus. I agree with that. And people have come to Chris Pratt's defense just because of all this nonsense. Mark Ruffalo says that Chris Pratt is as solid a man as there is. And all of a sudden there's this sudden push to try and cancel Chris Pratt, all because he does not agree with every single point of whatever secular left wing position that is deemed to be the current theological belief of Hollywood. And what's really fascinating to me is that we, as conservatives, we are perfectly okay with the presence of people that disagree with us within our planet, in our world. You see here that the left is not okay, not that even someone disagrees, but that someone might have even a slight skew of a different worldview within a position of leadership or authority within Hollywood. And so this story is gaining traction. Robert Downey Jr. Has come to his defense. And there's a great threat that if you dare disagree in Hollywood, that you will not be listed to movies, you will not be able to continue your career. And that is exactly how the collectivists operate now. They have never believed in freedom of expression. They do not believe in diversity. They definitely do not believe in disagreement. And we see this all the time at Turning Point usa, where young people who speak out in any sort of disagreement, any sort of opposition to the dogmatic, predominant view of the academic intelligentsia or the people in charge, the power class, you can get kicked out of class, you get kicked out of a sorority. We deal with this all the time. Just got another message from a young lady yesterday that she said she's getting kicked out of her sorority because she wore a Trump shirt does not surprise me at all whatsoever. And so the question for many people that are on the sidelines witnessing this is what will it take for you to engage against the people that wish to silence and destroy anyone that they disagree with? And this is exactly why, if we do not get back to being able to challenge the people in charge via comedy, because comedy is rooted in truth. In fact, stand up comedy clinic.com I never heard of it before. I was just kind of doing this in preparation of the show. I completely agree this it says, quote I always tell my students when they sit down to write comedy, don't sit down to write something funny, but sit down and try to write something true, then turn it funny. The truth. The truth. The truth. That's exactly right. And as Dennis Prager often says, truth is not a left wing value. Therefore comedy is no longer a practice that the left enjoys. The only comedy that they will use is not so funny. Expletive filled attacks towards conservatives, Christians and Republicans that they don't like. That's the only sort of speech that they feel comfortable interfacing on. And so to answer the question to the person who asked me privately yesterday in Huntington beach, what do we need more of? We need more truth tellers and we need more comedians. We need to make America laugh again. Please email us your thoughts on this episode. I'd love to get your feedback. Freedomarlicirk.com thank you for listening. Get involved with Turning Point USA, the nation's largest, most important student organization that is fighting for freedom and liberty on campuses across the country@tpusa.com. please consider supporting us at charliekirk.com support. Thank you guys for listening. Thank you for fighting. We'll be back with more. God bless. Talk to you soon.