Matt Walsh’s latest film is available for streaming now on DailyWire+. What’s it about? Should you see it? Here’s one RPKC member’s take:
’Way back in 1970, composer Leonard Bernstein held in his fashionable New York flat a fundraiser for the Black Panthers. All of New York’s elite were invited, among them journalist Tom Wolfe. Wolfe circulated among the guests, jotting down their comments on his cuff (he knew shorthand); then assembled the inane utterances with his description of the absurd situation into his classic essay, “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s.”
Since then, it’s been standard for journalists to transcribe to the pontifications of chic radicals and let their absurdities speak for themselves. The latest example is the movie Am I Racist?by comedian and filmmaker Matt Walsh, who is associated with The Daily Wire.
I’ve never seen anything by Matt Walsh, nor have I ever looked at The Daily Wire, but I was intrigued by movie’s premise, so I went to see it last Saturday afternoon at the Kenosha Cinemark. There were perhaps a dozen people in the theater.
The film is a mockumentary about DEI. In it, Walsh disguises himself as a DEI expert, complete with horn-rimmed glasses, a wig with a man bun, and DEI certification from a web-based diploma mill. In this guise, he encounters DEI advocates, interspersed with bits of guerrilla theater. Some highlights:
While disguised as a waiter, attends a Race2Dinner conducted by Saira Rao, who declares “Republicans are Nazis” and “The system has to burn.” The dinner cost the participants $3,000.
Interviews Robin DiAngelo, and persuades her to give $30 to his producer (a black man) as a reparation. DiAngelo was paid $15,000.
At the National Mall, circulates a petition to rename the Washington Monument to the George Floyd Monument (as well as painting it black and making it 30% bigger–mocking another racist trope). Yes, some well-dressed white people signed it.
By comparison, conducts spot interviews with people on the street or, in one case, in a biker bar, who speak some uncommon common sense.
Interviews an unnamed “anti-racism educator,” leading to the “Moana Problem.” (I can’t do it justice in this brief review, check it out below.)
Re-plays the interview in which Jussie Smollet describes the attack allegedly made on him. It is as awful as one remembers.
The movie concludes with Walsh, in his DEI-expert guise, conducting an anti-racism workshop. Some of the attendees had the nerve to walk out on him, but others ate up his BS.
Whether you like this movie will depend on whether you think “punking the libs” is amusing. For me, I found much of Walsh’s antics, such as when he interjected himself into the Race2Dinner, to be more cringe-inducing than funny. Still, Walsh’s humor helps to open the mind of the viewer to receive some pretty godawful news: that there’s big money to be made in DEI, and many of the people in charge of our education system, media, businesses and government, have swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
To sum, if you are at all informed about DEI, Am I Racist? may amuse you, but it won’t tell you anything you don’t already know. The main problem is that Walsh is preaching to the choir. The film has not been reviewed in mainstream outlets, is quietly disappearing from theaters, and probably will never attract a broad audience. However, I would love for it to be seen by high-school kids. It might help some, at least, to begin to Question Authority.
—RPKC Member Frederick Butzen