• @glimse
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    161 year ago

    I unfortunately know a lot about Ben Shapiro and have heard HOURS of his show due to a coworker a few years ago. He’s a failed screenwriter who saw a niche he could fill in right wing media targeting the youth.

    He’s genuinely conservative and does believe a lot of what he says but when you’ve been doing it for as long as he has, hyperbole catches up to you. You have to raise the stakes. That last thing was bad but this thing is VERY bad!

    You also can’t keep complaining about the same thing if you want people to keep tuning in…so you find smaller and smaller things to rage about. That’s where we’ve been with Shapiro for the past several years.

    But what I’m really trying to get at is that it’s a cop out in his favor to call him stupid. Stupid people can claim ignoranc and get an eye roll. Call him evil, a provocateur, a greedy bastard profiting off misinformation, whatever…because it’s the actions he willfully takes that are the issue, not his level of intelligence.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      101 year ago

      I’ve said for years that offhandly claiming someone is stupid trivializes the damage certain people can do.

      It is easy to call someone stupid and write them off, because they’re stupid. It comes with the unspoken rule that you think they’re stupid and not worth thinking about.

      Which is exactly what someone like Shapiro wants. The less you think it’s important to counter his claims, the more damage he does. You can apply this to most conservatives.

      • @glimse
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        31 year ago

        Absolutely. It’s like giving them an excuse.