Removing American men from the literary world (04-22-2025--Hour3)

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[00:00:28] Last hour, I went over the case out of Montgomery County, Maryland, that went up to the Supreme Court, where parents are saying that they should be able to opt out of the school curriculum that includes these books, these LGBTQ plus books. That's how they're described by the school district and by their allies, the ACLU and such.

[00:00:59] But it's more than that. The books are sometimes graphic, right? They're talking about sexual themes and such. And some of these books are inappropriate for the ages of the kids that are being exposed to the material. And the parents do not want their kids to be exposed to this material.

[00:01:20] And they have sued. And so it's gone up to the U.S. Supreme Court. They heard oral arguments on it today. I have a bunch of emails here. Let me read them on this topic.

[00:01:37] Stan says, so you can't omit books on queer and transgender subjects because they would be unworkable. That's what the district says. Like, oh, we can't let the kids opt out. We can't let the parents opt out because it became unworkable because they had such high rates of absenteeism, which in a sane world would be the signal to you that

[00:02:02] that not a lot of people want this to be taught. They do not want this as part of a curriculum, particularly in grades K through five. But it's K-12 GovCo schools. And so that's not sane. And so they're like, OK, we're going to do away with the opting out and we're going to force everybody into these programs, into this curriculum.

[00:02:25] And teachers will be allowed to read these books to your kid. And so that's why the parents have sued in the district's response is, well, we can't do the opt out because it's unworkable. Right. Yet somehow you were able to omit the Ten Commandments, says Stan. They got that out pretty quick. They were able to figure that one out.

[00:02:47] James says the growth of school choice or vouchers, even in blue states, is driven by parents concerned over the continuing efforts to indoctrinate students in progressive ideology. What's the current? Well, that is true. So there are different reasons, obviously, for parents to make this decision. And James is exactly right. Part of it is ideological here. Another part of it is.

[00:03:13] That their kids may have special needs that are not being addressed by the public school, whatever those special needs are, or they're not being educated or they're being bullied and threatened at school. So they can't learn. Right. There are there are all sorts of reasons why parents make these decisions. And that's the beauty of the market. Every parent gets to make the decision for their own child based on the criteria that matters most to the parent.

[00:03:42] Not to the school system. The school system is never going to care more about your kid than the parent does. And yes, I am excluding abusive, neglectful parents in this because there isn't anything you can do on that front. That's why you have mandatory reporting requirements and stuff like that. So the yes. So that is one of the things James says that the indoctrination.

[00:04:09] Yes. What's the current state of school vouchers in North and South Carolina? Well, North Carolina is now universal. North Carolina has the opportunity scholarship program. Everybody can apply to get voucher money. They expanded it last year to include vouchers, I think. But it's a it is a it's a it's a progressive system. In other words, the lower income the parents have, the more voucher money you get.

[00:04:39] And I want to say I'm trying to remember what it was. Seventy five hundred dollars a year. Is that what it was? Or maybe it was thirty five. I forget. But you get the full amount. And then. There are like four brackets of income. And then, you know, as you move up the brackets in the income. So the more money you make, the less money you would get of the full voucher.

[00:05:01] So and it used to just it used to to forbid people that are upper income from getting any voucher money. But that was peeled away last year. They fully funded the whole system. There were so many people on the wait list. So North Carolina's got them. I don't believe South Carolina has the same kind of program, but I don't know. Catholic schools are overflowing with long waiting lists.

[00:05:28] And now nearly twenty five percent of students are not Catholic up from two percent when I attended in the 70s. Yeah. Well, even non-Catholics know that their kids are going to get better education at the Catholic school. Right. That's why they want to send them to the Catholic school. It's a good school. The kid's going to learn stuff. It's got a good credential. Right. So as a diploma hanging on the wall, it's going to help you get into college or whatnot.

[00:05:56] So we're at the very beginning of this in North Carolina. I mean, the voucher program has been around for a while, to be sure. But the the the expansion of the opportunity scholarship program like you are like we're at the very beginning. I've talked about this S curve before. Right. The early adoption. With people that are sort of your pioneers, they come up with an idea. Or a product. They got to sell it. It takes a while for it to kind of catch on.

[00:06:23] And it goes pretty slowly at first and then very quickly. And then boom, it explodes. And then as more and more people adopt it, it becomes the norm. And then it kind of levels off. Right. So it's this kind of flattened S curve kind of a deal. And and I think that's what we are. We're at the beginning of this S curve. My expectation is that you're going to see more and more and more private schools coming into the market.

[00:06:51] To try to capture those kids, those that market share. That's my expectation. But we'll see. John says they say reading these gay books have no effect on kids. But government also banned cartoon character commercials because it influenced kids to want that cereal. Anybody remember Joe Camel? Yeah. A consistent standard would be nice here.

[00:07:18] This is the same dynamic as the Will and Grace dynamic. Remember that one? Remember Will and Grace, the TV show? Right. That was credited with normalizing or promoting or making people more comfortable with homosexuality. Because now everybody saw Will was a nice guy. Grace was a nice girl. They liked both of them as a funny show. And then Jack, the friend and all of this. Right.

[00:07:47] So it moved this lifestyle. Right. These characters. These people. This story. It moved it into people's homes where now they felt like they knew somebody who was gay. Whereas before they did not. This was the 90s. And so Will and Grace is credited by the left. By the activist crowd. By the people who were promoting it. As being a huge driver of public sentiment towards that thing. Murphy Brown. Another one.

[00:08:17] Murphy Brown having the kid out of wedlock. Dan Quayle made a comment. He was the vice president at the time. Made some comment about how it's not, you know, sending a good moral picture. Everybody's like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it. And all this. They say Murphy Brown. Ellen DeGeneres. Right. Like this kind of. This. The kind of cultural entertainment that we. That we consume. Right. Drives a shift in cultural norms. The left knows this.

[00:08:46] The left is well aware. So for them now to say, oh, reading the book doesn't actually do that. It's a lie. We know why. We know why you're doing it. Because it's important to you. Otherwise you wouldn't do it. Right. All right. So spring is here. A time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you. Are all of those treasured moments from days gone by?

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[00:10:14] Perhaps legislators should look into that. Yeah, there is kind of an element of it to that. Yeah. See, when I was in school, when I was a kid, if you ever asked a personal question of a teacher, like, that was detention. Like, they did not, they did not give you anything. They didn't talk about their spouses. They didn't talk about their kids.

[00:10:42] By the time you get up into the high school age range, yes, then you start hearing a little bit more about, like, one of my teachers got married, so her last name changed. And so, like, oh, you got married? And of course, these are high school kids. Like, ooh, she got married. I don't even remember her maiden name. Mrs. House was her last name. Like, spelled like the house. And, but she would never talk about any of it. She would just say, okay, open your books, move on, whatever. Like, that was it.

[00:11:12] There was a shutting down of any of this kind of talk. Except for the health class, where they showed us all of the, the after pictures of the STDs. That was not pleasant. But, yeah. They never talked about this stuff to us when we were that young. There were lines that, that the teachers did not cross. And that has been lost. It seems to me. That's what it seems to me. Your mileage may vary.

[00:11:42] Um, the goal of public, public education has become to create a generation of, oh, Greta Thunberg. How dare you? Yes, Greta. How dare you? Um, she's now all in on the, uh, Palestine thing. Have you noticed that? So I'm going to read now a piece out of the Washington Examiner. Not the entire thing. I'm going to be the highlights. As I am wont to do.

[00:12:12] It's a piece written by a guy named Mark Judge. And if the name rings a bell, you may recall why as we get to the end of this piece. So on May 17th, coming up, one of the coolest events in my area will take place. The Gaithersburg Book Festival. It's just a couple of miles from where I live in Maryland. The festival features some of the most interesting authors representing all different genres.

[00:12:42] Usually. He talks about, though, that, uh, most of the titles now, and the authors seem to be of a particular persuasion. Meaning, of the left. One of the featured authors is Juby Areola Headley. He, him. A black queer poet, storyteller, first generation United Statesian.

[00:13:09] And the author of two collections of poems, one called Bound, and another called Original Kink. There are books about abortion. There are manifestos about how America has to change. And, of course, a volume rejecting traditional biological sex. Now, he says, look, there are some more mainstream titles, like Rick Atkinson. He's going to be there. He's the author of The Fate of the Day, The War for America,

[00:13:38] Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston. There are also several novels from different genres, like crime, romance, and fantasy. But what's missing are young males. There are no young male authors who are producing literary fiction that is marketed to young men. There's a guy named Jacob Savage.

[00:14:06] He wrote recently in Compact Magazine about the phenomenon of the vanishing male white writer. Savage traced the decline of young white men in American letters by looking at the New York Times best-selling list of notable fiction. I don't know if it's best-selling, but the notable fiction list. In 2012, the Times included, so this was, what, 15 years ago almost?

[00:14:32] That list included seven white American men under the age of 43. The next year, it went from seven to six. In 2014, six. And then, the door shut. 2014, so a decade ago. And within, what, five years, six years? By 2021, Savage writes, quote, there was not a single white male millennial

[00:15:01] on the notable fiction list. There were none again in 2022. There was one in 23. And there was one in 2024. There were also no white male millennials featured in Vulture's 2024 year-end fiction list. There were none in Vanity Fair's. There were none in The Atlantics. Esquire has featured

[00:15:30] 53 millennial fiction writers on its year-end book lists over the last five years, so like 10 a year. And of those 53, one white American man. In the New York Times recently, David J. Morris wrote, he's a creative writing professor, he says that America has lost its literary men. Over the past two decades, literary fiction has become a largely female pursuit.

[00:16:00] Novels are increasingly written by women and read by women. Women readers now account for about 80% of fiction sales. 80%. Morris, dude, I grew up, I read, I read so much. And people, I have so many books that I haven't read. I have so many books that I haven't read now sitting on my shelf because I read all day long. But I don't read books. I read this stuff. I read current events all day long.

[00:16:30] And by the end of the day, it's like, I don't want to read anymore. I've been reading all day. Literally, you know, 12 hours. So I don't want to read anymore. But when I was growing up, I read all the time. I read like every Stephen King novel there was. Morris argues, this is the creative writing professor, he says that if you care about the health of our society, the decline and fall of literary men should worry you. In recent decades,

[00:16:59] young men have regressed educationally, emotionally, and culturally. Men descend deeper into video games and pornography. Missing are novels which improve one's emotional IQ. Novels help us form our identities and understand our lives. Even famous liberal writers, Joyce Carol Oates, James Patterson has also written about this. This is

[00:17:28] a well-known and disturbing trend inside the literary world. Several recent articles have noted that Lonesome Dove has recently experienced a surge in popularity. Did you know that? I did not. This novel is 40 years old. Why? Well, because the American library elite has discouraged the formation of the next Larry McMurtry. We're not producing any more of these kinds of authors,

[00:17:58] these male American authors that are writing stories for young men. These books offered more than just action. They had insights into work, sex, religion, and psychology from a dude's perspective to a dude growing up. And when you rip that out of the literary world, you're going to see downstream impacts. Here's a great idea. How about making

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[00:19:27] And they have pet-friendly accommodations. Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Mark Judge. In an op-ed at the Washington Examiner, the headline is, The Left Has Blocked Young White Men from Publishing Novels. And he's spent the first half of this four-page op-ed giving examples, talking about all these different lists

[00:19:57] in the literary world that are published and how there aren't any more American white men writing books for young men, young American men anymore. And there are authors that have noticed this and are pointing this out and they're saying that this is not healthy. This is not a good thing. Just like it's not a good thing to limit publishing of

[00:20:26] books by any group. Right? The object here is not to say that we have to go back to only publishing white male books. That's not what he's saying. It's not what I'm advocating. However, when you go from half of the list being made up of white dudes, white American dudes, you know, in 2020 or yeah, 2010 rather, and then within five years there are none, that shows something is occurring. Right?

[00:20:56] Something is happening. And it's not that those authors just don't exist any longer. It's not that people don't know how to write and read, although K-12 schools have done a pretty good job of getting us there. But, no, it's that the book publishing world is making a conscious decision not to have these authors published. They are the gatekeepers. Now, he goes on to say that today men who are looking for similar themes have to go

[00:21:26] to smaller publishers. And he talks about how in 2015 he wrote a piece that celebrated a publisher called Hard Case Crime. That's the name of the publishing company. And he said at the time, this was 10 years ago, the simplest explanation for the popularity of Hard Case Crime is that the books like most pulp fiction and the film noir movies it inspired are about animus.

[00:21:56] The Jungian term, Carl Jung, the Jungian term for male passion. Like a Scorsese film, they depict men on the edge when the world is increasingly hostile to dangerous and flamboyant men. In the 1950s, writers like Jim Thompson and Dashiell, I don't know this person's name, Dashiell Hammett brought readers into a world where carefully

[00:22:25] manicured lawns, jello, and white picket fences had not taken hold. Okay, so that's what he wrote about this book publishing company. Three years later, Mark Judge would find himself in the middle of a political firestorm in Washington, D.C. Do you know who he is now? Mark Judge? He was a, what, high school friend of Brett Kavanaugh.

[00:22:54] Mark Judge. And he got swept up in this firestorm and the media discovers his article on hard case crime and they went absolutely berserk on him. One outlet described his work as, quote, many of his writings, an MSNBC reporter noted, align with the ideology of the MRA movement. Do you know what the MRA movement is?

[00:23:23] The men's rights activists? MRA? In one instance, Judge praised the wonderful beauty of uncontrollable male passion. The MSNBC co-hosts, Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhl, couldn't quite wrap their heads around Judge's praise of men with out-of-control sex drive. Judge says, I actually did not know anything about the men's rights movement. I had no idea about that.

[00:23:53] I was just writing about dudes. In 2022, he says, I published a book about my experience being mauled by the media. The name of that book was called The Devil's Triangle, Mark Judge versus the New American Stassi. It's about politics, but also it's about the writers who shaped me. And then he lists them. G.K. Chesterton, Tolkien, Salinger, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Ellison, Thomas Wolfe,

[00:24:22] Hunter Thompson. And he says his book was ignored by the legacy media because, of course. But ironically, when reviewing a different book on politics that was written by a leftist adversary of mine and that briefly referred to me, the New York Times book critic Alexandra Jacobs wrote that, quote, one longs for more about Mark Judge. That was in this book by this other author. about,

[00:24:51] or mentioned Mark Judge. And when this woman was, after she had read this competing book from his adversary he does not name, the New York Times critic said, oh, one longs for more about Mark Judge. Oh, we wish we knew more. But, he's like, I wrote about it. It's in my book. Jacobs, the critic, and the New York Times have refused to review his book And despite growing up just a couple of miles away,

[00:25:21] the Gaithersburg Book Festival has never offered him an invitation to attend. Right? This is the gatekeeping function that these people are providing, that they have assumed. They're blocking access of authors to their publishing houses. And these are private companies. They are free to do what they would like. Absolutely. However, I feel like

[00:25:51] there is a demand that is not being met. But here's the problem. If the books don't get published by so-called reputable publishers, then they don't make their way down into the K-12 government system. They don't make their way into these libraries. And so when you do this for long enough, all you will have on the shelves are old books,

[00:26:21] Call of the Wild or something. Right? Or you're going to have the current offerings that are not written by anybody that these authors or that these readers have any interest in reading. They cannot relate to it. They don't want to read it. Right? So when I hear people in academia and in the libraries and in education circles, and they talk about how, oh, we're

[00:26:51] just, you know, offering this stuff. It's not indoctrination. We're not activists. It's why I don't believe you. Don't whiz on my boots and tell me it's raining. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app and it's a

[00:27:20] website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself.

[00:27:50] Check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Headline, Judge Rules School Can Ban XX Protests Over Males in Girls Sports. This is from the New Hampshire Journal

[00:28:19] by Damian Fisher. There is a school district up there called the Bow School District B-O-W or maybe it's Bow it could be the Bow it's New Hampshire a judge ruled a federal judge ruled that the district was acting within its authority to kick two soccer dads out of a girl's game. So these are dads watching their daughters play soccer and they showed up wearing

[00:28:49] wristbands pink wristbands with the letters XX on it which is the universal sign for moonshining. No, it was a silent protest against biological males playing on girls teams. One of the dads, Anthony Foote or Foote Foote Foote told the New Hampshire Journal that he plans to keep fighting for what he sees as the rights of women and girls.

[00:29:18] He says the judge openly admitted that pride flags are allowed because they promote inclusion but wristbands defending women's sports are banned because they might offend somebody. And he says that's viewpoint discrimination plain and simple and it's unconstitutional. The judge in the case Stephen McAuliffe in his ruling the crux of the

[00:29:48] ruling is that while Foote and his fellow dad Fellers so Foote and Fellers and the others acted within their first amendment rights to protest venues like school athletic events are considered though limited public forums and school officials acted within their legal authority to restrict what the parents said and did. Here's what he said. This is the judge.

[00:30:19] The question then becomes whether the school district can manage its athletic events and its athletic fields and facilities that is its limited public forum in a manner that protects its students from adult speech that can reasonably be seen to target a specific student participating in the event as well as other similar gender identifying students by invited adult spectators when that speech demeans

[00:30:48] harasses intimidates and bullies and the answer is straightforward of course it can discriminate indeed school authorities are obligated to do so dude you know what we used to do in high school like we had basketball games all of our home basketball games there were classmates of mine would bring a big bed sheet and they would tape it

[00:31:18] up on the wall on the top of the bleachers in the gym so you could see it it was huge it's a bed sheet and in the middle of the bed sheet is spray painted the word meathead and then there are numbers and like the later the season gets the more numbers are on that sheet so the very first game of the year you hang the sheet up there says meathead on it and they identify a player on the opposing team and usually it's the best player and you pick one of these players

[00:31:48] and every time they touch the ball for however long they're touching the ball you chant meathead meathead meathead and then you stop as soon as he passes so every time he touches it he knows that the crowd that the home crowd is going to chant meathead at him and just in case anybody is unfamiliar with who they were targeting that's why they put the number up there so they put the number they spray paint a number or write a number

[00:32:17] on the bed sheet and everybody targets that number and then after the game is over they x out the number so by the end of the season you come back or you show up to play our high school and you're going to see a sheet up there with like a dozen

[00:33:02] different girls teams that happens to have a boy on it boy by the name of Parker Terrell days before the game Terrell made national news with a court victory against the state of New Hampshire's law barring biological males from girls sports

[00:34:56] and the other parents are seeking to allow them to protest at school games and other events like if you can't even wear a wristband to express your displeasure in what the district and what the school system and the government is forcing your daughter to do like you guys have lost the plot here this is again this is like an 80-20 issue that Democrats have chosen the wrong side on yet again

[00:35:27] all right that'll do it for this episode thank you so much for listening I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast so if you'd like please support them too and tell them you heard it here you can also become a patron at my patreon page or go to the Pete calendar show dot com again thank you so much and don't break anything while I'm gone