Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike. And I'm Nate. What are we smoking, Mike? We are smoking a cigar that I've been looking forward to. The Cane Daytona. This is an Oliva, not a nub, but it is an Oliva. And I really liked the Cane nub, so I'm looking forward to this one as well. Yeah, don't they also, didn't we also do a Cane, do they have the Cane F? Yes, we have the Cane F, yes. I think that one was two different sizes of that, I believe. Yes, yes, I am. I'm really looking forward to it.
Okay, good, good. I just, you told me to pick one and this one leapt out at me. All right, I'm lit. How about you, Mike? I'm lit as well. I put a V cut on this one. Same. Pretty good first couple puffs, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm excited. It's good. Good, good, good. So what are we talking about today? I am glad that you asked, Mike. I'm not sure what I want to call it, what the overall topic is.
It's not really a guessing game and it's not really one or the other, but I wanted to talk a little bit about grooming and or indoctrination. Another just exciting, positive, uplifting topic for the show. I am all bluebirds and happiness over here. Yes. I thought, why not? Just double whammy, double whammy it and make this stuff good. So what brought this about or what? Do you want to know why I want to talk about this, Mike? Well, yes, yes, I do. Sure. Why not?
Okay, so I want to talk about this because I was a little curious and I mentioned this something about this to you earlier is one set of grandparents for my daughter is religious and they will pray before meals that we share with them. And normally what they do is they will hold hands and kind of silently pray. You know, you can hear what they're saying, but they're not, they're not forcing everyone else to do it, right? They're not doing it in a, in a normal talking voice.
It's somewhere above a whisper, but not by much and it's quick and it's over and it's fine. And recently they've taken to doing like a kid's Z style prayer and actively asking my daughter. It's a, it's like an ABC prayer. And so they're like, do you want to do your ABCs with us? And which of course confuses her because she does, you know, A through Z, like the ABCs actually goes.
Then that got me, then that got me to thinking about, you know, kind of like indoctrination and how that set of grandparents is very much the ones that would say drag shows or drag queens reading to kids is grooming. Even though I was like, but you're doing the same thing you're accusing them of doing. So that's how this came about. And I don't mean, I don't intend it to be an overly heavy or dark episode, but I don't want to make light of grooming or indoctrination either.
So I just thought it'd be good to kind of talk through some of this stuff. Yes. Because they are different. I would say, well, they are different. Yes. I would say if you don't indoctrinate your children into a religion, it is extremely likely they are not going to follow the religion that you want them to follow. Yeah. I would also say even if you do indoctrinate them into the religion, you want them to follow, it's very unlikely they're going to continue following it.
I don't know what the statistics are on that. I think, I don't know. I don't know. It depends. I mean, I was indoctrinated into religion and now I am an atheist. So both of my brothers are as well or close enough. So one's a little more spiritual than us other two, but I don't know that it's full on religion, you know? Right. That's true. I mean, it would depend on the religion. Yeah. And how strict the followers were. Because some religions are a lot more strict than others, you know?
The Southern Baptists, certain of them won't watch R-rated movies and things. So I mean, you're missing out on Alien and Aliens. What kind of, why? You know, masterpieces. Right. Mad Max. Mad Max. I mean, The Road Warrior is one of the best movies, sci-fi movies ever. I think it's great. Yeah. I quite enjoyed it as well.
So I just kind of wanted to, and I'm going to start out with, because I was just trying to do some general research on grooming and whether or not like churches and stuff like that. And grooming is not the right term. But this is the first article I came across from the Anti-Defamation League. And this article just struck me as being so far the opposite of what I would imagine an Anti-Defamation League article should be. Does that surprise you? See if you can tell me why.
So the title is What is Grooming, and grooming of course is in quotes, the truth behind the dangerous bigoted lie targeting the LGBTQ plus community. Okay. It starts out with far right and extremist voices have launched a significant attack against the LGBTQ plus community in 2021, 2022, demonizing people via repeated false claims that LGBTQ people are pedophiles who are grooming children in order to abuse them.
And then it goes on about calling everybody who doesn't agree with their point of view a bigot. Which I thought if you're going Anti-Defamation League, defamation works two ways or all ways, right? Like much like racism, even though most people won't admit that. So it just struck me as very angry. You know what I mean? Now, the Anti-Defamation League has some controversy about it with some of the things that they say. So if you look at, they're not always, I don't know what we call it, accurate.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they, I don't know. Some of the statements they make are a little wild in my opinion. Yes. Yes, yes. So then I decided to go for a little less emotional definition of grooming than theirs. And I have a definition of grooming and indoctrination, both from Wikipedia, just to get both definitions from the same source.
So sexual grooming is the action or behavior used to establish an emotional connection with a minor and sometimes that child's family to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse. And it can occur in various settings, online, in person, and through other means of communication. And children who are groomed may experience mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and suicidal thoughts. So that's grooming.
And usually when somebody calls somebody a groomer, they're talking about the sexual grooming, not like grooming somebody to take over the family business. Right. So there's that. And then indoctrination is the process of inculcating, which is teaching by repeated instruction, a person with ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies, or professional methodologies, like a doctrine.
Broadly speaking, indoctrination can refer to general process of socialization, in common discourse, the term often has the perjurative balance to refer to forms of brainwashing for disagreeable forms of socialization, you know, like cults, things of that nature. Like a fallacism. So yes. And there's four stages of indoctrination. The first stage is softening up.
So I guess I usually groups will do this kind of like, you know, being friendly, a lot of them will run legitimate things, you know, to get you face to face with members. Number two is compliance. Three is internalization and four is consolidation. So the internalization is when they start actually taking on little like, I'm going to do like air quotes, like little missions, or tasks or things for the group. And then consolidation is when they're actually like believing everything.
So we have, let's see here. I have cult recruiting techniques. We're kind of going to go through some of this backstory before we get into some of the, what do Nate and Mike think these things are? Do we think they're grooming? Do we think they're indoctrinating? Do we think they're just evangelizing? What do we think they're doing? Yes. Here, this is from bigthink.com. Four psychological techniques, cults used to recruit members. They pick the right targets.
So they have a, what would you call it Mike, like a, almost like an APB on a missing person. They have like a set of things they look for in people that they try to recruit. Those people are generally the most susceptible. So they're looking for people that maybe are stressed, emotionally vulnerable, don't really have family connections or have living in kind of adverse socioeconomic conditions, like new college students. Sure. That makes sense.
And they want to go be part of a protest about Israel. Yes or no. Okay. Too soon. Anyway. Then they do, does the, do the moonies mean anything to you? I've heard of the moonies. Yes. Okay. I'm fuzzy on the details now, but I've heard of them. Yeah. I don't know anything about it, but I guess love bombing was a term coined by them. And that's right out of this like cult MO. So they'll find these people that are susceptible.
And then what they do is they go and they shower them with affection and flattery and validation and stuff. Basically they do everything they can to ingratiate themselves with these people. Like, Oh, Hey, these people are actually taking an interest in me. They're talking to me. They're saying that my problems aren't my fault and whatever other various things might need to be said. Sure. You know, and this is, of course these people have an end goal in mind.
So it's not the general kind of like early friendship jitters or something, you know, like when you first meet somebody new and you're gelling on the same stuff and you're like, Oh man, like, Oh, you're whatever. So awesome. Blah, blah, blah. There's not really an end goal in that. That's nefarious. It's just, I want to be friends with this person maybe. So and here again, it says about college students.
So like a recruiter approaching a college student and then doing everything they can to make that student feel special and unique and they'll even fake mutual interests and things in order to get the impression that there's a lot of commonality. Sounds like a political party. Yeah. Some of them even wait outside counseling centers to post trouble students.
So imagine that you're going to get some kind of like counseling and mental help and there's somebody in the waiting room or somebody just outside the building, just waiting to, I don't know, in snare you in something. Then the next one is isolation. Unless they entice the recruit, then they need to isolate them. So they'll usually it'll be like a weekend retreat where you're immersed in the cults ideology over a few days.
And then so you're physically isolated from friends and family, but they often try and isolate the recruits from any outside information like newspapers, books, TV and web. I don't know. I don't know how they would do that kind of nowadays because I don't have to be on wifi to access the internet unless they did like, I suppose they could do a, you know, it's a no cell phone weekend, put your cell phone in this bin and you can open it when you leave. What you're describing is church camp.
Just so you know. Yeah. Sounds exactly like church camp. I have been to church camp. I know. I met my beautiful wife at church camp. I know because you didn't have phones. They made you put your phones in the bin. Yeah. That was pre cell phone. Well, it wasn't pre cell phone. I know that. I know that it was pre internet on cell phones. It was pre internet on cell phones. Yes. Yes. I know that at homes. Yeah, that's too.
Yeah. So the next one is keeping control after they've convinced you that they're the best friends you could ever have. Then they make sure that they hang onto you. So they, it usually involves subjecting the recruit to terror and love. So they try and make it so that when they're afraid, they run back to the cultist and then give them a lot of love. So fun stuff. I think that was only three things. Oh, wait one. So keeping control.
Okay. So keeping control, isolation, love bombing and picking their target. So there was four things. It said four things and we did four things. Interesting. Yes. This was just kind of like, um, it was from the, the guardian, but it's like a write in thing. So people just random people wrote in to answer this question. The question was when does a cult become a religion?
Yes. The first answer from Anthony Breckner in London says a cult becomes a religion when it's granted tax free status by the government. That's true. I suppose. Like I said, some of these might be jokes, uh, cause these are just like anybody could write in David Lewin in Oxford has a pretty on the nose when it progresses from killing its members to killing non-members. I like that. Cult becomes a religion. Yeah. Uh, this one's a little longer. I think it's got some good stuff in here.
It says the essential difference is openness. Religions publish their beliefs openly in the Bible, Quran, et cetera, and seek to persuade the public of their truth.
Anyone who accepts these beliefs in the accompanying ritual is recognized as a member of the religion as a priesthood, which is open to any normally male person with the necessary commitment religions, therefore seeking mass following cults, however, rely on a secret or special knowledge, which is revealed only to initiates by the cult's founder and his or her chosen representatives.
The beliefs normally aren't published and everything depends on the personal relationship with the founder and followers who are required to separate themselves from the rest of the world. However, it says all religions begin as cults. Christianity began as one of several competing messianic sects and became a religion when Paul and his followers began Prostel. Oh Jesus, I should have done my text to speech. Uh, proselytizing, you know how to say this word, Mike? That's a tongue twister.
Prostel. Manians or the Mughal Toneans now? Yeah. Yeah. Proselytizing. I know the word you're talking about. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, and maybe you do too, listener at home. Once again, spreading their shit outside of Judea. Let's just call it that. Cults fade away when those who knew the founder die. Not me for sure, because I don't know what the fuck those are. Religions die too. Just saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And this one says, a religion is a cult which has become acceptable.
And then there's the last one here is, according to Frank Zappa, the only difference between a cult and a religion is real estate. Nice. Nice. I heard a definition of a religion being a cult becomes a religion when the leader is dead and so is everybody who knew them. Okay, yeah. So I guess like, I guess it's, it's not necessarily black and white, you know, cut and dry. I think there are different levels of indoctrination and different levels of cult and different levels of religion even.
So I have a feeling that, you know, when somebody says cult, we're thinking the most extreme we can, whereas with religion, some people will think cult right away, but other people, especially those that are religious and go to church wouldn't necessarily have that extremist thing pop into mind right away. Right. So, are you going to discuss the BITE model? No, I think you should.
So the BITE model was developed by a doctor named Stephen Hassan and it's sort of a framework to establish whether or not an organization is a cult or a religion. And the BITE is, of course, an acronym. It stands for behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control. So it's not a hard line. It is a... An assessment tool. A spectrum.
It's an assessing tool and it puts the religion or the cult on a spectrum of more or less cult-like because all religions definitionally have every aspect of the BITE model. It's just a matter of how exclusive is it. So for example, for behavior control, one of the keys is to minimize or discourage access to non-cult sources of information. So most religions do discourage access to non-religious information, but they do not prevent, they do not actively prevent that. You know what I'm saying?
Like, your Catholic priest might discourage you from certain news sources, but he's certainly not going to come to your home and punish you if you do get information from outside of the church. He might refuse the body of Christ because you watched a news source he doesn't like. Right. And then there's information control, which is provide only cult-generated information propaganda and use information to create a sense of fear or guilt, which that's a spectrum of... Right?
Like your local Lutheran pastor is going to try to make you feel guilty occasionally, but it's probably not a regular part of the program, right? Yeah, it's probably a regular part of the sermon, but at the coffee afterwards, it's not making you feel guilty. Right. Right. And there's thought control, which is encourage blind obedience and unquestioning acceptance, which the Catholic church has been very guilty of.
Yes. And emotional control would be to create a sense of dependence on the church leadership or the cult leadership, which again, there's a spectrum of that, right? Yeah. Yeah. And man, I read a study somewhere that for believers in church, the church service triggers the feel good chemicals in the brain. Like it triggers a specific section of the brain that you can get kind of like a high from. Right. But it doesn't work if you're not a believer, you know, so kind of one of those things.
They actually, I don't know if you're familiar. I think we've talked about it before on the show, but are you familiar with the God helmet? No. Okay. So, and I haven't looked at this for a while, but there was a study or a team of scientists that developed this helmet that you put on your head and it would stimulate the area of the brain that was stimulated in church.
If you went to church and you were a believer and they put it on and the people who got that area of the brain stimulated reported seeing angels in the room and all of that stuff. So it was, you know, definitely something that you could manipulate in the brain to trigger this kind of, I don't know, euphoric religious experience, let's say. Sure. That I can believe.
Which, yeah, which religious people would say, well, there's proof that God exists because we wouldn't have that region of the brain if he didn't exist, blah, blah, blah. And you know, atheists or agnostics might say, well, if you can, if a manmade thing can force that feeling, then it's false and it's just exploiting the brain. It's not necessarily an end all be all and it might actually raise more questions than one would think, but there's also that.
So I mean, you know, there's kind of that, the good feels that people can experience in church and or probably being in a cult. I don't know. Sure. That's like anybody who's been out in the woods deep enough to have been lost, you will, I describe it as seeing the fairies, but you start hearing noises and seeing things that don't exist for sure. Yeah. Like, yeah, it's the best.
The best time for that is at dusk, like before it's too dark to see, but it's just dark enough that every bush or shrub can look like something completely different depending on what your brain decides it wants to see at that time. Or, you know, the thing it most does not want to see. So yeah, I definitely sympathize with the old fairies, like the old European fairies and things like that. Oh yeah.
I can see like in a pre technology time where you're out alone, you could probably see some fairies for sure. Oh yeah. Well, even in technology time, you know, your phone flashlight will only light up so much of the woods, you know, as well. But you don't get reception everywhere. And we, I think we know a lot more about the things that are likely to be there, but telling yourself that there's no whatever, like there are no ghosts, there are no giant wolves here. There are no whatever it is.
If you're a load of the woods and don't know where you are and it's, it is that dusk or nighttime and you can't see anything, like good luck trying to reconvince yourself that those things don't exist right there. Right. Right. Exactly. But of course, you know, when you come out of the woods and look back and go, that was kind of silly, but I was scared for other reasons, you know, but I had to manifest them somehow into some kind of shape. Where are you with your cigar, Mike?
I am a little over halfway. Where are you at? Same. Yep. Same. I like this a lot. I knew I would. I was looking forward to it. It's dark. Yes. Very dark. Yeah. These are good. I like these a lot. This is a good one. This smoking pretty fast. Have you had this one before? No, I have not. I have not, but I like these cane series cigars. Yeah. The canes are good. I like them. Yeah. So I was definitely looking forward. I'm like, oh man, this is going to be a great one. I'm not going to lie.
I picked it mostly for the size because I don't have a ton of research on this one. I didn't want to get really heavy into a lot of this stuff, you know, like the grooming stuff and I wanted to keep it a little more surface level and a little more like conversational than reading off of articles and things. But oh, absolutely. And I do have more to talk about.
Yes, it might be controversial to say, but at least on the surface, like something like Drag Queen story hour, which made the news and some of these behaviors that have been criticized by the conservative elements, at least on the surface, they do have some appearances of grooming for sure. Yeah. I don't know if you saw the video of the child children at a drag show at a bar. And in the background, there was a neon sign that said it's not going to suck itself.
Okay. It's it's just it's like perfectly normal for adults to go and watch a drag show at a bar that has a sign like that. It's probably not like it definitely makes me question what's going on when there's children at that event. That is definitely for adults. Yeah. Well, and when we talk about the drag stuff, which we'll do here in just a little bit, I want to and I'm going to tell you this now because I didn't write this down, but I want to tell you now so that you can help me remember.
I want to differentiate a drag show slash like a drag brunch and the drag story times. Okay. So I want to I want to handle each one of those separately. That is perfectly fine. Okay. The last thing I have as far as research research goes is prayers. And yes, I just wanted to talk about prayers a little bit because I know it can be almost a form of meditation maybe for religious people to pray. But there is there's an article that was published, thoughts and prayers.
Do they crowd out charity donations? And this was published in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. But this professor who wrote the article shows that people who pray for others genuinely do so out of empathy. They feel sorry for the misfortune of others and pray as a way to help them. But when they pray, they often fail to do anything else like donate money.
So they actually did a study where they told these participants they all had like a free five dollars and they had religious people and atheists and everything. And the religious people would pray and not do anything with the five dollars. And the atheist people would donate the five dollars.
So the problem that this article is trying to point out is that and with a lot of the school shootings and a lot of the issues that we think the government should be able to take care of, you know, a lot of the religious crowd will say we're sending our thoughts and prayers to wherever. But they don't send anything else. They only send the thoughts and prayers.
So I guess just trying to expose or explain or look at that kind of, I don't know what you call it, that conundrum or something where the praying in itself is enough for some religious people and they don't actually do anything about it. And I don't want to get into the theological discussion of, well, praying is doing something about it because God's working on it. I'm not trying to get into that.
I'm just saying if you want to solve a problem, you're going to have to do something more than thoughts and prayers. Yes. Well, America is a big fan of doing nothing about problems right now, currently. So specifically with the events. Historically, yeah. Right now we're doing nothing about violence in schools, right? Nothing. So if we agree there's a problem, we have to do something, something.
I'm not saying what the solution is, but maybe having universal access to healthcare services would alleviate some of the mental health issues that are underlying the violence to begin with. Maybe that's a solution. Yeah. Yeah. Because I honestly, personally am tired of reading about the shooter, that they've been in and out of mental health. You know what I mean? I knew they were mentally unstable and all these people knew all these things and what happened. Nothing. Like nobody helped.
Nobody was able to help. Nobody was, you know, for whatever reasons, I don't know what reasons, but how many of the shootings that have happened in America have you looked at those articles where they say, oh yes, this person was struggling with this mentally or that mentally. It's like, well, if you knew that, what the fuck? Right. And there was a case- So I agree.
Well, this was a couple of months ago where the parents of the shooter were charged because they gave that child, their child, access to firearms when they knew that they were in treatment and they had some mental health problems. That's highly irresponsible. And I think that's probably a step in the right direction because you shouldn't be buying pistols and guns and giving access to firearms, unlimited, unrestricted access to firearms to somebody who shouldn't, you know, responsibility, right?
Let's be responsible with our actions. Yeah. Well, growing up, the only, once I was old enough, the only firearm, let's say, you and I know it's not really, but just for the sake of, you know, the only firearm I had free and unlimited access to was my BB gun. Everything else was locked up and was only to be used when my dad said it was time to use it. You know what I mean? Like I could ask to shoot and he would most oftentimes oblige and say, yep, we've got time for it. Let's do it.
Let's get him. We'll be safe and all this. But it wasn't something I could just wander down and grab myself and go, you know, plink targets in the yard with unless it was my BB gun. I largely had unrestricted access to my shotgun and to a 22 rifle, but I also grew up in the middle of nowhere and I hunted and the intention was for me to use that for hunting. Well, you know what I mean? Like I went hunting with my friends. Yeah. Yeah. Like after school or whatever.
Yeah. Well, I mean, like when I, yeah, but that was older. I was talking to like when I was younger, but when I was in high school, yeah, when I was in high school, then I think I was, I think it was high school. I was given the code to the gun safe, you know, if I needed it. But by and large, we only did, you know, we only took the guns out if we're going to go sight them in or shoot trap or actually go hunting. Right.
Yeah. When I was in middle school, I just saying I didn't have access to all that stuff until I had had the proper gun safety in the eyes of my parents. You know what I mean? Like that stuff was instilled indoctrinated, if you will, in me before I was given access to those things. Right. Me also, me also. I also didn't have issues that would lead anybody to believe that I was going to harm anybody with a firearm.
No, no, I wasn't out there shooting neighborhood dogs or cats or, you know, the mailman or something. Right, right. So, but that, you know, like that's a good, uh, kind of a good segue because teaching people things is that indoctrination? Uh, it has elements of it for sure. Yeah. I mean, there's probably a line. Oh, for sure. You know, but like safety things, it kind of has to be indoctrination.
Like what, every time I cross the street, look left, look right, look left again, you know, I don't know. It's a habit now. You know what I mean? Well, there's, if you go to college to teach, they try to teach you pedagogy, which is literally the science of how to manipulate children into learning more or less. That's a more pessimistic way to put it, right?
A pessimistic way to put it would be the science behind how to manipulate children to pay attention and learn your boring school subject that you want to teach them. Yeah. There are definitely elements. Well, and maybe it comes down to intent. Potentially.
Yeah. You know, I mean, some, some safety things, I don't know, in the early days of humanity, don't eat those berries over there because they killed Chad or something, you know, like if you don't do that kind of indoctrination or teaching, everybody's going to die because they're all going to eat those berries. Yeah. That's a, I've heard that social theory many times that the food prohibitions of early religions were a lot about food safety. Yeah. So what is it? Well, Simcha would know.
I don't know if it's Leviticus, but one of the chapters of the Bible, even that non-Judaic people read are mostly preclusions for the Jews in that time period, you know, like the clemeness and don't eat pork and don't lie with a woman on her period kind of thing. They simply didn't have the understanding of a lot of the stuff or they wanted to share the knowledge they did have with a lot of the stuff. So I've heard that interpretation.
I don't know if that's true about that chapter or whatnot, but I've heard it said that some of that stuff is like you said, you know, passing along wisdom or the best wisdom they had at the time. But now we can talk a little bit about things that might be grooming or indoctrination or neither. And I guess let's start with the, I don't know, do you want to start with the Drake Queen story time or do you want to start with the Drake brunches and Drake shows?
Drake story hour, because I think that's, that's easy. It's not easier. It's actually more complicated. It's hot topic and I don't know what to think about it. You know what? I didn't know what to think about it until I did research on this because I've seen there's a meme and I'm sure it spawned from a non-meme source, but the thing is, you know, why are you only reading to children? Why aren't you reading in nursing homes, hospitals and things like that?
So there's definitely people that are upset about Drake story hours. I was reading and this is, I think this is true for both Drake story hours and Drake shows, though what is presented and let's say, I don't know, consumed by the audiences is drastically different. I hope I think is that, uh, Drake Queens are a form of pantomime, like an over the top performance, right?
And, and so that got me thinking like Monty Python, kids in the hall, a lot of these shows or comedy troops, uh, even Shakespeare in the beginning, you know, when Shakespeare was still alive and doing, doing the stuff, men played all the roles and it wasn't an issue, you know, and Monty Python kids in the hall, they cross dress and do crazy things for no reason other than it's funny. It's over the top.
They're taking stereotypes and embodying them fully, you know, and I think the story time is specifically aimed at children. So they're reading a book, but it's a overly flamboyant, overly made up, overly costumed person who's reading the story to the kids, which who cares? As long as they're not reading, we all should cross dress or we should all have this kind of sex. You know what I mean? Yeah, I would say, who cares? Who's reading you Charlotte's web ultimately, right?
So my line would be, and I don't, I have done almost no research because I, I think it's the parents responsibility to judge whether it's appropriate or not. Yeah. It's a local issue in my opinion, but if you have a drag queen doing a normal recital of the Lorax, sure. Like that's fine. As long as they're not reading the script to the Rocky Horror Picture Show to five year olds, I don't see what the problem is. Don't be hating on the time warp.
All kinds of people read books to children and whatever, you know, like who cares? That's not a problem. Yeah. Not inherently. It's not inherently a problem. No, it's not inherently a problem. And I think we might as well mention this is not every drag queen is the same. So some, just like all people, some people have an agenda they want to push on people and some people don't. And that's true for anything you might want to do, any hobby you might have.
So sure, there are drag queens who use the story time to try and let's just call it evangelize the children and get them to chant, you know, pro LGBTQ plus stuff or what have you, you know what I mean? But then there's a whole bunch that just have fun with their character that they're doing and reading a book to children while being all like glammed and glitzed out.
So I think, I think by and large, when I was reading a lot of stuff on like Reddit and things about drag queens and the story times and whatnot, and just kind of being an over the top performance, I was like, yeah, that's probably fine. That's okay. Why they don't do it in hospitals and stuff. Maybe they do. Maybe they do it in nursing homes. It's probably just not reported on because everybody there is of the appropriate age for any kind of thing. You know what I mean?
Why don't clowns go and read books to dying people, right? There's a time and a place for everything. I see a drag queen reading a normal children's story the same as a clown doing it, which is normal, right? Yeah. Giggles the clown going into the school and reading books is, or at the library is non-controversial. So, yeah, they're more similar than they are different. Yes, I agree.
The drag brunches and things on the other hand, my wife has gone to some drag brunches with one of her friends and sent me videos. And these drag queens are putting on a very physical performance and are very over the top flirtatious and things of that nature. My wife was telling me that her friend will bring her children to these shows and I'm like, are you shitting me? This is not appropriate for a child, in my opinion. Every parent has their own thing.
So, I'm not trying to say this person's a bad parent, but I was kind of like, the what now because they're wearing like performance getup. Right. It's a burlesque style show to entertain adults. Yes. It's not for children, at least not to my awareness. This is for adults to be entertained. Yeah. And some of those drag brunches and drag shows build themselves as family friendly. And I think that it is family friendly in the same sense of a PG-13 movie that says fuck is family friendly.
You know what I mean? Right. Like it's, I don't believe the drag show people are necessarily saying, bring your four year old to this. You know what I mean? And I think that might be the difference is like a drag story hour is kind of targeted to kids because I'm not going to go listen to a drag queen read a Dune novel. One, because it would take all day and two, I'd rather just read it on my own, but you know, they're targeted at kids.
So of course they're just going to wear a really large dress, heavy makeup, what have you. No big deal. It's no different than a clown. That's the same thing clowns wear, you know, or if you had, I don't know, let's say like Snoopy, somebody who's wearing a Snoopy costume.
Oh, Snoopy the dog is going to read you a book, you know, Santa Claus, Easter bunny, Santa Claus, whatever anyone, but like a drag show, I think is different in nature because they're performing, you know, doing moves on stage. It's the same as like going to any kind of band. You know what I mean?
Like some of those bands get very like graphic on stage with their dance moves and stuff and some don't and some have very suggestive lyrics and some explicit lyrics, you know, so it's, I think it's, you know, I don't know that I think the difference is like the drag shows aren't necessarily targeted for children in the same age group as the children that would go to a story reading. Right. If I were a drag queen. Some people think like, yes, you'd be beautiful.
I would not want children at my drag performance in no, like that is, that would be like being a Britney Spears and wanting children at your concert. That's not for children, right? Like you can listen to the Britney Spears song on the radio, but the show is not for children. The show is for adults. The CD booklet was not for children. Right. No, no, it was not.
But I think like it gets a little confusing for some of the parents because they're, they're like, oh, well, we, you know, we were at the drag story hour. So of course it's fine to go to a drag show.
And I don't know if it's like the parents that just don't realize or, but I don't, you know, I think that the religious people like to kind of vilify the, uh, uh, the drag queens and not say, well, the parents should have known to just not bring children to a sexualized burlesque show featuring drag queens. You know, like you're not bringing your kid to this strip club. I hope you're not bringing your kids to a lot of shows don't get.
Yeah. I mean, the drag, the drag shows, as far as I know, don't get like full nudity, but they're still overly sexualized because it's the same type of over the top performance. Like that's the whole point of a drag queen, you know, is it's like, it's over the top. It's a performance. It's embodying the stereotype. You know what I mean? It's largely humorous. It's but it's for humor for adults, right?
You're not going to bring your kid to go see Richard Pryor, Richard Pryor probably not probably doesn't want you to bring your kids to a show either. Of course he's dead, but if he were alive, he probably didn't want you to bring your kids to a show. Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted to make the distinction between like the drag show, which is very, very different than the drag queen story time, at least hopefully, hopefully.
I mean, I've seen videos of like, of course the, the story times that have gone bad. There's always going to be weirdos in whatever group you're talking about. And then you're talking about a subset like drag queen. You're probably going to have a higher percentage of people who are don't think the way that the most conservative people think. Let's put it that way. Right? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. John Waters does not want your kid to watch his movie. I promise.
Yeah. I don't know that he, I don't know that he necessarily cares if they do, but it's not his goal. His goal is not to make things for kids. You know? Yeah. I mean, you know, and you can do the same thing. You know, the priests and pastors, you know, how many of them have infidelities or done things with children or what have you. So it's not really the thing. It's the person, you know, it's not, are you a drag queen? Are you a minister? It's the person. Are you, do you have a secret agenda?
Are you abusing it? That sort of thing. In my opinion. Right. Uh, the doctor who just recently had a drag queen as a villain character and people got up in arms about it, which I did not watch the, the episode for my own reasons, but it was not because there was a drag queen. And uh, I was like, why are you upset that there's a drag queen as a character in the show as, you know, one of the antagonists? This person's an actor. They're acting.
It's perfectly fine to have a crazy villain in a stupid sci-fi show. You know what I mean? As long as they're not doing anything not appropriate for TV, which obviously they're not cause it's on TV. Like, what's the problem here? Yeah. Yeah. Separate the actor from the character and separate, you know, the real people from the shitty writing. Right. Yeah. The shitty writing is why I'm not going. It's not because there's an actor playing a character. I don't care who they put in it.
I'm not, I'm not watching it. Right. Yeah. It doesn't really matter. I'm sad to say, I'm sad to say I'm done with Dr. Who because I really loved it for a long time there, but I just can't do it much like a star Wars, you know? Well, the numbers don't lie. I don't care who you put in it. This is the worst ratings they've ever had. Not to go on a total tangent, but these are the worst ratings they've ever had. No, yeah. They're worse.
They're worse than the Dr. Who ratings when they canceled it back in the nineties. Like they are the lowest. They've literally the lowest they've ever been. Yeah. So. And for good reason. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So I don't, you know, even the drag show though, I don't think is trying to indoctrinate or groom anybody. No. I mean, the drag show is for adults, right? It's there to be entertainment for adult human beings.
Like, okay, Britney Spears is a great example because it's not appropriate for kids. Is Britney Spears trying to indoctrinate you into wanting to listen to Britney Spears music? You know what I mean? Like. Yeah. I mean, obviously she has paid off of people listening to her music, just the same way drag queens get paid off of people coming to their shows, but they're not out there actively doing the things to indoctrinate.
They're not finding susceptible young children and inviting them to the drag show. Exactly. That they couldn't get into with other parents. You know what I mean? Like they're not out there encouraging kids to come to their show. They're encouraging adults to come to their show, you know, with flyers and the bar or whatever, but it's not like they're out there going to elementary schools, handing out pamphlets saying, come to my drag show. You can watch a full grown man in a dress do the splits.
Right. Like they're doing the drag show at an event for adults in a space intended for adults. You probably shouldn't bring your kids into the same bar that they're doing the drag show at. That's an adult bar. Like all bars are adult bars. Right. Even if it's a brunch, you know what I mean? Like even if it's a brunch. Right. We did go to a brewery. We did go to a brewery, Mike, with the kids, with both kids, and they had drag bingo. But you know what drag bingo was?
No. It was regular bingo, except the person reading the numbers was a drag queen in a huge dress with a lot of makeup. That's kind of fun. Yeah, it was fun. It wandered around and looked at cards and passed out cards and what have you. Not a big deal. Like it's not, there was nothing goofy about the whole thing. It would be no different than if it was clown bingo or like you said, Santa Claus bingo or any other kind of bingo. You know what I mean?
Like they weren't doing the splits in skimpy outfits. I love a good gimmick. I've mentioned, yeah, I know. I've mentioned the splits twice, not like that is like the most sexual move somebody can do. I've just, you know, the stuff I've seen from the drag brunches my wife's gone to, they're in physical shape. They can do things. Okay. Right. So kudos to them for being able to put on those kinds of performances is the main point at the end, at the end of the day.
So I think with the drag queen stuff, it drastically depends on how you're encountering them. If it's a story time or a bingo time, I think that's pretty benign. If you're going to a drag show, that's a different, a different thing. You know, I know last year we talked about the pride fest when we did all the pride flakes and things and pride fest is not something I would bring my children to because there's not a lot of clothes worn.
Like the least amount of clothes legally allowable to not end up in jail is what's worn. So again, not everything is for everybody. Right? So if you're going to the place where the body painting clothes, probably don't want to bring your kids there. Like not everything is for children. Not everything is for whoever. Right? Going, going to a, going to a bar that has a kitchen, probably fine before seven o'clock. You know what I mean? Right. After a certain time, it's no longer for kids.
No, no, it is not. You know, be, be aware of what you're getting involved in and don't complain if you got your kids somewhere that you should have known they shouldn't be. You can't fix stupid people. You know, a lot, I think that a lot of this is like nanny state bullshit from the conservatives where it's like, we want the government to protect us from being stupid. Like, no, no, you should be thinking about what you're doing. So be aware.
I would say the flip side though too is like the liberals sometimes say, well, if you don't like a drag shows and you're a bigot, you don't have to like drag shows. You don't have to like Britney Spears. You know what I mean? Like, like you said, not, not everything is for everybody. So if the, you know, if somebody doesn't want to go to a drag show, they're not a bigot. They might just not enjoy it. Exactly. Exactly.
So that's like complaining that they're swearing at the people who enjoy, yeah. People who enjoy like burlesque shows might not like going to strip clubs. It's two different things. Absolutely. You know, so I think understanding what it is is a good first step before we start throwing around bigot and whatever, what have you. So you know, Monty Python, not for everybody, but the people is not for, you don't need that kind of negativity in your life. So don't worry about it.
No, it's like going to a clown performance. You better pay attention to what that clown is because you could have the sad murder clown who does adult comedy, or you could have the kids clown. Those are two different things. You know what I mean? Like they are not, I bet you that guy or the woman, whoever the clown is, that's going to be a clown act for adults, does not want your kids there, right? That person does not want you to bring your kids. That's not the goal. That's not the goal.
They're not making content for kids. Right. You know, I think the, the, the, the tricky thing is the performer, like how, how is the performer going to know who's going to be there? Do you know what I mean? Like they want to sell tickets. They put on a show for whichever audience they want to put the show on for. It's not like, I mean, they're getting ready to perform. It's not like somebody at the door then runs back to the dressing room and says, Oh my goodness, uh, Killy the clown.
I sold 18 child tickets to this performance. They don't know. They don't know who's buying tickets. They don't, you know, like, I like Killy the clown. I hope that there is a Killy the clown out there. That'd be awesome. Uh, Killy the clown, drop us a line. We'll have you on the show, you know, and even if they knew there were kids there, it's too late. They can't change the show. They've rehearsed this, you know, right? Like drag shows, they've rehearsed it.
They can't change it because a child showed up. Like that's not necessarily on them. That's why movies have ratings. And you can complain about ratings. You don't want to bring your kid to Eddie Murphy's standup, right? Like Eddie Murphy's children movies are his children's movies. His standup is something totally different. You know, Bob Saget's standup when he was alive, like that is not a show for kids. Like just because he was on full house does not mean that it is full house the show.
Yes. So, well, and the, uh, the guy who voiced Winnie the Pooh for a long time was in an R rated animated, uh, movie. It was a dead space movie. So not really a name that you'd want to show to kids. But if you were like, oh yeah, that's the guy that does Winnie the Pooh. Well, he doesn't do the Winnie the Pooh voice in this one. I can assure you that. So you know, right.
I mean, just like parents, parents talk to their children differently than they talk to other adults when the children are in bed, right? You know, by and large, like there are certain things I don't talk about when the kids are awake because they're not prepared for that yet. Right. I also have religion on here, which I think we kind of covered earlier. You know, some of them, or they all started as cults, maybe.
And it kind of depends on the actual church plus the minister slash priests slash rabbi slash figurehead of that, of that church. I know in the Lutheran sense, a lot of the churches have a, uh, Oh, what's it called now? Some of them are like ECLA and some of them are, I don't know, some, some other thing, but they're kind of, they're not really, I don't know if they're organizations.
Or if they're kind of like schools of thought or something, but you can generally tell because some of the Lutheran, is it a synod? Synod? Is that the right word, Mike? I think so. Some of them are, you know, pro homosexual and some of them are homosexuality is a sin. So it just kind of depends, you know, but even in the Lutheran faith, there's a wide range of belief systems out there.
And then I think it really kind of depends on the actual minister or preacher, how much of a cult it is versus religion kind of thing, you know? And like you said, the bite model, they all are kind of trying to, of course, gain, attract and keep followers, but they're not all trying to necessarily flat out indoctrinate people or groom children. Right.
Well, that's, there's a spectrum of what's appropriate and what's not, you know, there's a line for what we would consider normal and what we consider abnormal. Yes. So somebody like me, from my perspective, like Jehovah's Witnesses, that's abnormal to me. That's a little too cult-like. Yeah. And they are way more cult-like than any Methodist church, let's say. The Methodist church is not going to try to control your personal life to that extent for certain, you know? Yeah. Or Mormons.
There's a wide range of Mormon churches, too. I would say Mormons are pretty culty. Depends. Depends, because there's the Jack Mormons and then there's the regular standard Mormons and then there's the FLDS. And those are just three main groups, but there's a spectrum there, too, you know? Yeah. And it's not like the mainstream Mormon church. Scientology. Yeah. Scientology is, I don't know if there is a normal Scientology existence, you know, where you can integrate to society. I'm not aware.
I'm not a Scientologist and I really don't know. They keep it secret. They keep their internal working secret, so it's more difficult to tell. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas like a Mormon church, at least, it's not secret, you know? Yeah. So. I want to talk about something I think that actually legitimately is grooming and then one that I think is borderline grooming. The first one that I think is definitely grooming, and I don't know that you could convince me otherwise, is child beauty pageants.
That's some weird shit for sure. I don't have a worldview that allows me to accept that as normal behavior. I've seen some images and videos about child pageants. I've never been to one, obviously. I've never been to one. But it doesn't seem to be on the level to me. No. I can understand spelling bees, science fairs, tee ball, flag football, soccer, child. But child beauty pageants, I don't get. I can understand synchronized dancing. You know? Like, I can get that.
Yeah. Like, that's pretty normal. You know, group competition type behavior, you know? With coaching and. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the next one I was going to talk about was actual dance. Like the, you know. Oh, sure. I don't know, because all those like dance people, and they go all over and they dress their kids up in like real tight clothes for no reason. And then it's like dance. And I'm like, this, I don't, I don't know. They're children.
Like, why can't they just wear something normal for a child? You know what I mean? I do. I do. It's some of the, some of it's borderline and some of it's normal, I guess, depending on. Well, yeah, yeah, exactly. You know. Yeah. I do know what you mean, though. Yes. I've had relatives that were in dance and there's some cult like behavior with the dance studio and the teacher. Oh, for sure. And everything else. But typically it's all women doing it.
So I don't think that it's predatory or anything like that. Whereas the child beauty pageant industry seems like it could be more predatory in nature. Yeah. The, the judging in the child beauty pageant is less. I mean, dance you could say is almost like gymnastics where there's moves or things that get graded on how well they're executed. Whereas a beauty pageant, I am not even going to mention what I think the criteria is for that. So I don't even like the adult beauty pageants.
Adult beauty pageants, which I've watched Miss America beauty pageant on TV as a child, because that was all that was on TV for public airwaves, you know, and it's just a pretty contest. Isn't that basically what it is? A pretty contest. And then they have some sort of a hokey skill. It's never like a real skill, right? They're not fixing cars or something. No, I can whistle with my belly button or, you know, I can use a baton and look pretty doing it. I can gargle and sing the national anthem.
Right. They're not they're not small engine mechanics or something. Yeah. They're not a NASCAR pit crew. Right. Yeah. It's not or arm wrestling or something, you know, like something that's just they're not using a saw. I guess actual skill. Yeah. Is that it's not like something that it's like it's like it's like it's an oddity or something. Right. Yeah. Like like like a bar trick. Yes. Like you can juggle we're wearing a bikini. It's like, OK, that's nice. They're not they're not speed cutting.
Ten points to Gryffindor. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I've never seen him bring out a skateboard. Let's put it that way. You know. Yeah. Fucking doing ollies and flips and shit. Yeah. Yeah. So the other thing I came across in my research, I didn't go too deep into it because it was kind of a little more political and stuff.
But I guess in the 70s, 1970s, that is, there was a slew of kind of legislations across the countries like France and America and stuff where they were trying to legalize sexualizing children, trying to say that if you didn't allow children to have sexual things happen to them, I guess you were taking away part of their humanity or something. So I didn't look too much into that. But I didn't know if you knew anything about that or heard heard anything about that.
I have heard a little bit about it. And it's it's like the map kind of thing. It's icky. I don't want to look too much into it other than there's certainly nefarious reasons for some of these things. There might be good actors, but I think that is I think that it's an excuse to do bad things. Basically, is that you know? Yeah, mostly by and large.
Yeah. I think that, you know, I mean, it's it's we talked about age and majority and like tattoos and gender reassignment and piercings and other things. And we don't really have a consistent age and majority in America, which is confusing for everybody. It is confusing. And it's not I mean, it's hard to pick an age and say it because you're going to have scientific evidence on both sides of that, whatever number you pick, you know.
But if you put a hard number, then at least you can enforce rules in a way that's consistent across time and space. Yes, at least our time and our space where we have legal jurisdiction to enforce said rules. But well, this space being the continental, well, the American Empire, right? In time being. Yeah, yeah. You're not now magically committing a crime in the future or in the past. You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I didn't mean it in the sci fi way. No, I know.
I was just we did mention Doctor Who. So I had to like clarify. Right. Well, Doctor Who, I mean, not to get on another Doctor Who tangent, but how can you have the doctor and then just like the actor playing the doctors, their personal identity is now just the character, you know, like that's their personality traits is just because you have an actor that has certain characteristics in their personal life. Like, no, that's not how it works. You're an actor.
Like you pretend time you're pretending. Well, we've talked about this before, too. Yeah. Where people are upset, but it only depends on the movie. Right. So if you have a non homosexual person playing a homosexual character, people get upset. But then you have Bergman Mountain. Nobody's upset about that.
So you know, I think when the when the rating quality drops so far, then you can get upset about things like this actor is not actually what they're portraying because everything else is so bad, but you don't most people might not know that it's because the writing is terrible and then it's easy to jump on the bandwagon. Well, it's because they had a straight person playing a non straight person or whatever it might be.
But that falls apart pretty quickly when you're like, you mean Mark Hamill couldn't actually manipulate things with his mind? Unacceptable. Like, I'll never watch that movie again. Liam Neeson didn't time travel back to 1930s Germany and start a slave factory and then save a bunch of Jewish people from the Holocaust. Like, what do you mean? Yeah, like, yeah, what? What? Yeah, Tom Hanks didn't really have AIDS and die. Yeah, or get lost on an island with a beach ball or whatever.
Mel Gibson's wife really didn't get killed by a biker gang in, you know, post society Australia. Yeah. I refuse to watch this trash. Yeah, so I think where are you at with your stick, Mike? I am done. I am done. So I smoked it right to the better end. My fingers are my fingers are burning. I've been a little more talking, but I'm I'm just about to that point. This one was good. I like this one. It was consistent throughout. I didn't notice a change really. I didn't notice a change.
That's not a bad thing. It's dark. No, I'm not saying it is a bad thing is dark. Yeah, it was consistent. It was a good size. Yes. Yep. I would consider it a robusto, but it's a smaller gauge robusto. Yeah, smaller gauge. Very nice smoke. Very nice smoke. I agree. Yes. So I don't know that we answered really any questions on grooming or indoctrination other than Drake readings. Probably fine. Drake shows fine for adults. Beauty pageants for kids never fine.
No, no. Even the teenage beauty pageants is like, I get it, but at the same time, you're getting into questionable territory here. You know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe your local yokel beauty pageant that's like not professional and it's just like a girls event for a scholarship. That could be fine, you know, potentially. Possibly. Possibly. You know. But do you really want Donald Trump involved with your teenage daughters? Like activities? Or Joe Biden?
I mean, I know Trump actually ran and was head of beauty pageants, but. Yeah, right. That's why I mentioned him specifically. It's going to be. Do you want a really old person, old man in charge of a child slash teenage beauty pageant? Probably not. Probably not. And I'm not making any accusations. We all know that Donald's predilection is towards, you know, 30 something Eastern European prostitutes. That's his flavor of the month.
Yes. Yes. I'm not saying that he specifically did anything inappropriate, but you can imagine it could happen, right? Yeah, yeah. We're also not saying nothing inappropriate didn't happen, but whatever. Yeah. Whatever. I'm just saying he's not. We weren't there. Yeah, we don't know. Do you want Bill Clinton to be? He's not the stand up. Yeah, none of these people that would have the money to put on a child beauty pageant and give enough money to make people want to put their children in this.
Don't have the moral fortitude to be the kind of person you want to put your child into a beauty pageant that they're running. Yeah, pretty much. That's what I'm getting at. Yeah, something like that. That's what I'm getting at. Like I'm just saying that there's a spectrum between beauty pageant runner and strip club owner and they're not as different as you might think. They're not as far apart as you might think on the spectrum there. Right. Like clown and drag queen, pretty close.
They're pretty similar. Yeah, yes, yes. Well, I think the thing is if you have kids and are thinking of bringing them to something, use your head, do the research beforehand. Is it a drag story or is it a drag show? And what's the story? That's the thing. What's the book they're reading? Are they reading a book that is blatantly inappropriate? Because if not, then I don't know, right? How are they going to make the Lorax inappropriate?
I say the Lorax because I really like the Lorax, but green eggs and ham is green eggs and ham, no matter how you want to spin it. Speak for the trees. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If it's a kid's book, that's a kid's book, that's a classic kid's book, you're fine. If it's Timmy got his wee wee cut off and now he's called Tina, maybe he skips that one. Yeah, yes, pretty much. I've seen some pretty crazy Australian news about books aimed at children that describe sexual acts.
And I'm like, is this even real? I get that disconnection from reality. How can this possibly be real? You know what I mean? Yeah, it's like, wait, is this from The Onion? Oh no, this is a real news story. Yeah, is this like a book that's actually for adults, but it's in the style of a children's novel? You know what I mean? Or a children's book? Because there are books like that. Yeah, and that's perfectly fine. That's great. I've enjoyed reading some of those.
But you still have to do your due diligence. You can't just, oh, it looks like a kid's book, so it must be here. Right. There you go, go read it. What was the famous book, Gold Ifuck to Sleep? Yes, that one, yeah. The difference is like, I don't want those books censored, but as a parent, it's kind of your responsibility to vet the things your child consumes. So that's on you. If you think your child can handle it, then your child hopefully can handle it. You know what I mean?
There are certain things that aren't designed for children despite their appearance. Like Team America, World Police, it looks like fun puppets. Not for kids. Not for kids. South Park. Yes. Adult Swim. Pretty much all the Adult Swim shows. Yeah, pretty much anything that was ever shown on there. Probably not for kids. Yeah, yeah. Well, I just put mine out. I really liked it. Very good. Two thumbs up from me. Highly recommend. Yes, yes. Very good stick. Thanks for listening. Be safe.
Fucking awesome.