In a post at Media Matters entitled This Pundit’s 10 Rules For Right-Wing Fight Club Has 11 Rules (Or Maybe 14): Ben Shapiro Needs An Editor, one Hannah Groch-Begley takes a page from the Palace playbook and mercilessly mocks the shit out of a new book by Ben Shapiro. Ben who? Yeah, I got nothin, either, but this gives us some hints to the precise sub-species of conservative we are dealing with here:
Shapiro is Shillman Senior Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, as well as editor-at-large of Breitbart News…Shapiro is also a nationally syndicated columnist, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and the host of The Morning Answer on KRLA 870 in Los Angeles.
Glenn Beck calls Shapiro a “warrior for conservatism, against those who use fear and intimidation to stifle honest debate. I’ve never known him to back down from a fight.” Sarah Palin says that Americans should “consider Ben’s advice about how we must stand up and push back twice as hard against this bullying.” Sean Hannity says to join Ben Shapiro and “fight back!” against liberal bullying. And Michelle Malkin says Shapiro is “infused with the indomitable spirit of his friend and mentor Andrew Breitbart.” Even the liberal Washington Post [LOL. -Ed], in the aftermath of Shapiro’s devastating destruction of Piers Morgan on national television, conceded that Shapiro is a “foe of extraordinary polemical agility.”
With fans like those, I’m surprised he isn’t BFFs with Ann Coulter. Oh wait.
Just look at this smug shitweasel. Jeezus.
Anyway, much virtual ink touts Shapiro’s precociousness and pundit cred, including attending UCLA at the tender young age of 16, becoming a nationally syndicated columnist at 17, and receiving a law degree from Harvard in 2007. To which I can only observe that apparently UCLA and Harvard Law sure can churn out epic dumbasses as well as the rest of ‘em. To wit:
He begins the book by claiming the real reason conservatives lost the 2012 election was that President Obama was “considered the more empathetic of the two candidates. Why? Because Romney was perceived as so darn mean.” His solution is not for conservatives to follow Obama’s lead and appear more empathetic in the future; his solution is to double down on looking mean. But how?
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To be clear, one of Shapiro’s primary rules for debating people with liberal values is to shame them in front of others, because President Obama won 2012 by looking too darn nice.
Next, Shapiro offers his list of “ten rules” for how to debate your leftist opponent, which includes eleven rules, because copy-editing your book before publication is not a rule.
Hahaha. Groch-Begley proceeds to summarize each of Shapiro’s ten eleven rules in much the same vein, and you should go read her whole post. It’s a thing of beauty.
Just remember, people: when we mock a conservative Harvard Law graduate for making hilariously incoherent arguments, or—gawdferbid—miscounting the very “rules” that make up the entire fucking premise (and title!) of his own book, we are being mean elitist inteeleckshuls and therefore we deserve to be bullied and “destroyed.”
To address any contention that perhaps I ought to actually read Mr. Shapiro’s ebook before tossing on the virtual bonfire with a hearty laugh, let me just repeat something I said recently:
As Loyal Readers™ well know, I have spent much of my adult life [dedicated] to the study and careful analysis of conservatism (as well as much of my childhood surviving it). I have pored over endless tracts by William F. Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, George Will, Milton Friedman and Ann Coulter; I have sought enlightenment in the work of Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and S.E. Cupp. I have listened to Rush Limbaugh and watched Fox News for hundreds of hours. I am a regular reader of The Wall Street Journal editorial page as well as various and sundry right-wing publications and blogs. Moreover, I have witnessed along with the rest of humanity the horrific destruction and devastation unleashed upon my country, people all over the world and the planet itself by the conservative policies of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and a long line of predecessors, both within government and without.
And yet! I am still directed to read this or that writing, by so-and-so Big Willie or such-and-such doucheweasel. Listen: I have satisfied myself beyond any reasonable doubt that there is nothing new in any of it. Not one single thing. All of it boils down to: an entirely unwarranted sense of self-regard and entitlement; desperate and fanciful rationalizations for one’s own unearned privilege, resulting in the characteristic detachment from reality, wild mischaracterizations of history, and rejection of hard-earned knowledge; and a blundering, comical narcissism. Or, in more colloquial terms: “I’ve got mine, jack! Fuck you! And especially fuck THEM!”
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In short, it is well worth remembering exactly what it is that conservatives wish to conserve: a status quo that is racist, sexist, violent, amoral, ubercapitalist, hierarchical, heteronormative, patriarchal, and viciously social Darwinist—an imperialist oligarchy in a state of permanent war.
Well done, Ms. Groch-Begley. Carry on.
[h/t PZ]
