Conservatives in Caves

 

This can't possibly be real, can it? It's like David Lynch hacked Shapiro's email account. pic.twitter.com/bXxnGjIbwe

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) December 24, 2021

Hey, gang,

You're familiar with me as the guy on speedballs and helium who can rant on the day's Murdoch talking point for eight minutes without taking a breath, displaying astonishing erudition and common sense as I disembowel the liberal line, and I know how much you treasure that experience, because you're an essential part of what has made my enterprise and my self the incredible successes we are today. And I am one hundred percent that guy, but I'm so much more. For example, I like to just hang out shooting the shit with my Intellectual Dark Buds in the den. In my new series, Conservatives in Caves Having Coffee, we'll be setting up the camera in my basement and you'll get to be a fly on the wallpaper as I share some of my most intimate thoughts with friends like Dr. Jordan Peterson in his suit and sweater vest. 

Instead of the harsh light and monochrome background for my talking head, we'll have a softer and more relaxed set, though with masculine furnishings like the classic wire wheel coffee table, and I'll be in lighter makeup. Jordan doesn't drink coffee, but maybe I can talk him into a cup of bone broth, and even if he's not drinking anything, it'll be a thrill for you to hear us chat about the masculinity crisis and stuff like that. Stresses of modern marriage. How to raise your kids with the moral backbone they'll need to survive the coming radical left gay trans socialist takeover of our country.

And speaking of child-rearing, you'll be crazy about Badminton? Goodminton!, my new show where I lead my kids and their friends in backyard net games like badminton and volleyball, filmed in natural outdoor light, and you'll get to see me in shorts and sneakers engaging with some of the most precious people in my life. You'll get a sense of what it would be like to have me as a fun but firm father, enforcing the rules but leaving time for hearty laughter. And every once in a while I'll throw a stick at the camera and you can pretend you're the dog.

And then for evenings we'll be streaming My Date With Ben, a series where I go out with my wife, Dr. Shapiro, for some wholesome entertainment. You'll be sharing our table at the tango club as we nurse our glasses of Malbec and joining us on the dance floor trying out some fancy moves, or giggling with us at the bowling alley as I score strike after strike. Or some nights simply behind our heads, perhaps, when we're on the couch relaxing with some Netflix. You'll be wondering if you could make me as happy as Dr. Shapiro does, holding hands and enjoying some fresh-popped popcorn, repeating our favorite lines from whatever the film happens to be. I love her a lot, obviously, but I do love you too. Facts may not care about your feelings, but I do, and I always will.

Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.

For the Record: Make it so, Democratic senators!

 Couldn't help diving back into the economics a bit, because Shapiro thinks he DEVASTATED my girl Senator Warren:

1. Warren is not particularly a proponent of MMT, though she's understood the point that deficit panic is stupid. She insists that "debt matters" https://t.co/cuMZRN0Xf8 pic.twitter.com/bfON5SYGyt

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 25, 2021

Nevertheless after five years in which we've added something like $10 trillion to the national debt, first because of Trump's insanely wasteful tax cuts, then the emergency response to the COVID crisis, it's time to start adding more tax back into the mix https://t.co/u5NFk4ba1c

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 25, 2021

You really need to learn something about a subject before you start popping off on it. I realize you get paid by the tweet and don't have much time to prepare.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 25, 2021

And then I got annoyed by the very distinguished historian Timothy Snyder, retailing a silly formula in place of an argument:

For the Record: Miscellany

 

Called a "Tomahawk" because it can be used as a weapon. No longer on the menu at Trump's BLT Prime in Washington, where the largest steak is now the 36-ounce Porterhouse at $102 and advertised as shareable.

Can't understand why this nutty algorithm keeps delivering your coke-addled video rants to my TL. Most incompetent censorship I've ever seen. pic.twitter.com/d3xIwQf6JK

— Screechy Ill-Speak (@Yastreblyansky) February 20, 2021

Then there was the Times gangbang salute on the passing of Rush Limbaugh, inspiring double-edged idiocy from Frank Bruni and Ben Shapiro:

Literary Corner: Theater of the Intellectual Dark Web

Trying to imagine what kind of universe Ben Shapiro lives in... 

The Short Soprano

by Ben Shapiro, J.D.

SCENE: An American dining room in a middle-class American home, with American furniture, four easy chairs around a coffee table in the foreground, and in back a dining table seating eight and set for four, with a large flower arrangement as centerpiece, an American credenza holding American china and cutlery left, with a cuckoo clock above on the wall. and an American home bar unit right, where Mr. Smith, an American accountant in comfortable but elegant cardigan and chinos, is mixing a cocktail as his wife, Dr. Smith, an American musicologist, enters from the living room, wearing a caftan, with their American dinner guests, Mr. and Dr. Shapiro, he in suit and tie and she in white lab coat, with a stethoscope around her neck.

DR. SMITH: Darling, here are our dinner guests, Mr. and Dr. Shapiro! Say hello!

MR. SMITH: How splendid to meet you! How is the weather, Mr. Shapiro?

MR. SHAPIRO: The weather exists by means of complex and chaotic systems in the atmosphere and the ocean, not to mention the gravitational effects exerted by the Moon and the Sun. 

DR. SHAPIRO: I am so pleased to meet you, Mr. Smith. I am Dr. Shapiro, a specialist in women and behavioral health, and this is my husband, Mr. Shapiro, a dark intellectual.

For the Record: Trump's Legacy

Attorney General Yates? Just sayin. Photo by Heratch Ekmekjian/NYTimes.

Seriously, I'd hope it would be constitutional and legislative changes to prevent something like this from happening again: force presidents to financial transparency instead of expecting them to be "gentlemen" about it, guarantee DOJ independence, protect civilian and...

— Yas Just a Lightweight (@Yastreblyansky) December 3, 2020

military employees from retaliation when they reject illegal orders or blow whistle, provide real legal teeth to prevent presidents from profiting from office.....

But I'm afraid it's not going to happen.

— Yas Just a Lightweight (@Yastreblyansky) December 3, 2020

The No Trumps Bridge Act of 2023. That's the kind of legacy I'd like to see.

And in response to an irritating "let us look forward" column by Paul Brandus:

For the Record: Song of Ben Shapiro

 

Wheee! 445 new infections per million in the US and headed for the sky, while France (which reached peak at 840 on Monday) is down to 340 (unfortunately not yet on the map). World in Data.

For heaven's sake people, it's not just his "little feelings". He's got criminal liability and no money. He wants a deal. https://t.co/U5u2DZlMnN

— Yas We Can #BidenHarris2020 (@Yastreblyansky) November 11, 2020

And here's Ben:

Wrongthink

Siri, show me a stupid person's idea of a smart person.

It's the Intellectual Dark Singularity! Where on the same strange Tuesday, Andrew Sullivan gets the sack from New York Magazine

The underlying reasons for the split are pretty self-evident, and I’ll be discussing the broader questions involved in my last column this Friday.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) July 14, 2020

the young throwback artist Bari Weiss, representing the liberalism of the good old days of Woodrow Wilson and Alan Dershowitz, takes her departure from the New York Times editorial board, to an extremely gloomy response from National Review's Rich Lowry

They warned Trump would bring fascism to America even as they implemented their own exquisite system of thought control https://t.co/D6HITsn7bp

— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) July 14, 2020

and Squeaky Ben Shapiro the Straw Man King has emeritated hinself from the helm of the alleged publication he's been associated with, "The Daily Wire" (I have to admit while I haven't seen any proof it exists, I haven't looked very hard)

Literary Corner: Shapiro

Why I'm Not Worried About Global Warming

by Ben Shapiro

so let's say
let's say
for the sake of argument
that all of the water levels
around the world rise
let's say
by five feet
over the next hundred years
say ten feet
by the next hundred years
and put all the low-lying areas
on the coast under water
which let's say all that happens

you think the people aren't
just going to sell their homes
and move?

"Whaddaya mean, trouble finding a buyer? What about all the subscribers to my newsletter?" Image via.

For the Record: Why not compare it to the Holocaust?

"Binary" is so grating. What about something softer, like "Sophie's"? https://t.co/YlbET3j9pk

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) April 9, 2019

I don't see why not, Ben. He wouldn't be the first to notice a family resemblance https://t.co/H2fsafQjgG

— Oranges of Species (@Yastreblyansky) April 9, 2019

https://t.co/aYKA0QI2A7

— Oranges of Species (@Yastreblyansky) April 9, 2019

Chait's in pretty good company on this. What kind of company are you in, Ben? https://t.co/sUsQ8NSrYA

— Oranges of Species (@Yastreblyansky) April 9, 2019

For the Record: D'Souza as academic historian, Shapiro as historical hallucinogen

I know everybody's seen this picture, but I can't get over it: the evil, violent criminals invading our country, as Trump sees them, fleeing from tear gas. Photo by Kim Kyung-hoon/Reuters, via NBC.

One of the more fun D'Souza owns, short and sweet:

Woodward clearly never read more than 10 pages of Illiberal Education. He endorsed it on purely ideological grounds, and as John Hope Franklin said it was reprehensible. When Eugene Genovese turned right he also crossed the line from history to propaganda https://t.co/kccrD38bXR

— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) November 26, 2018

And what George Fredrickson said about you? That he hasn't read your book but probably disagrees with one of the points. https://t.co/1NdLy9ReVp Kindly explain how that constitutes praise. pic.twitter.com/0tDCtNSDgj

— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) November 26, 2018

Finally, nobody criticizes you for not being an academic historian, but for doing terrible, shoddy, ideologically distorted, historically illiterate work and being completely unaware of the rules academic and gifted amateur historians follow.

— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) November 26, 2018

And below the fold, an exhausting encounter with a troll and with reference to this:

How did you get Trump?

Got me a Trump
Just about yea big
With a stomach bump
And a tangerine wig

And when I get my Trump
To the garbage dump
Gonna kick that pig
In the tangerine rump

For the Record: Can Korean-Americans be Racists?

Like did somebody say there was anything wrong with being an underground goblin?  Via Monsters Vault.

I feel like I warned everybody about Kevin Williamson, that when the Atlantic hired him and then fired him over his ridiculously ghoulish tweets demanding capital punishment for women who undergo abortions—by hanging if I remember it right—the world would have been better off focusing on what a terrible writer he was, and how thoroughly dishonest, instead of pressing him like a mob of Jake Tappers to confess that he really wanted mass executions, which of course he didn't, he's much too clubbable for that—he just wanted to make people's flesh creep, like the fat boy in Pickwick Papers, only with self-righteousness instead of honest fear, and without any sense that his stupid and careless words were encouraging actual real-world abortion haters to kill, as they have killed before—

But no, everybody wanted to make it about the tweets, and now the world has constructed its equal and opposite reaction in the form of The New York Times hiring a gifted young tech writer, Sarah Jeong, to serve on its editorial board, and a massive rightwing butthurt protest because she once emitted some mean tweets, displaying an alarming lack of compassion for white people, because that's one of the big issues of the day. For example, in response to some especially obnoxious "can we hear both sides?" tweet from Andrew Sullivan in 2014, she'd responded,

Comically enough, this was the one Andrew Sullivan himself would personally call out four years later, as especially hurtful, completely unaware that it had been composed as a direct parody of his own most offensively just-saying "can't we at least consider the possibility that black people are genetically predisposed to sit around gossiping in the low-stress environment of the African savannah?" manner.

Everything's going to be fine for Sarah Jeong, the Times has backed her up appropriately, but I really can't pass over the implication around the intertubes that it's somehow impossible for Asian women to suffer discrimination:

For the Record: Fart Act and Other Disasters

Trump had to double down, of course, and say it was done on purpose, a message to the Fake Media, though he obviously couldn't say clearly what the message was ("Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares"), or explain why her communications director had said there was no message and her stylist was completely unfamiliar with the jacket. He's really trying to convince us that he was in control of whatever it was. I believe Trump would rather be accused of almost anything, no matter how gross, than admit that a woman got out ahead of him. 

Trump is about to blow up the global trading regime with an unsettling FART Act. https://t.co/tgDZxQSE2V

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 1, 2018

When I was first working in Singapore, the National University moved from the ancient hill of Bukit Timah to a new campus in the south of the island, everything very shiny and new, and in the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences every office door was equipped with a bright brass plaque displaying the room number, ASS 1, ASS 2, etc. As a representative American, I quietly let the Dean know he had a problem, and the faulty acronym was replaced with something else, with Singaporean efficiency, basically overnight, before we moved in.

This kind of thing can happen in a densely multilingual society, where people up and down the hierarchy share enough languages to give and receive orders but not necessarily the ones they need to get the job done. In my later career as a magazine editor I found that the art direction staff were always graduates of Chinese-language schools, while the editorial were inevitably from English-language ones, and crucial miscommunications could take place, though none quite that funny.

For the Record: Shapiro Goes Godwin

After the 1903 pogrom in Kishinev, state-sponsored gang violence that convinced my grandfather to  come to North America. Nobody in America was worried he might be a gang member, though they may well have worried he could be a Communist. In fact he was too cynical for that.

So as you know the Mare Salvatrucha or MS-13 gang, which arose among criminals of Central Americn origin in southern California prisons in the 1980s, and expanded to Guatemala and Honduras and El Salvador when the Reagan administration started deporting them to their homelands, is a big issue in the mind of the president, who seems to believe all Central American immigrants (who are at this point and for a couple of years now mostly fleeing from gangs of the MS-13 type at home) belong to the thing, as his dad no doubt believed all Italian immigrants were members of the dread Sicilian Mob (as some of them, especially the ones the Trumps worked with in the real estate business, unquestionably were), and he was saying, "They're not people, they're animals!"

When all of our great-great-grandparents came to America they weren’t “animals,” and these people aren’t either.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 16, 2018

My great-great-grandparents weren’t members of a violent and brutal gang responsible for widespread drug trafficking. Were yours? https://t.co/K4mn5WUT5C

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 17, 2018

How do you know, Ben? Maybe your parents didn't tell you great-great-grandpapa was a horse thief back home in Bessarabia. My zeydi was a draft dodger and a socialist and an atheist who made bubbi cry every Passover by singing obscene parodies of the sacred songs, and she was actually illiterate, in three different languages. I don't know any MS-13 members, but I'll bet most of them don't do the gross things you're worried about.

Los Angeles prisons hadn't created MS-13 when Hitler was alive, but I don't think he'd have liked them much. He was pretty big on law and order, and more importantly they aren't Aryans.

— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) May 18, 2018

And as you know Hitler was an admirer of the 1925 US immigration law, which ended the days of almost open borders (under which your ancestors and mine entered) and instituted quota restrictions. https://t.co/2rKQPVBnFK pic.twitter.com/ThTvz2Ekb8

— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) May 18, 2018

For the Record: These Goulish Things Remind Me of You

Deplorable https://t.co/EMGX6xPzva

An early look at Tuesday's front... pic.twitter.com/ZAK1Vk5ACW

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) May 15, 2018

This headline is disgusting in every conceivable way https://t.co/sgzh0k7uYI

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 15, 2018

So the headline is disgusting, but the fact that people were murdered is completely fine? Was that your take away from this whole thing Ben?

— Mohanad Elshieky (@MohanadElshieky) May 15, 2018

Daily News front page doesn't blame her for it. What's ghoulish is having such a nice party amid the carnage.

— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) May 15, 2018

For the Record: Ben Shapiro's Working Class

I didn't watch Roseanne back when she was still alive, so to speak, s so I can't imagine why I'd be watching her now, but I've still managed to acquire enough opinions to take issue with young Ben Shapiro, who's pissed off because Roseanne and Dan voted for Trump but are not in his opinion authentic Trump voters, who are all, in his view, identical:

The whole premise of "Roseanne" is that this pro-abortion, pro-LGBT woman who is happy to watch her grandson wear girls' clothing voted Trump -- because she's blue collar. That isn't an accurate depiction of Trump voters. (/3)

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 28, 2018

I started out trollishly agreeing with him:

You're right, it would have been better if Dan was more clearly self-employed and somewhat better off, but the age and lack of education fit the profile very well. I'm pretty sure sexual puritanism wasn't a factor either way.

— Smash-Mouth Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) March 29, 2018

Gun and Done

Drawing by Rob Tornoe, 2015.

Can the Left let the families grieve for even 24 hours before they push their anti-gun and anti-gunowner agenda? My goodness. This isn't about a gun it's about another lunatic. #FloridaShooting

— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) February 15, 2018

I don't see how anything I say is going to interfere with the grieving of anybody's family—I doubt any of the Broward County families whose children, brothers and sisters, and friends and teachers were murdered yesterday are hanging on Twitter waiting to see what Tomi Lahren or I have to say about it. If they are and they'd like us to stop, they're welcome to let me know, but that's not the impression I'm getting from Steph, or Glenn Greenwald's niece, who seem to need to talk, right now:

Never in a million years would I think that I had to run over dead bodies in the same hallway I once walked happily with my friends. Never in a million years would I think I had to mentally prepare myself for the worst because the gunshots were getting louder and closer. Never.

— Steph (@ohstephany_) February 15, 2018

My niece goes to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where the shooting occurred. She wasn't there at the time, but just heard from my brother many horror stories of parents still without information about their kids, others who texted as their kids hid in closets.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 14, 2018

Ben Shapiro at the Direly Wail claims that

For the Record: Windy Olympics

Mr. Vice President and Mrs. Pence in their matching jackets in Pyeongchang, painfully aware that the baleful eyes of Madam Kim Yo-jong may be on them. Screenshot via Fox.

It's a good thing that the South Korean and North Korean athletes are competing together, as a single country in a slightly half-assed way, and an even better thing that the South Korean president Moon Jae-in is contemplating a meeting with mad North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. To say that is not to say that Kim Jong-un is a good person, and I'm getting a little cheesed with rightwingers suggesting that it is (though I'd agree with them that CNN's crush on the dictator's sister Kim Yo-jong is, ah, unnecessary):

1. Since people are being willfully obtuse in interpreting this tweet, I'm going to delete and spell out, slowly, why North Korean charm offensive is surprisingly successful. pic.twitter.com/io7hN1PuXw

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) February 11, 2018

To me, it is the South Koreans who are especially winning this initiative, and last night I tacked on a couple of additional details to Jeet Heer's thread:

This gives the political maneuvers a transcendent emotional value for the public. It's not just maneuvering. US always fails to understand this, but this time much worse than usual.

— Yas Over Elbow (@Yastreblyansky) February 11, 2018

And then spent the rest of the evening happily watching non-Korean skaters, and in the morning there was sour-assed Ben Shapiro, still whining, and his fans:

Wait, a socialist?

With Yolanda and Martin Luther III on the Magic Skyway ride at the New York World's Fair in 1964. Via ABC News.

So Sarah Palin was astonished to hear CNN spreading rumors that Dr. King was some kind of non-Republican:

CNN however just set a new low bar for things to be said about the influential figure.

In a tweet, the media outlet said, “He’s an environmental hero. He was a socialist before it was cool. He never let a political disagreement turn nasty.”

Wait, a socialist?...

Appears CNN finally figured out that Martin Luther King Jr. was actually a registered Republican so in their desperation to IGNORE that inconvenient tidbit they decided to make him a socialist hero.

I sent her a note, but she hasn't responded.

KIng's attraction to socialism is very well known. https://t.co/NmdIGEIpvO pic.twitter.com/L5caArjLIH

— Yask Not What Your Country Can Do For You (@Yastreblyansky) January 16, 2018

He wasn't "actually a registered Republican" (or Democrat) either, as you might imagine, and took considerable care, as befits a professional religious leader, to remain detached from partisan politics, though he wasn't quite able to do that in 1964:

For the Record: The Week in Shapiro

American Tory. Russell Kirk with his ancestral home, Piety Hill, in the background. He would be startled to learn that Ben Shapiro thinks his views are anti-conservative. Via The Imaginative Conservative.

This was funny, from an outraged Ben Shapiro who knows more about conservatism than his elders:

This, from @davidfrum, is nonsensical. It reduces philosophy and ideology to nothingness. It's a thoroughly anti-conservative sentiment, actually. pic.twitter.com/Ipwe6wc6As

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 20, 2017

Uh, no, with all due disrespect to old Axis of Evil David Frum:

Actually no, it's pretty much Russell Kirk. Frum's read quite a bit more than you have, I expect. pic.twitter.com/SaPy1Tt6yZ

— Yulstreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) December 20, 2017