Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh slammed conservatives eager to praise Ne-Yo after his latest apparent reversal on gender identity, saying that the rapper’s comment was not even close to a person “standing” their ground against pressure from the LGBTQ mob.
“The Matt Walsh Show” podcast host on Wednesday took aim at what he called a disease among conservatives who too easily will claim a celebrity is on their side when they say even the slightest thing that lines up with conservative values. In Ne-Yo’s case, he was was talking about when the 43-year-old rapper called out parents who let their children choose their own gender identity.
The singer’s initial comments drew backlash from the left and he issued a written apology on Monday, only to walk that back later. Walsh made it clear that the reversed apology was not proof that Ne-Yo was willing to “stand his ground”
“If this is what we now call standing your ground, then we have lowered the standards so far that the standards don’t exist anymore,” the host said. “That’s not standing your ground. Okay? If putting out a publicist’s statement apologizing to the LGBT community for hurting their feelings, if that’s standing your ground, then — well, I guess the good thing is, if that counts as standing your ground, then it’s very easy to be heroic in that case, like, if that’s the standard, then all you got to do is just — if the bar’s all the way down here, all you’ve got to do is barely move your foot up and you’re a hero of historic proportions.”
Ep. 1201 – Race Hustler Judge Throws Cop In Prison For Being In The General Vicinity When George Floyd Died pic.twitter.com/BgMJyehReC
— The Matt Walsh Show (@MattWalshShow) August 9, 2023
“Even in his [Ne-Yo’s] follow up statement, he apologizes again for offending people,” he added. “That’s not standing your ground either. But more importantly, he says that everyone should be able to do what they want with their own kids. Do you see how that’s the exact position that the Left has on this?”
“This is what the Left would say. A parent and child make their own choice about transitioning the kid,” Walsh continued. “That’s what they say. Okay. So, he has affirmed that view explicitly. This is not me being a purist. This is me understanding what our position is and recognizing that someone has taken a position that is the opposite of our position, but in the meantime thrown out a few buzz words and phrases and whatever that are impressive to some people and so its, ‘Oh, he’s on our side.'”
The podcast host said those on the right’s reaction to the rapper’s reversal is an example of “this peculiar conservative disease where we’re so desperate for mainstream approval and relevance that any celebrity who comes anywhere within our vicinity like ideologically — just latch on to them. And we want to give them the Medal of Honor. And I don’t think that that has ever been an effective cultural strategy. I think it’s pathetic.”
Walsh said in situations like this conservatives would do well to take a cue from those on the Left — their strategies in particular — “because they’re the ones who own the culture. They won you know, they won everything, now we’re trying to win it back.”
“And so it it behooves us to look at some of the ways they did that,” the host concluded. “And so when you look on the Left, they don’t do this. If somebody says one thing that’s like vaguely sort of they agree with, that’s not good enough for them. So they’ve got a hard line. This is the line you’ve gotta walk, and if you don’t, you’re not on our side.”
“Then you look over at us and we can have someone that’s like on one subject, 99% of what they say we totally disagree,” he added. “But if we get that 1%, then not only do we embrace them, but we we hail them as heroes. I don’t think it’s an effective strategy.”