I read Townhall.com as religiously as I read every other rightleftcenter thinktank, blog, or column, if nothing else but for a good laugh and a head's-up from the right. Of course, after the election, my skin would crawl as a I read their haughty and bragging columns, but now I'm back to square one. They accuse liberals and naysayers of sarcastic intellectual snobbery, so here we are.
Ben Shapiro.
I once wrote him a letter after reading a column of his entitled Sex too young: Janie's Story. It was basically a lot of pompous windbaggery about how his poor friend Janie would never be the same after having sex before marriage. Poor, poor Janie. Sure, she was practically normal... but that look in her eye sometimes! The column ended with Ben Shapiro lamenting:
"But the question remains: Even if venereal disease and teen pregnancy are eradicated, will America's young people be able to recover from the loss of their innocence?"
Ben Shapiro, a frequent commentator at FOX News, is a 20 year old writer and early grad from UCLA. He is your typical (in his words, not mine) "Orthodox Jew, virtuosic violinist, and hack golfer" who is attending Harvard as we speak.
Well, Mr. Ben, how dare you lecture me on my innocence.
See, we're about the same age Ben, and while I'm usually reticent to lecture my peers on innocence, I can see you're not so I'm sure you won't mind. That puts us on fair ground, except that you have book deals, pundit credentials, the money to attend Harvard, and a weekly column in townhall.. and I don't. Bummer. But you obviously still know plenty about innocence, being an over-driven right-wing crazed twenty year old, don't you, Mr. Ben?
I wonder to myself how many townhall columnists ever actually know what they're talking about... if they've seen the poor, or been to a third-world country, or seen the hungry, or the oppressed, or if they know anyone who is gay, or if they've had family in Iraq, or love someone who can't afford healthcare. I worry the most about Little Benny Shapiro (forgive my tone, I'm just showing you what it can be like to be patronized) because I know that at just 20, with so much a busy work life on your hands, you probably don't know much about these things on a first hand basis.
Indeed, I worry that many in my generation do not have this oppertunity to realize what they're spitting venom or blathering on about before they open their mouths. I'm afraid that too many people might be reading Ben Shapiro and taking him seriously when he hasn't even cut his intellectual teeth yet.
I accept that at this age the kids my age are still learning their way along, and so is Ben. I just wish he had the oppertunity to do so in a proper setting for a 20 year old, instead of being swallowed up by the monsters at townhall and FOX news at such an early age, becoming a grotesque caricature of his masters and role models: a hawkish golfer who attended an Ivy League school who speaks like Ann Coulter but is just so tiny and my goodness, how cute!
Please take a good look at yourself before you go lecturing your peers about their innocence, Ben. While you feel nothing but sorrow for your little friend Janie, I honestly feel nothing but heartwrenching pity for you.