Colbert Move To CBS Sparks Breitbart Editor To Claim Acting Like A Conservative Is Racist
For years conservatives have been claiming that the battle to win marriage equality has nothing to do with the battle for civil rights for African-Americans. Of course, the two are in many ways similar and linked, and the concept of civil rights is not reserved for African Americans any more than it is for LGBT people. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s wife, Coretta Scott King said so in 1996 before her passing. So has Julian Bond, the former head of the NAACP.
Enter the radical right’s young conservative Tea Party provocateur and troll, Ben Shapiro.
Ben Shapiro is the editor-at-large of the Tea Party’s favorite news site, Breitbart News, and recently started his own anti-progressive website, TruthRevolt. (Do with that name what you will.)
Yesterday afternoon, upon learning that CBS hired a man who is clearly one of the nation’s best and most talented (and, frankly, hysterical) pundits, Stephen Colbert, to replace David Letterman as the host of “The Late Show,” Shapiro penned something titled “Stephen Colbert’s Vile Political Blackface.”
(It is rare that The New Civil Rights Movement refuses to link to a website, so here’s the link. If you visit you’re essentially giving him money.)
Shapiro claims that someone who is not conservative but acting as if they are conservative is racist. Apparently, conservatives are now claiming they were “born that way,” and to turn their argument back at them, apparently there must be a conservative gene.
Perhaps there is.
Shapiro writes that Stephen Colbert “engages in Conservativeface.”
He needs no makeup or bulbous appendage to play a conservative – after all, conservatives come in every shape and size. Instead, he acts as though he is a conservative – an idiotic, racist, sexist, bigoted, brutal conservative. He out-Archie Bunkers Archie Bunker. His audience laughs and scoffs at brutal religious “Colbert†who wishes to persecute gays; they chortle at evil sexist “Colbert†who thinks men are victims of sexism. This is the purpose of Colbert’s routine. His show is about pure hatred for conservatives in the same way that blackface was about pure hatred of blacks. In order to justify their racism, racists had to create a false perception of blacks; in the same way, Colbert and his audience can justify their racism only by creating a false perception of conservatives.
Looking in the mirror can be an ugly pastime, Ben, and yes, modern-day (aw, heck, olden day too) conservatives often can be “idiotic, racist, sexist, bigoted, [and] brutal.” Many often “persecute gays,” in one manner or another. Many think “men are victims of sexism” (though, to be fair, it is certainly possible for a man to be a victim of sexism.)
Over at Salon, Elias Isquith writes that “Shapiro has long distinguished himself for writing unhinged, idiotic and hateful things.”
He tried to smear Chuck Hagel by saying the former senator had a relationship with a group called Friends of Hamas, for example. Such a group did not, does not and likely will not exist. He’s urged Israel to engage in ethnic cleansing. He’s argued that there’s no discrimination against LGBT people in America today. The list goes on.
Indeed it does. Last year Shapiro said that if you think Jason Collins‘ coming out as gay is a big deal you “hate America,” and he’s pointed to Dan Savage as “proof” that liberals bully conservatives to “death.”
If that’s not enough insight into the mind of Ben Shapiro, know that he is the author of Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth, and, Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans. Also, Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future, and the soon-to-be released The People Vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against the Obama Administration.
Â