Anyone who follows the entertaining political wars that take place on Twitter knows that recently a trend of journalists are requesting a debate with another journalist, or a politician they disagree with.
This all started when Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro publicly called out Ocasio Cortez to a debate, and in addition to the debate, Shapiro would donate 10k as a donation to her campaign or charity of her choice.
After Shapiro’s request, TYT’s Cenk Uygur then called out Ted Cruz to a debate, along with others adding to the fun.
Dissecting this circus of stupidity, I came to two conclusions. One being, why in their right mind would a political figure debate a journalist? And two, Shapiro, once again has proven to be more concerned with popularity and building his business rather than having an intellectually honest debate. I will touch on these both.
Politicians, like Cortez, live extremely busy lives. I am assuming most politicians maximize their time efficiently to try and accomplish as much as they can every day. If a politician is campaigning to try and advance their agenda, why would they take time out of their busy day to debate a journalist?
The only one benefitting from the debate would be the journalist. The debate would provide the journalist with free exposure and traffic to their material. In no shape or form is the politician benefiting from this debate. A wise politician would much rather utilize their time campaigning rather than fueling their adversaries base.
I believe we live in a day in age where we conflate journalist with sellouts. By this I mean those who actually report and discuss serious issues regardless of the consequence and those who just spout out non-sense to rally their base and bring clicks to their content. I’m talking about the opportunists. People like Mark Dices, The Krassenstein brothers and yes, in my opinion, Ben Shapiro.
Take a moment to review Shapiro’s website, Daily Wire. It’s bombarded with advertisements. There’s even a switch at the top of his website to turn the ads off. However, in order to turn them off, you have to pay of course.
If you listen to Shapiro’s podcast you will be stopped every ten minutes with another brand promotion. All these companies are advertising on Shapiro’s podcast and website, why? Because his clickbait articles bring in an enormous amount of traffic. With his sarcastic one-liner tweets, to his anti-identity politics articles, his conservative audience loves this stuff.
There’s very little substance behind Shapiro’s material. He’s good at fighting the culture war and encouraging 18-25-year-olds to hate leftists. His material consists of attacking NYT op-ed pieces for supporting transgenders. Or he will use his airtime to talk about another stupid comment Ocasio Cortez made. Is this “news” really informative and expanding knowledge on the world around us?
Why isn’t Shapiro reporting on the War in Yemen.? Or why isn’t he talking about monetary reform or proposals to decrease our national debt? Where are the articles about prison reform due to an injustice criminal system? No, Shapiro is more concerned with fighting the PC culture to fuel his audience and bring more clicks to his content. Obviously to put more money into his pocket and his business.
But, how does this relate to his proposed debate with Cortez? Well, Shapiro is simply calling her out for more exposure and the opportunity to grow his brand. He would never waste his time debating someone publicly with a smaller audience. How do I know this? Because for the past year Nathan J Robinson and the crew at Current Affairs have been begging to debate Shapiro. Current Affairs is made up of a group of young intellectuals who all have prominent degrees from Ivy League schools. Listening to Shapiro exchange ideas with these philosophers would be exciting to hear.
Unfortunately, Shapiro is more concerned with advancing his business and doing the work of an opportunist rather than having an intellectual debate with people worth debating. Current Affairs does not have the platform Cortez has, therefore it’s a waste of Shapiro’s time. Sad that “journalism” has come to this.
