On Wednesday morning’s The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Senator Kerry Roberts to the show to discuss his latest hyperbole which was misunderstood by the liberal mainstream media. Roberts made a joke stating that he thought colleges where liberal breeding grounds which warranted an unrelenting backlash.
Towards the end of the show, the men discussed how colleges and universities have become breeding grounds for social justice warriors through their obscure course studies lacking a definitive mission.
Leahy: This is the 18th anniversary of the attack on the world trade center and pentagon by Islamist terrorists that killed over 3000 Americans. And of course the brave heroes in flight 93 that took the plane down rather than have it hit the capital in Washington. And we have to just stop and pause and consider those great loses.
And 18 years later here we are. A lot has happened in those 18 years. Just a moment of brief silence and contemplation for those patriots that were killed by Islamic terrorists 18 years ago today. We are joined now by our good friend state Senator Kerry Roberts. And Kerry has been in the news lately because liberals can’t take a joke. Kerry, state Senator Roberts, welcome to the Tennessee Star Report.
Roberts: Hey good morning. Let me say that’s it’s not that they can’t take a joke it’s just that they don’t understand what the word hyperbole means. I never said I was joking, I just said I was engaged in hyperbole to make my point. And what I’ve discovered is either they don’t know what it means or they don’t think they’re readers know what it means but they don’t use the word.
Leahy: So really what they’re doing is they’re looking for any opportunity and take something and twist it to make it be what it’s not. That’s basically what this circumstance is?
Roberts: Wow. I’ve never thought about that. Now that’s sarcasm. I’m not sure if they understand that or not or they would just say I’m stupid for not understanding what happened. I have a radio show of my own. It’s just a weekly little local market thing.
Leahy: Springfield. You represent that area.
Roberts: It’s not a policy show. I don’t issue policy statements and put on my Senate title to do the show. I tell everybody that calls in I’m just Kerry. Not Senator Roberts show. This is the Kerry show.
Leahy: You do it Mondays from 7 am to 8 am typically?
Roberts: 7 am to 8 am. It’s just the local market.
Leahy: You don’t get up and do it at 5 am like I do?
Roberts: I’m not as much as a man as you are. I could not get up and start a show at 6 am I can assure you and do one for three hours.
Leahy: Yeah, three hours. 5 am to 8 am Monday thru Friday.
Roberts: Ok. I couldn’t do that for 3 hours let alone 5 days a week. I’m struggling to do it one hour.
Leahy: I’ve listened. It’s a nice show. I like your show.
Roberts: I enjoy it and it’s a challenge because it’s a one man show. So I’m sitting in the studio and running the board.
Leahy: Oh, you run the board too?
Roberts: It’s awesome.
Leahy: I have the luxury of Jimmy who’s are producer here who is superb at running the board so all I have to do is talk.
Roberts: It would be a luxury for me. It’s clearly a luxury that we can’t afford. So it’s a one man show. And on top of that, I have to juggle…
Leahy: The calls coming in?
Roberts: So my calls are all planned. There’s no one to screen the calls. I don’t have anyone to screen the calls. I live stream on video so there’s the whole rat’s nest of wiring that I’ve got to set up every morning to do a live stream and have to manage that. Occasionally somebody will type a note on Facebook saying, “Hey I can’t hear you.” (Roberts laughs)
Leahy: So in this show, you occasionally engage in hyperbole?
Roberts: It’s been known to happen. By raising my voice it’s probably hyperbole. My wife hates it. She hates it, “Don’t rant.” Every now and then you’ve got to call it like it is. And you know the whole context of this thing is I promised an hour-long show recounting the summer stay on the Heartbeat bill.
And you know, we sat there for two days and got lectured by a whole lot of people about white privilege and the color of our skin. Our Christianity and our political…
Leahy: Really? You where getting lectured on white privilege on the Heartbeat Bill?
Roberts: Nothing to do with the bill. Nothing to do with the bill. For me, that was two days of, “I want to listen to legal experts tell me how this can or cannot overturn Roe versus Wade.” That’s why I’m interested in. I’m not interested in what happened 400 years ago. And how this is still oppressive.
Leahy: This whole thing came about on his small market one-hour weekly radio program in Springfield he used hyperbole because, in fact, colleges are in fact a “Liberal breeding ground.” Just using hyperbole he suggested that we abolish higher education. It was hyperbole. And yet, state Senator Roberts the mainstream media decide oh you were serious. They just don’t get it, do they?
Robert: They don’t. You know the great thing about my radio show and you’re radio show is? We don’t have to define hyperbole. (Leahy laughs) They not only know what the word means but they understand that they can play. What happened with all this ramp-up was we’re here for the Heartbeat bill. It degrades into this conversation about social justice and white privilege and color of the skin of the people who are Senators.
And I made the point on my show, “Look if you don’t like the color of the Senator of senate district 25. Don’t blame me. There was no person of color as if that should matter who ran in the race.” There’s no woman that ran in the race. Now as far as I’m concerned it should only be are you an American or not? Are you a United States citizen able to run for office. That’s all I care about. I look at what the Tennessee constitution says.
It says you have to be 25 years old. A resident of the district and you’re a citizen of the United States. So, the rest ought not to matter. That’s what the voters of my district voted on so don’t sit there in a hearing about a Heartbeat bill and chastised me for being white. It’s ridiculous and irrelevant.
Leahy: You’re point was, and I think it’s something we’ve talked about in this program. Public education, K-12 and colleges of all sort are in the business of creating social justice warriors. That’s the business they’re in.
Roberts: Yes. Well, let me nuance that. Sometimes, and I’ve said this for a while. Let’s say you have 15 academic departments in the University. And 10 of them are very focused on what they’re mission is. We’re trying to crank out good accountants and good architects. And maybe you get a little of the social justice that bleeds over. But generally speaking, the engineering students are focused on how do we build a building that doesn’t fall down.
It’s these other departments that have emerged over the past 25 years on gender studies and all this other social justice stuff. These are the departments that are now pervasively influencing our traditional academic departments that for the most part have steered clear of liberal ideology during their missions. So when we look at a University, it’s not that a University is all bad, it’s that we got these two or three or four departments that are trying to push their mission to say the business department.
So now it’s the business departments mission to engage in social justice. And 20 years ago the business department didn’t have anything to do with that. They told all those professors your whacko. Go back to smoking your dope. (Leahy laughs) We’re going to keep creating CPA’s. We all know who they are. The hippies who still have a ponytail. And he’s the one that comes and testifies before us about recreational marijuana and you find out they’re a professor of something weird at the University.
Leahy: Well, it’s the Bernie Sanders crowd right?
Roberts: And that also is cynicism or sarcasm? We need to define that for the reporters too.
Listen to the full hour:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 am to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
