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CULTURE

Worst Quotes of the Week: Vogue, Ellen DeGeneres, and Ben Shapiro

People say a lot of dumb sh*t. Sometimes I hear about it.

Rihanna

Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

People say a lot of dumb sh*t.

Some of those people are famous, and then I hear about it. Here are the worst quotes of the week:

3. That Vogue Writer Who Didn't Prepare for Her Rihanna Interview

"Normally I bring a list of questions, but I didn't have time to prepare one..."

Look, when you're interviewing or profiling one of the biggest musical artists in the world, you should probably do your homework. I'm not going to go so far as saying there was a racial element at play, as was evident with The Hollywood Reporter's BTS profile, but there does seem to be a trend of white writers profiling major non-white artists and pulling this "I wasn't ready lol" stunt.

That being said, in the writer's defense, it sounds like maybe she really was given way too short notice for the interview. In which case, maybe just don't include that bit next time.


2. Ellen DeGeneres

"Just because I don't agree with someone on everything doesn't mean that I am not going to be friends with them. When I say, 'Be kind to one another,' I don't mean only the people that think the same way you do. I mean be kind to everyone."

This was Ellen Degeneres' response to people online who were angry at her for buddying up with former president George W. Bush, a nice old man who paints sh*tty pictures of veterans and also lied to the American people in order to propel us into the Iraq War.

Look, it's a nice sentiment and Ellen DeGeneres seems like a very nice lady. I'm not going to sit here and sh*t on her for pandering to her primary demographic of stay-at-home boomers who love her milquetoast pranks but also kind of low-key hate gay people. But we're talking about a legitimate war criminal here, a guy whose lies led to countless violent deaths and the destabilization of an entire region of the world. So instead of pooping on Ellen for her nice, "politically neutral" sentiment of buddying up with war criminals who think she's going to burn in Hell for eternity, here's her explanation juxtaposed with photos from George Bush's Iraq War.

Rafael Shimunov's Remix of Ellen's BS Explanationwww.youtube.com

1. Ben Shapiro

"You want a culture war in this country? You damn well have it, Beto O'Rourke...Because I promise you, if you come to tell me that you're going to indoctrinate my kids in particular policy and that I can't pull my kid out of the school and send my kid to a school I want to send them to...If you send a truant officer to remove my child, I have two choices at that point...One is to leave the country utterly. Two is to pick up a gun...Beto O'Rourke does not get to raise my child. And if he tries, I will meet him at the door with a gun."

This week, tiny lunatic Ben Shapiro attempted to take straw man arguments to a whole new level while essentially threatening to murder a political candidate he doesn't like.

Shapiro's rant was in response to Beto O'Rourke saying that if he were president, he would take tax exempt status away from any organization, religious or otherwise, that discriminated against LGBTQ+ people. How Ben Shapiro jumped from "Churches that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people will not get tax breaks" to "Officers will come to my home and remove my children, so I must kill Beto O'Rourke" is beyond me, but it's worth noting that Shapiro's brain is most likely a giant, malignant tumor at this point.

All joking about Ben Shapiro's soft, frail body and his almost definite inability to properly handle a firearm aside, here's the thing you need to understand about him: The only people who like Ben Shapiro are very, very stupid. They're so stupid that they can't hold functional conversations with anyone whose shoes aren't already in their mouths. They're so stupid that they've deluded themselves into believing they're capable of debate. They're so stupid that they actually listen to Ben Shapiro.

In other words, these people are incredibly dangerous. There's a reason that the Quebec City Mosque Shooter was a big Ben Shapiro fan, and I promise, it has nothing to do with him wanting to hold a debate.

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Watch Ben Shapiro, Overcome By Rage, Walk Out On BBC Commentator

Before he left, Ben Shapiro deflected Andrew Neil's tough questions about his hateful tweets and incendiary, polarizing commentary by accusing the well-known conservative interviewer of being left-wing. Naturally, Twitter is having a great time.

Ben Shapiro getting angry and storming out of a debate instead of actually confronting the issues at hand or actually listening to another person's perspective? Unheard of.

That's sarcasm. Of course, Ben Shapiro couldn't possibly sit through an interview with a commentator asking questions about his old tweets and bringing up the hypocrisy of his new book, which calls for a more civil America despite its author's history of incendiary and polarizing commentary.

Instead of listening and engaging in an actual debate, Shapiro—famous for his harsh takedowns of liberal college students—walked out on BBC conservative commentator Andrew Neil after only sixteen minutes of discussion. From start to finish, like much of modern politics, the discussion was a useless, cyclical pile of wasted time. It all started to go downhill when Neil brought up Shapiro's abortion beliefs. "Some of the ideas that are popular in your side of politics would seem to take us back to the dark ages," said Neil. "In Georgia, new abortion laws which you are much in favor of, that a woman who miscarries could get 30 years—and a Georgian woman who travels to another state for an abortion could get 10 years," he said.

"Are you an objective journalist or an opinion journalist?" asked Shapiro.

"I'm a journalist who asks questions," said Neil. "My job is to question those who have strong views and put an alternative to them."

That's when things went off the rails. "Sir, sir, I'm happy to answer your questions," said Shapiro, who was obviously not happy. "Why don't you just say that you're on the left?"

"Mr. Shapiro, if you only knew how ridiculous that statement is you wouldn't have said it," said Neil, briskly moving on to the next question. "You position yourself as supposed tellers of hard truths. But haven't you all just really coarsened public discourse in America and exacerbated its divisions?"

"It's kind of odd to be hearing about me coarsening public discourse when you call policies you disagree with brutal and bringing us back to the dark ages?" said Shapiro.

Neil again tried to return to the issues at hand. "In your new book, you suggest America's largest struggle is the struggle for our national soul," he said. "We are so angry at each other right now. And I think that's true—I've just returned from the United States. But aren't you part of the problem with the way you go about your discourse, not the solution?" Neil then brought up Shapiro's old assertion that Obama's state of the Union in 2012 was 'fascist mentality in action.'"

"The problem that I have is not with charged language in politics...I like a robust and spirited public debate," said Shapiro, skirting around the content of the question. "What I'm talking about is the assumption that the people we disagree with politically are in bad character."

Neil continued to push, causing Shapiro to finally acquiesce, "The wording of President Trump's 2012 address was bad and wrong," using Trump's name instead of Obama's in an exquisite example of a Freudian slip.

Then, Neil asked Shapiro a few times about his hateful comments and tweets about Jews who voted for Obama, as well as tweets about Arabs and Palestinians, but Shapiro was too far gone to listen to a word. "Honestly, this is a giant waste of time in the sense that the entire interview is designed for you to shout slogans or old things that I've said at me...You talk about undermining the public discourse," said Shapiro. "It seems to me that simply going through and finding lone things that sound bad out of context, and then hitting people with them, is a way for you to make a quick buck on BBC off the fact that I'm popular and no one has ever heard of you."

Neil, a famously tough journalist known for asking all of his interviewee's difficult questions, tried one more time to get the interview back on track, but Shapiro wasn't having it. "You're lecturing me on Judeo-Christian culture?...Frankly I find this whole thing a waste of time," said Shapiro. "Frankly, I don't give a damn what you think of me since you've never heard of me. Honestly, sir… I'm not inclined to continue with a person as badly motivated as you. I think we're done here. I appreciate your time."

"Thank you for your time," said Neil, "and for showing that anger is not part of American discourse. Goodbye."

Twitter, naturally, is having a field day.







Eden Arielle Gordon is a writer and musician from New York. Follow her on Twitter @edenarielmusic.

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