Ben Shapiro
| One of the |
| And a dirty dozen more |
“”If you pay tuition, you're sponsoring the militant homosexual agenda. If you pay taxes, you're sponsoring the militant homosexual agenda. If your child majors in English, you're sponsoring the militant homosexual agenda. Tell Billy to major in math.
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| —Ben Shapiro[1] |
“”The immature rantings of Shapiro as a college student weren't something he grew out of. Instead, his dumbest beliefs were reinforced by a right-wing culture that nurtured every nutty idea he had, and pressured him never to stray from a far right ideology. As a result, Ben Shapiro has become a professional idiot.
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| —Some moonbat no doubt[2] |
Ben Shapiro isn't terribly sane is known for being one of the more visible radical right-wingers in the wingnut clogosphere. He has written for Townhall.com and WND (which should tell you something right off the bat), but his real claim to fame was his close association with Andrew Breitbart, to the point where he became the primary editor for Breitbart News.
Shapiro is most infamous for being a conspiracy nut, who is well-known for finding leftist propaganda virtually everywhere. He is also the founder of TruthRevolt, a conservative media watchdog group who openly state that their mission is to "unmask leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding bases."
Shapiro got in hot water when he pushed the "Friends of Hamas" manufactroversy, but that's really only the tip of the iceberg that is his madness.[3]
He has become even more popular among wingnuts for taking the "pro-gun" side in a debate with noted sleazeball Piers Morgan.
One should be hesitant to read Shapiro, because whereas the ramblings of other radical right-wingers or extremists in the clogosphere can be mildly amusing and/or entertaining Shapiro's sheer smugness pretty much sucks out any potential "fun" that could be had with his articles.
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[edit] Nuttery
Shapiro has this odd habit of claiming lefties and liberals are the real meanies while he himself constantly engages in ad hominem attacks against anyone who is even perceived to be left-wing. For instance he labels a professor's wife "brainless" when she cried while talking about how much she treasures the Constitution, and the same professor later accused Shapiro of outright lying about aspects of the fairly meaningless event and in the same book Shapiro outright calls the social views of liberal professors "evil".[4]
Basically his entire schtick is to whine about how persecuted conservatives are in places like Hollywood and universities, where they work to indoctrinate the public with leftism. The Christian Science Monitor summarized his book Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth thusly, "Shapiro makes sweeping—and many would say absurd—charges that they promote atheism, absolute sexual freedom (including pedophilia and statutory rape, which are crimes), and rampant environmentalism." He has befriended fellow wingnut David Horowitz in his quest to reveal leftist plots.
He is a believer in some sort of homosexual recruitment conspiracy taking place at college. In full irony mode he gets upset whenever someone accuses the right-wing of homophobia.
Shapiro has also written about birtherism and while trying to avoid being an out and out birther, his writings are extremely sympathetic to it.[5] He believes that it is perfectly logical for someone to believe someone as "un-American" as Obama was born overseas, but he concludes that it's more likely that Obama was indoctrinated with Marxism while in an American school.
In 2013, he published a book Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Is Silencing America, basically a tone argument stretched over 300 pages. Among assertions in the book that have little to no basis in reality include a claim that a federal judge "was just using the power of his gavel to justify his sex life" in ruling against California Proposition 8.[6]
[edit] Science
Shapiro is a pretty vehement global warming denier, writing a weird article that "mocked" liberals who believe in global warming and then violated Gore's Law.[7] He went even crazier in another article that basically compared belief in global warming to a religion, with Al Gore as the "Prophet".[8]
He is also (unsurprisingly) a DDT denier, pushing the urban myth that Rachel Carson caused less DDT to be produced which led to millions dying of malaria.[9]
[edit] Random weirdness
In 2003 he wrote that Israel should force the Palestinian population out of the West Bank, writing that "if Germans, who had a centuries-old connection to the newly created Polish territory, could be expelled, then surely Palestinians, whose claim to Judea, Samaria and Gaza is dubious at best, can be expelled." He backed away from this opinion in 2013.
According to Shapiro, Matthew Shepard wasn't killed because he was gay, but instead because he was involved in drugs, and insistence that he was killed because he was gay is simply a "leftist myth".[10]
Infamously, he has cited Sesame Street as an example of liberal propaganda.[11]
Shapiro also asserted that Mitt Romney would win the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election, feeling so confident in his victory that he wrote "The ball is in Mitt Romney's court. And the American people know it."[12] He was incorrect.
[edit] See also
- Katie Pavlich: His female counterpart.
- Wingnut welfare
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ The full article is even more bizarre
- ↑ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/29/1205635/-Ben-Shapiro-s-Homophobia
- ↑ http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/02/07/Hagel-Friends-of-Hamas-WH
- ↑ http://dailybruin.com/2004/05/11/shattered-shapiro-author-of-fl/
- ↑ http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/benjamin-shapiro/about-the-birth-certificate/
- ↑ Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Is Silencing America.
- ↑ Dunning-Kruger in full effect
- ↑ http://www.creators.com/opinion/ben-shapiro/the-left-s-global-warming-solution-no-more-children.html
- ↑ Just remember, mosquitoes don't grow an immunity to overused pesticides
- ↑ http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2013/09/19/matthew-shepard-trayvon-martin-and-the-power-of-leftist-myth-n1704035/page/full
- ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W1NURCkQHM
- ↑ Why Mitt Romney Will Win