facts feelings etc, but I do feel bad for Ben here. he stumbled onto a lucrative grift as a teenager, but he’s a Valley kid... he wants to be a real boy again. but whenever he gets close he’s undone by things he’s done & said. tragic! 
when he watches Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin bray at each other across a bar table, part of Ben thinks, “this is boring and it sucks. there’s a better life than this.” part of Ben wants out. he wants the malign things he’s done & said to not count. but, the thing is: they do
Shapiro grew up thinking you could sling all the incendiary filth you wanted... it wouldn’t stop you from being “respectable” once you decided to be. he wasn’t wrong to think that. Buckley’s lionized. Buchanan was all over TV. shit, CNN hired Erick Erickson!
but times and technologies change. the ugly stuff that Ben said, argued, supported... he did all that on social media. that stuff’s not going anywhere. it looks BAD. Kevin Williamson tried to make the jump and ate shit thanks to his old stuff. that probably scared Ben!
he knows he can rake it in on the crank circuit for life, but he’s starting to wonder if he’ll ever be able to leave that circuit. maybe those tweets will haunt him forever. maybe debating Milo on Infowars still means he worked with Milo on Infowars. yikes!
Ben hasn’t gotten CNN airtime in six months... the only mainstream TV he can book is Maher, and Maher’s days may be numbered. Tapper seems to like Ben, but does he *really?* is Ben starting to text Jake too much??
Ben is Doink the Clown. Doink was an effective gimmick! but nobody ever said “get that makeup off, I want to see Ray Apollo wrestle.” some gimmicks stick with you for life. Ben Shapiro’s gimmick is bad-faith polished bigot... it’ll make him rich, but it’s all he’ll ever be
