News brings word that the pint sized pundit, Ben Shapiro, is going to Berkeley to give another speech. Judging by his twitter activity, he is hoping it will attract Antifa and be shut down by the city. It is hard to know exactly. He could also be playing it the other way, hoping the event goes off without a problem. That way, he can blame the growing army to his right for the recent crackdown of speech by our masters. Like all of the boys and girls who color inside the lines, Shapiro needs to believe safety is a virtue.
Either way, this stunt is just that, a stunt to draw attention to himself, as well as an effort to re-establish his brand of Progressive punditry, as the extreme edge of acceptable. Calling Shapiro a Progressive may strike some people as weird, but that is the truth of it. He embraces all of the blank slate arguments of the Left. He takes, as a given, that the Left’s moral framework is the default for society. You see that in his twitter rants about the alt-right. Shapiro is a man of the Left, just the lagging edge of it.
Shapiro is also a notorious pen for hire, a guy who will say anything if you write a big enough check. He used to say nice things about Trump and the issues that Trump is now championing. Then the Wilks brothers hired him to be an anti-Trump loon, so he went full-on NeverTrump last year. Now that there is money to be made on the Trump train, Shapiro and all the other faux right-wing grifters have gotten on-board with Trump. One gets the sense that if Antifa writes him a check, he could be persuaded to support communism.
Of course, as that Charles Johnson piece reminds us, Shapiro was in on the Michelle Fields hoax a year ago. For those who have forgotten, she claimed to have been assaulted by a Trump campaign staffer at an event. Shapiro and several other fake conservatives demanded Trump quit the campaign over it. Shapiro even quit Breitbart over it, coincidentally just when the Wilks brothers check cleared. Video later revealed that the staffer in question merely brushed past Fields and she had been lying.
That is the thing about our chattering classes. They are never called to answer for their perfidy. Fields still gets on TV as a pundit, despite having been exposed as something of a sociopath. Shapiro was never pressed to explain his role in that affair. National Review is happy to give him a platform, as no doubt the Wilks brothers are stroking checks to them too. There’s little doubt that Sloppy Williamson was paid to write those insane anti-Trump columns last year. Even by his standards, they were a cornucopia of crack-pottery.
Since Charlottesville, Shapiro has been taking every opportunity to condemn the alt-right and you see that in the linked twitter rant. The game he is playing is the moral equivalence strategy. He keeps equating the alt-right with Antifa, comparing what you do not see, with what you do see. People hear about the alt-right, but they see black clad lunatics toppling over statues and smashing windows in street riots. Chad and Stacey out in the suburbs can be forgiven for confusing the two and condemning both.
That is the role guys like Shapiro play for the Left. These so-called conservatives happily define the boundaries between what is and what is not acceptable on the Right. He and his fellow pens-for-hire are the palace guard, defining the outer boundary of the political Right. It is why they are more worked up over the alt-right than the violent left-wing mobs of Antifa. The former is a real threat to their position, while the latter is good for selling books no one will read and building their media brand.
The other angle Shapiro is working is the flattery fraud. He invests a lot of time and effort in presenting himself as the thinking man’s right-winger. That in itself reveals something about him. His appeal is that smart normies can feel like intellectuals because they listen to Ben Shapiro. The fact that he can say he supports free speech and in the same thread condemn the speech of everyone to his Right reveals him to be a pseudo-intellectual moral nullity. He is an obsequious rumpswab, who will say anything for a dollar.
It is just another example of the corruption of the Official Right™. They may as well be actors, hired by the Left to play a role in the Prog political drama. They will never bite the hand that feeds them. It is why they are falling all over themselves to signal to the Left that they are perfectly OK with cracking down on dissident speech. It is not about ideology. It is about the paycheck. If the boundary of the Right gets pushed out, guys like Shapiro are no longer useful. It is why their guns are always pointed at us, rather than the Left.
It’s real easy to boil this down. Every “NeverTrumper” was willing to see Hillary Clinton become President of the United States.
Therefore, none of them can be trusted – ever again. Some things you can’t come back from.
Shapiro was on Rogan’s podcast – usually a harmless, fun place. I got to 40 minutes in and then BS started his anti Trump stuff out of nowhere. It sounded fake, now I know why. I bailed at 45 min.
Chuck Krapphammer…I’m stealing that one! Is he still on Fox News? I don’t watch much teevee these days.
Benji is/has been always full of excrement. He acts all tough, but when push comes to shove, he folds like a cheap tent. He was real tough with his Iraq war talk, yet never put his precious little rear-end on the line to go do the dirty work. Poser. He needs a big cup of STFU, plus his face just looks so punchable.
Just like fatboy Williamson, he’s a poser. Talks tough, but that’s about it. I am surprised anyone still reads Cuckservative Review. I still get their begathon mailers, which go directly into the circular file.
At one level, Shapiro could be the degenerate opportunist that he appears to be, which is about as bad as it gets. Alternately, he could be real 5th Columnist like Kessler, in which case he would at least preserve some integrity as a professional propagandist. But then there are also the naive idiots who allow themselves to be duped by his nonsense, and thereby elevate stupidity as a cultural norm. God help us.
Just curious. I subscribe to the Daily Wire to listen to Andrew Klavan. I have never listened to Shapiro; I just know him as the other guy at that site. What am I supposed to think of Klavan? I want the official view here.
I’m sure Klavan would disagree with me on a great many things, but he has always struck me as a guy who has his own opinions. That’s the thing. I don’t like phonies, I can respect someone with whom I strongly disagree, just as long as their opinions are their own and they are willing to examine them.
Shapiro just says what he is paid to say.
Correct.
Shapiro is out to sell copy, not ideology. There is no money in agreeing with or writing to an audience like us. For now, there is more copy to be sold by goading and trolling us and that is what your boy is gonna do along with every other standard leftwing turd brain in the democrat/media complex. That’s the cynical version and I think there is truth to it.
The other thing I am seeing here, Z, is that as we all know the liberal left has effectively gone insane. The democrat party is only a fit home for mentally and sexually defective nutters, and sub-intellect ethnics and vibrants. Anyone with a triple digit IQ is being run out on a rail and they have to go somewhere – so you see guys like Shapiro and Jonah Goldburg moving into the right – and smuggling their stupidity in with them.
I see a future political landscape for the USA similar to Canada’s: you’ll have the conservative party for rational adults that pay the bills and keep the country rolling, you’ll have the liberal party for kids that haven’t grown up yet, and still have problems equating actions and consequences – and you’ll have an ultra-left party for the fat ugly feminists, the queers, the pedos and the vibrant nut jobs. In Canada they are called the NDP (New Democrat Party). The problem with that is that you get the liberals and conservatives in a bigging war with the howler monkeys who will whore themselves out to whoever pays out the best – which is usually the liberals because they have everybody’s money.
I refuse to take sides in any mainstream politics or bullchit. I don’t twatter, I don’t Fecesbook, or Youtube or any of that shit. My politics and trust rides on the gun in my holster and with the guys on this blog and others like it.
It’s seriously time for all of us to grow up and get some integrity and demand it of others.
Zman, I love your articles, but I have to take a teensy weensy exception to this one. I was unfamiliar with the details of the Michelle Fields incident, so I went online to educate myself and find as much original source evidence as needed to make up my own mind. A hoax, absolutely, as the story was presented. But you claim the staffer merely “brushed past” her. The staffer clearly grabbed her by the arm, perhaps to pass her or perhaps he thought she was getting too close to the candidate. His actions were not violent and were likely justified, but just “brushing past her” …. Not quite.
Here’s a video & commentary from Paul Joseph Watson showing the entire affair, which shows Lewandowski grabbing Fields by the sweater, near her upper arm. This would not result in bruises on her forearm, nor any of the violence that she & others claimed; so I must agree, it was more than just brushing past. It was still a massive hoax and an attempt to destroy Donald Trump’s candidacy, so the larger point remains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkLrr9Ydl9g
Yes, I agree. The thrust of the article and the major points are valid. But our side can not afford to be casual about the facts, even the minor facts. The other side will jump on any error, no matter how insignificant, and then claim they have discredited the article. They will claim that Zman lied about the Fields incident and therefore the rest of the article can be ignored. You know that is how it works.
And as for why Pelosi disavowed the Anti Fascisty, in line with what an earlier commenter said, this could be referred to as “Exemplary Injustice”. Damore shows you can get fired for what you say in a company, Daily Stormer and Stormfront show you can lose your public voice for disagree with the big company’s views of what’s acceptable, and Charlottesville (and previous attacks on rightist meetings) show the violence that awaits you for exercising your alleged right of free assembly. Oh, and don’t forget the cancellation of public speaking engagements by BadThinkers because of the threat of violence from unhappy leftists.
The point has now been amply made. You disagree with Leftist orthodoxy at your own peril. It’s now no longer necessary to belabor the point (and no doubt some mob of enthusiastic amateur hall monitors will show up without the Hungarian Sauron have spread his largesse among the Anti-Fascists).
Oh, and for what it’s worth, Apple and Google have now magnanimously offered to fill in for the failings of the democratic process to implement the Glorious Future.
Turns out Orwell was wrong. The future won’t be a boot permanently holding your face to the ground. Rather, it will be a bitten Apple (for original sin?) and a cute little Diversity Google Doodle patiently waiting to stir up a mob against you and to “unperson” you if you fail to toe the Party Line. You have been warned!
The obvious answer to the question as to why the Left doesn’t disown their “fringe” elements while the Old-Fashioned Right constantly “shoots to the right” is that the Leftists are all in fundamental agreement as to premises and goals and differ only over tactics, but the Old Right basically agrees with the Left and disagrees with the “New Right.” In effect, the Old Right is merely the Rightist Left and the hate the New (and real) Right.
Perhaps it would be better to term the Old Right the “Weak Left”. Gives a better sense of what they really are.
This is pretty believable.
Maybe we should call them the “Vichy Right”.
This made me laugh. I don’t really disagree, but as a friendly observation, I’d say that the problem with the phrase “Vichy Right” is that it suggests that they really are part of the right. My point was that these commentators are just a watered-down version of the Left. Don’t give them the courtesy of suggesting that they are actually rightist in any meaningful sense of the work.
The thing about the Vichy French, they peacocked around like they really represented the French, but they were just rumpswabs for the Germans, at the end of the day. Not only that, but when things went south for the Krauts, the Vichy then acted like they should be thanked for doing the good work of ridding France of those guys. I can’t imagine a better analogy to our GOPe, who sorta, wanta be different than the Dems, but can’t get their heads far enough out of the Uniparty pork barrel feeding trough to do anything about it.
And heck, since Nazis are the flavor of the week, why not a Nazi analogy, and one that the Left couldn’t find on a map.
While I am banging my highchair table here, call those GOPe people “collaborationists”. It has a very specific meaning that perfectly fits them.
Okay, I surrender!
I love the term rumpswab.
I guess he doesn’t count as an Alt-Jew, just the other kind.
Join my new movement: the galt-right! I’m the only member right now, but you can join by forming your own chapter, making up your own rules, ideological stance, hell, whatever you like! We (myself and my b-side) are exiles from ALL movements, and by God-and-or-the Tao, we plan to keep it that way!
Dutch shrugs.
That makes two of us.
nice Rand homage, Atlas
Ah yes, Little Benny, he’s been like that since his larval stage: http://i.imgur.com/2QDn5Zr.jpg
I know you like to disparage your podcast voice Zman, but it can be worse… Much worse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdiX3Nq6ECM (it also demonstrates Little Benny’s so-called ”intellect”)
Little Benny’s sliminess has a long and ugly history:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/search?q=ben+shapiro
Shapiro never really stood out for me; he always seemed to spout the exact same ideas every other member of Conservative, Inc. while looking like the local junior high class president. In fact, the only thing I even remember about the Jewish Tucker Carlson (pre-Trump) was that time he almost got prison raped by a hulking tranny on TV (good times).
There’s a good reason I leave my ad-blocker enabled for this site. I don’t want to contribute any money.
too bad you don’t leave you mouth blocker enabled. say, you wouldn’t be a sock puppet for LabiaMike, would you?
There aren’t any ads. Take a look at your ad blocker. I hope you aren’t too disappointed.
Yep if he’s getting ads on this site that means his browser is compromised. Sounds like a proxy.
“His appeal is that smart normies can feel like intellectuals because they listen to Ben Shapiro.”
This is how I feel when my in-laws start telling me about things they heard on NPR. I just sort of nod, and smile, and move on. We were in FL for a family holiday last month, and went to Sea World, and had a great time with our kids. You coulda heard a pin drop when they found out we went there, lol. They had seen an NPR interview about that “Blackfish” agitprop, and just assumed because it was on NPR that it was wholly true. Oh, the lecture I got from my brother in law. So, I just replied, “I never saw it. We had a great time, especially the orca show. It’s great to see those whales do a lot of good for the broader species.” hahaha
When my wife told her sisters she voted for Trump, oh my was that an eye opening ordeal for her about how vicious and stupid Liberals are. They couldn’t figure out why we kept finding other places to go, and other restaurants to eat at than them, for nearly the entire trip.
You can’t reason with people like that, which is why so many in Conservative Inc. Media don’t even bother putting up a fight. They just get tired of getting screamed at, and it pays better anyway.
Most of the Alt-Right activists are only in it for the clicks, cachet, and whatever donations they can get. Thats why the content is so lame and unappealing to normies.
If you want clicks you hafta feed people their own feces (tell them what they want to hear)
But the worst offenders have got to be white females. Tara McCarthy just strolls into the movement with 3 pounds of make up on her face, starts a Youtube channel, and gets 50,000 subs in 90 days; what a fucking joke.
She talks as if we are supposed to be impressed with her parade ground intelligence?
She can’t even speak in complete sentences?
She dodges the “Jewish Question”, won’t admit to being a racist; but whines and complains about “white genocide” all day long…
*vomit*
This is why we lose.
These frothy cunts yapping their mouths about “white genocide” have exactly ZERO CHILDREN and they aren’t even that good at it?
(((shaking my head)))
In contrast, Lauren Southern, can give a much better presentation; factual, witty and coherent.
Seven dislikes and no retort?
LOL
I rest my case.
here’s a retort: you sound like an old drunk barely able to keep his fat ass on the bar stool.
Do you say that to every person who looks you in the eye and tells you the truth?
Zman, your commentary is pretty good, especially your podcasts; but your followers here are pretty weak and I think you deserve better?
Im one of those people who found your blog from the Counter-currents podcast you did. You have a great “radio voice” and I really like the rational, coherent perspective you bring because lord knows we need it; because one of the main reasons we lose is due to the large numbers of flat, inarticulate, boring, equivocating, attention whores… who have flooded into the alt-right in the past 3 or 4 years.
Do you have professional broadcast experience?
We really need more calm, rational people like yourself, and less, flacid, easily offended girls like most of your commenters.
BTW– I have probable cause to suspect your comments section is infested with Jews?
*Ive seen this movie before*
“They are never called to answer for there perfidy.”
their
ABS has just recently discovered this blog and he is very happy he did.
Chipping at small spelling errors is a great way to make a good impression.
“These so-called conservatives happily define the boundaries between what is and what is not acceptable on the Right. ”
So do any so-called progressives define the boundaries between what is and what is not acceptable on the Left?
This is not a rhetorical question. I’m genuinely curious. Seems to me the answer is emphatically no, as Z implies, but I may have missed something.
At one point, even before my time, I think the Democrats thought they were distancing themselves from the out-and-out Communists, but that may have been for show and / or was ineffective.
But what about now? Does the Left ever shoot left? Can anyone think of even one instance? Even for show?
No. The worst the Left does is ignore their lunatics, when their tactics go a bit beyond the current pale… but always with a not-so-secret admiration for the raw **authenticity** of someone who is willing to do ___ for The Cause. Among themselves (e.g. in the faculty lounge) they like to have hissy little slap fights about the differences between the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea, but that’s just LARPing as Revolutionaries.
Coincidence: I just went from here to Breitbart and got my question answered:
‘Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) issued a statement late Tuesday denouncing violent left-wing “Antifa” protesters, saying they deserve “unequivocal condemnation” ‘
I’m sure it’s just for show after the Gary Cohn fuss, but it amazes me that Pelosi is actually shooting left and pandering right.
Any others?
The internal polling told Nancy what to do. Journolist made sure everyone on the left pivoted on the same day, so no one got left behind.
Doesn’t change the basic concept that they would shoot all of us in the back of the head, if they thought they could get away with it.
In my lifetime, the Left has never punched Left. Their crackpots are quietly indulged, maybe sidelined so as not to embarrass anyone, but never purged. The purging by the Left is always their right flank. It’s their way of creating easy to defeat right-wingers. For instance, Charles Krapphammer was a speech writer for Mondale when he ran against Reagan in ’84.
Pas d’ennemi a gauche. Pardon my French.
Dennis Kucinich?
With Pelosi distancing herself from Antifa, the top politicians supporting them are Mittens Romney & Foam Party Rubio. That’s your “Conservative” Republican Party, Right wingers/Benjy Shapiro. Supporters of Antifa. Wallow in that.
Antifa is getting the Occupy movement treatment; which means they’ve outlived their usefulness to TPTB. Like BLM, their antics our getting out of hand and making the left look bad, so they need to be quietly sidelined. The Soros money will dry up and the few that don’t go along with the program will get arrested as an example to the others. Now that both Pelosi and WaPo have now deemed criticism of Antifa to be legit, the floodgates of opprobrium will open and their shenanigans will very quickly fade out.
They should be congratulated for a job well done. Their task was always to ensure that right-wing rallies and marches do not happen. Now that every mayor can plausibly deny permits based on “public safety concerns” Antifa needs to go back into storage, to be trotted out as a boogeyman should the right ever feel the need to go out into the daylight again.
“Now that every mayor can plausibly deny permits based on “public safety concerns” Antifa needs to go back into storage,”
I hadn’t thought of that.
Into storage Antifa goes. The new crisis today is back to “climate change”. All day, from all the lefties, “climate change destroyed Houston”. Journolist does its work.
The worst part is we are going to be hearing a lot from Al Gore for a few days.
too bad (for the media and dems) there is all kinds of footage of them praising antifa, and making common cause with them. same for Ryan, he fukked himself in the ass with his slimy comments on antifa.
My apologies, but I must disagree.
Most rank-and-file right-wingers simply don’t have the time or interest to wander around somewhere, marching or occupying anything, because we have better things to do, like keeping civilization around by working at our jobs.
Most leftists, on the other hand, have plenty of time for that sort of thing, either because they are paid to do it or because they are unemployed.
Good for them, but the problem is that they still haven’t figured out how to get rid of the election problem- that is, they still happen- or how to disarm enough of the American people to simply impose tyranny by fiat.
That antifa is now facing criticism isn’t a sign of strength for them, the deep state, or the left. It’s a sign that antifa polls really really badly- and all of the above are fearful of future election results.
I know that isn’t a unique insight, but I think it remains worthy of note.
But what about now? Does the Left ever shoot left?
Yes, they do, all the time, but perhaps not in the US. In the UK there has been no-end of catfighting and bitching between the “moderate” lefties and the headcase Corbynistas, with the moderates shooting left. The Corbynistas are nuts, but they represent the same threat to the UK elites as the alt-right does to the American elites. This is why you have soft-left and soft-right joining forces to denounce them.
John Nolte has returned to Breitbart, and the mutual parting ball-washing he and Shapiro engaged in on Twitter was sickening, but return to Breitbart he has. Glad to see that.
Every time I see him speak at a conference he always has to work into his statements that a) he is jewish and b) that the alt-right hates him.
Nobody cares, Tiny Ben. Stop shooting right.
Always wears the little hat if you missed the other details. With David Cole he just tells you ten times in his articles.
Fortunately he sounds as if he were breathing an atmosphere of helium.
OK, I’ll bite. Who the h**l are the Wilks brothers_?
Couple of billionaires from Texas. They funded Ted Cruz and the anti-Trump thing.
While I agree with you on Shapiro, I kind of find it weird that you’re on the anti-Cruz train. I find it weird that ANYONE who claims to be a conservative is on the anti-Cruz train. Cruz is the most conservative Senator we have, but because he ran against the god-emperor he has to be the constant target of the alt-right. Frankly, I think the Podesta emails pretty much prove that Hillary rigged the Republican primary in favor of Trump, but the only way we can win against the Dem scumbags is if we stop all this crap where “He’s not as much of a true patriot as me, therefore he’s a lib nutjob!”
There is no anti-Cruz train to be on. He is a non-entity. There’s simply no reason to talk about Cruz right now, other than as an historical footnote. If he had not been such a jerk at the convention and in the general election, he would probably be on the list to replace Ginsberg when her black heart is finally called home by Satan. But, that’s not happening so there’s no reason to talk about Ted Cruz, one way or the other.
Well, thank you for explaining that Cruz was a big meanie. I’m still muddling over the alt-right plan to copy Shapiro and attack non-alter conservatives with fervor and vehemence and ignore the true target. Attacking the alt-right and basically ignoring Antifa (as well as being a paid hit-man) are my Shapiro problems. Trump won. Why is the non-entity still a target? The real enemy is 1.) Liberal politicians. 2.) Liberal academia. 3.) Liberal entertainers. 4.) Liberal media. They all share a common thread.
say, you’re that little homo that was mewling around here a few months ago.
For the same reason that right wingers correctly regard professional cucks to be a greater threat than the far left. Ryan, McDonnell, McVain, Linsey, on and on, are in my trench screwing with the ammo. Cruz is a different animal but he shit himself in Iowa, then at the convention. He would have lost November massively. Trump taught us a lesson. Cruz don’t take no lessons.
Conservatives?!?! You mean LOSERS!! Conservatives couldn’t even keep freaks out of women’s bathrooms. No one in the Alt-Right considers themselves conservatives. They’re the Washington Generals of politics, their job is to put IPA good front to sucker people like you out of voted and money. They’re not supposed to actually get anything done, I s all just theater. That’s why they all hate Trump so much, he’s exposed them for the losers that they are.
I had such hopes for Cruz in 2014. Then he went and shat on himself during the 2016 primaries by adopting Alinskyite tactics. Every time I hear him talk now is cringe worthy. So many earnest sounding noises saying nothing of any import or meaning. Very sad.
it’s only sad if the person you/we saw at the convention was not the real Ted; that somehow the real Ted was admirable and he just made a bad decision. But that isn’t what happened. Convention Ted is the real Ted.
Thanks. I halfway thought it might be some incarnation of the Koch Bros as Ashley Wilkes from GWTW or something.
Benny’s initials describes his writing style. Didn’t he also achieve notoriety by shilling for the Iraq war, all while still at Harvard? The amount of military knowledge he espoused for being a mere 18 yoa was truly something.
You are absolutely correct, Zman, about BS, he is a grifter and, at best, a pathetic excuse as a conservative thinker.
James Kirkpatrick calls “conservatives” like Shapiro and Williamson “House Negroes of the West’s anti-white ruling class.”
It’s always about the money and the smart ones play the game quite well.
As we knew all along, Gavin has been always auditioning with his little pieces and street theater, and now it looks like he is cashing in. Not that there is anything wrong at making money but where are the values?
Maybe I am too old for the Alt Right or just that I see no reason to define as anything other than Paleo Conservative. These poseurs, youtubers and such just don’t seem in it for anything other than personal aggrandizement and financial gain.
This Shapiro gnat was a little prodigy being groomed early on starting with his World Nut Daily pieces when he was in high school.
I don’t begrudge these guys their money. If some rich guy comes along and offers to bankroll me, I’m taking his money. What I won’t do is conceal it and I won’t change my opinions. That’s the corruption with these guys. They lie about their motives and they change opinions based on who is writing the check. At least with Captain Buttplug, he does not hide the fact he is the organ grinder’s monkey.
I wonder why my post has no paragraph breaks, they were there before I submitted it.
Your take about the money is how I feel. I don’t even begrudge some acquiescence to survive. Buchanan knows when to pull back a bit or leave well enough alone without sacrificing his principles or beliefs.
Buchanan fell down the rabbit hole once upon a time when he got a whiff of the throne. He crawled back out.
Yes, the smart ones do play the game. That said, what would a man of the right do if he wants to play the game full time? While I suppose there is the option of being in a cubicle in a think tank, but those jobs are limited and relatively few in number.
The left pays its provocateurs by skimming from our tax dollars and as such, they have an army of workers at the ready. On our side, we have limited opportunities for such graft. We have to earn our living.
Mind you, I am not defending the insect Shapiro. Not at all. However, I do not begrudge a man of the right that is trying to make a living off of an adjunct to his activism.
The reason that ours are better by far than theirs is precisely because ours are not paid.
“His appeal is that smart normies can feel like intellectuals because they listen to Ben Shapiro.” This is what I’ve never gotten. Admittedly I’m a weirdo, but I really thought the Web would be the end of these guys. You really can pull a Good Will Hunting in the Internet age — you can get expert-level informed on anything you have the brains to master, all for about a buck-fifty in late charges at the local library. Why feel intellectual listening to one of these clowns, when you can actually BE intellectual for approximately the same level of effort? Is it just laziness? Or have our educational institutions succeeded so well in training us that we feel we can’t learn unless some dork with an Ed degree puts it all on PowerPoint for us and hands us a standardized test?
Sev;
My guess is that, aside from lack of bloc free time, it’s a ‘signal-to-noise’ issue given just how many books, articles, etc. there are out there now on every conceivable subject. The sheer volume alone has to tell you that much of it is BS, but how to discriminate_? One of my relatives is a mathematician and he says that there are plenty of academic catfights-in-print in math, of all places.
Also, there is the ‘where would I start_?’ problem. You know that the entire academic edifice leans left worse than the Tower of Pisa. And you’d hate to waste your limited free time chasing some CV pumping rabbit trail just to finally figure out that’s what it was
So I guess that’s why our esteemed proprietor runs his ‘Basic Knowledge’ occasional series. One could start there.
One of my jobs is in the academic racket; I’m fully aware of how much of it is baloney (ALL of it; margin of error <1%). 🙂 But that's the thing — like Z Man's "essential knowledge" series, there are zillions of folks on the internet who post their stuff up for free, for the sheer love of it, and who aren't constrained by publish-or-perish to say something new (=stupid and counterintuitive) about anything and everything. But it's not like you need two PhD's, a GPS, and a Sherpa guide to find where Shapiro types go wrong; pick a sentence, any sentence. Their audience should be about the size of the typical academic monograph's.
You’re right in the sense that unless people are “tuned into” this guy, he won’t rise above the noise floor. For example, Shapiro is not somebody I follow nor read nor know much about in the slightest. Zman tunes the radio to that frequency, and that’s the only reason I know or care. That’s why so many of these posers have to pull stunts to get their names out there.
It’s very liberating not following or even paying much attention at all, to whatever it is that Conservative Inc. is marketing today.