The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh fired back on Tuesday at critics who expressed concern about the methods he had employed during the making of his hit comedy film, “Am I Racist?” — namely that he had “lied” to the “unwitting stars” who made his film possible.
Walsh was responding to those like Denny Burk, who argued in an op-ed titled, “Is ‘owning the libs’ a justification for lying?” that the film “opened up a conversation about the ethics of deception and lying when doing so for an ostensibly good cause.”
But as Walsh pointed out in a lengthy X post, the reason he had to go to such lengths to expose the unwitting main characters — in both “Am I Racist?” and “What is a Woman?” — was that he was dealing with people who would never intentionally reveal themselves.
As there’s a lot of conversation about it today, I will say one more thing about the methods we used to make “Am I Racist?” and “What Is A Woman?” before that.
We are trying to expose the so-called expert class — our self-appointed moral superiors who impose their doctrines on…
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) September 17, 2024
“We are trying to expose the so-called expert class — our self-appointed moral superiors who impose their doctrines on us from on high. Some conservatives have expressed discomfort with the fact that we use ‘deception’ to accomplish this goal,” Walsh said, adding that he did not necessarily believe that the word “deception” was the most accurate descriptor.
“The better question is this: how else can these people be exposed?” he continued. “Sure, you can make your arguments, present your opinion, explain why these people are full of s***. But that doesn’t expose them. Not in the way Robin DiAngelo was exposed, or the professor in WIAW, or any of the other unwitting co-stars in our films.”
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Walsh went on to argue that the only way to truly expose the “expert class” was to convince them it was safe for them to “come down from their perch and open themselves up to it” — largely because, as he said, “these people will never do that intentionally. They will never knowingly make themselves vulnerable.”
The only solution, Walsh argued, was to “use more innovative and maybe even ruthless means to lure or drag them out from behind that wall — because the alternative would be to simply give up.”
“That’s what we’ve done with our films,” he concluded. “And once we have them, we let them embarrass themselves. And we laugh at them. It’s not the nicest thing. But niceness is a luxury we don’t always have.”
Daily Wire co-founder and co-CEO Jeremy Boreing also weighed in on Burk’s article, laying out what set Walsh apart from his critics — particularly those, like Burk, who agreed with outcome but questioned his methods in achieving it.
Such is the plight of the man in the arena that he must endure slings and arrows from those whose interests he advances but who themselves lack the courage and faith to do the same.
I say courage and faith because the man in the arena must be bold enough to stick his neck out,… https://t.co/mjEKQ3mTDZ
— Jeremy Boreing (@JeremyDBoreing) September 17, 2024
“Such is the plight of the man in the arena that he must endure slings and arrows from those whose interests he advances but who themselves lack the courage and faith to do the same,” Boreing began. “I say courage and faith because the man in the arena must be bold enough to stick his neck out, and he must have faith enough to trust that his inevitable errors were borne by the only Perfect Man.”
“The critic on the sidelines needs no courage and requires no faith,” Boreing continued, noting that the critic would never face the same scrutiny as the man who took action. “His faith, like his achievements, remain largely academic.”
“The man in the arena knows God only recommends Himself, and that He uses broken vessels to enact His will, no other vessels being available to Him but One. ‘Maybe,’ he thinks, ‘that means He could use a wretch like me,'” Boreing concluded. “The critic points fingers and shouts, ‘Look at that wretch! He should try doing things exactly the way I would do them, if I ever did anything at all!'”