Wednesday, January 27, 2021

They're still not over it

 It's been nearly two weeks since conservative commentator Ben Shapiro was a guest writer for Politico Playbook. In his piece at PP, Shapiro attempted to explain why many Republicans opposed the impeachment of President Donald Trump, who was a mere six days away from leaving the White House at that point. 


Two weeks later, some Politico staffers haven't been able to dislodge their thumbs from their mouths.


More than 100 Politico staffers signed onto a letter sent to publisher Robert Allbritton, expressing disgust with allowing right-wing firebrand Ben Shapiro to guest-author one day’s edition of the Playbook, and with the outlet’s subsequent handling of the fallout.

Earlier this month, the Beltway news outlet handed over the keys to its signature news product to Shapiro, a talk-radio host and pundit who has long been one of the most controversial voices in right-wing media, thanks in part to his incendiary comments about the LGBT community, Muslims, Black Americans, and Jews who support Democratic politicians.

Well if indeed Shapiro is as much a knuckle-dragging oaf as he's being portrayed, then it should have been a simple task to refute his piece in Politico. Instead, butthurt leftists either cast aspersions on Shapiro's character or attempt to denigrate him by ginning up past "controversial" statements of his without a shred of nuance. 

Regardless, it appears Politico doesn't want to get on the bad side of its whiny little staffers again given its latest editorial decision

Ben Shapiro claims the controversy surrounding his turn as a guest writer of Politico's Playbook has extended to conservatives slated to follow him in the editorial role.

In a Twitter thread posted Tuesday evening, the editor emeritus of the Daily Wire claimed Townhall's Guy Benson and Mary Katharine Ham, a CNN commentator, were uninvited from serving as guest writers after his own turn in the role attracted controversy. Shapiro said the two right-wing political personalities were told that the magazine was "overbooked," but he speculated that the motivations for the cancellations were more biased in nature.

"Politico's blow-up over me writing Playbook wasn't about me being cancelled -- it was about woke staffers cudgeling editors into never reaching across the aisle again," he wrote, adding in a later tweet, "message received. Conservatives are pre-emptively cancelled. Homogeneity maintained. Polarization increased. Well done, wokescolds!"

We've been hearing an awful lot lately about Americans needing to "heal" and "unify" now that the divisive Trump is no longer President. However, to be able to do so requires an effort to understand why others think differently than you, with the goal of not necessarily changing your worldview but to, on some level, empathize with others. Sadly, that's not what's happening. 

It's become abundantly clear that unification in the minds of leftists is tantamount to capitulation.

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