Who listens to Ben Shapiro?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
I am a moderate republican. I was a Jeb Bush supporter who held my nose and voted for Trump. I appreciated his work on taxes and the economy (pre-pandemic).
I can not stand Ben Shapiro. He comes off as annoying and seems to just talk fast to make it seem like he is making a good point. He is obviously an intelligent guy (UCLA + Harvard Law and wrote an NYT best seller) but none of his points really resonate with me. My family members who are much further to the right than me can't stand him either. I am just confused as to who his target audience is? |
Anonymous
| He may have had a couple of insightful thoughts previously; however, when given a regular audience and the need to fill time he's regressed to the mean. |
Anonymous
The people that write the reeeeaally long repetitive posts on this site. Also the smarmy poster that shoots from thread to thread telling everyone how ignorant they are. |
Anonymous
| I do and I love him. He really connects with my teenage kids. |
Anonymous
| I've never gone out of my way to listen to him but I watched him on a couple of YouTube videos and he seems smart but also just pretends that his opinions are facts. He does indeed speak very fast. I've never seen a single one of those videos where he doesn't mention religion or that he's Jewish. It's ridiculous. He seems to believe that gives him some sort of moral authority. I saw one video where he claimed he was fine with gay people but didn't think marriage was something they should get because it's a religious function. Evidently he speaks for all religions everywhere. |
Anonymous
I started listening to him several years ago and still do. I found that his earlier podcasts had better content even if the production isn't as polished as it is now. I believe the issue within the past year or so is that the general public's reaction to Trump has become much milder but Ben is in the position of having to fill 45-60 minutes *EVERY DAY* with discussions, plus other hours of content for subscribers to Daily Wire. I know that in the past 12 months we went through the impeachment, plus Covid, plus George Floyd, but people are generally either paying attention to other things, or just grown numb to their continuous distaste for Trump. So whereas an analysis could be done in 5 minutes, he feels the commercial need to stretch it out to 10 minutes. As a consequence, issues get amplified beyond an adequate level of coverage. I listen to Ben not because I agree with everything he says or even some of the fundamental pillars of his ethical/moral principles (I'm an atheist), but I appreciate the fact that Ben makes an effort to tie his positions to those fundamental principles. This makes him far less hypocritical than most other political commentators, and he is not shy about admitting his mistakes when he makes them. He is very clear about his conservative bias in his coverage, does not pretend to be neutral, and does he hesitate to criticize and ridicule Trump. I don't know why you and your relatives can't stand Ben, maybe it's his speaking voice? He does talk quickly and takes on somewhat of a "squeaky" characteristic. Ironically, I listen to all my podcasts at 1.3x speed, including Ben Shapiro, so that I can fit more listening. |
Anonymous
Well... I don't know if Ben is claiming that he personally is some sort of moral authority, but it's at least a debatable point that religions do in fact serve as a moral authority. While Ben does mention his religion, he almost use it as the basis for an argument - unless he is specifically talking about the founding principles of the US, and governing politics since then, which is historically accurate to say was heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian values. Even then, he merely states this as an observation rather than an argument that because these are Judeo-Christian values, therefore they are correct. It is also factually true that the US has two separate treatments of marriage: a religous/cultural ceremony, plus a legal civil union. If I understand Ben's position correctly, he supports government-recognized civil union for anyone, but leave religions alone and to their own decisions on whether or not they want to recognize certain types of marriages. Therefore Ben's position on religion and marriage is exactly opposite of what you are understanding - he does not want anyone to speak for all religions, not the government, and certainly not himself. |
Anonymous
| See? ^^ Those are a lot of words for not saying a whole bunch. |
Anonymous
|
I don't know why people listen to pundits. Stick to news, and maybe once a week watch one of the roundtables if you need someone else's insight into what it all means. At least those are roundtables, which means the pundits are usually answerable to someone else on the other side of the screen.
|
Anonymous
| He is thought provoking and sometime pragmatically right but he hides behind moral principles as rules when he doesn't get to define other peoples morals. That is the whole problem with the right, they think there way is the only right way. I agree with many of their platforms (not the social ones) but without giving a little to get a little a democracy will never work. That and they are all hypocrites. Why is it always the most virulently anti-gay that is the closeted homosexual |
Anonymous
Agreed 
|
Anonymous
💯 |
Anonymous
| I think kids and milennials are his main audience. |
Anonymous
|
I just checked.
1.53 million subscribers on YouTube! |
Anonymous
| Who? |