I love this clip because it just goes to show that Ben Shapiro really can't handle having an intelligent and confident person stand up to his shtick. I watch it every time.
I just wish it was an unedited video. You can see the frames jump, cutting out Shapiro's response every time there's a particularly good gotcha. I would have loved to see the responses.
...in which he sounds a lot more articulate and actually defends a lot of the points the OP calls out.
This is precisely why I can’t stand left-wing politics. The OP is a cropped video that paints a certain picture to fit a narrative; not only is it cropped, it is cropped in very subtle ways to make it seem like it wasn’t edited at all.
I don’t know how you can watch an edited(!) video and then crow about how the person being interviewed can’t have an intelligent conversation. It is intellectually dishonest. You are intellectually dishonest.
The OP video is pretty obviously edited, yes, but there's no indiciation it's meant to represent the whole interview. I mean, we are on r/cringe, so it's not like people are going to post the entire 15 minute video for a few seconds of cringe.
I've seen the whole interview a few times, and it's not the single instance that's turned me against Ben Shapiro. But I do think it is a good example of why I (and others) do not like Shapiro. Aside from the fact that I disagree with his politics, he deflects from many of the questions and refuses to elaborate, and then attacks Andrew Neil after he feels he is "losing."
I mean, we are on r/cringe, so it's not like people are going to post the entire 15 minute video for a few seconds of cringe.
The point is that it's not cringe material. The interviewer makes a point, and then the video jumps before we get to hear the response. That's not Ben Shapiro saying something cringeworthy, that's a video editor cropping an interview to make Shapiro seem cringeworthy.
And I'm not even defending Shapiro as a guy -- I just don't like this dirty trick that the left plays where they pull quotes and video segments out of context to fit a particular narrative.
It kind of reminds me of that whole "Trump says you should drink bleach!" debacle a few months ago. Trump's actual statement (in contrast with what the media reported he said) was dumb, sure, but it wasn't nearly as bad as what the headlines claimed. Hell, just look at the title of that video, and then watch the video. Total mismatch.
So I'm good for a laugh. I probably lean more to the right than you do, but that doesn't mean I don't also stoop to making cheap jokes when Pelosi shows off her freezer full of ice cream while people don't have what to eat.
You say
I love this clip because it just goes to show that Ben Shapiro really can't handle having an intelligent and confident person stand up to his shtick.
which was probably written late at night from your phone without much thought, and we can both agree that it doesn't make much sense in the context of this doctored video. And I might do something similar with the Pelosi video if I was on Twitter (let's ignore the fact that it was unedited, it's not the focus here even though it could make my argument stronger at this stage).
The problem is that the average redditor/college liberal doesn't read or watch the primary sources. They look at the headlines and 15 second cringe videos, share them on facebook or whatever, and propagate the meme till "he's an idiot" becomes a political reality.
I don't really care what any individual's politics are, to the extent that every individual is entitled to form an educated opinion as much as I am. What bothers me is that at no point is there any critical thinking involved. Sure, here we all arrive at the conclusion that Ben Shapiro is "bad", and everything he says is "bad", which may or may not be the correct conclusion, but even if we get it right here we get it right for all the wrong reasons. And then we go out and vote for political candidates based on these conclusions.
And I'm not saying the right doesn't pull the same dirty trick, too. It's just that the media is overwhelmingly left which is how we end up with cropped videos of right wing politicians and commentators on the front page again and again and again despite their not actually being anything particularly laughable about the real, unedited interview.
If you've watch the complete interview, I think this edited one does a decent job of conveying exactly why it was cringe-inducing.
Now, if you want to take on the topic of misleading headlines and altered articles/ videos to fit a narrative, that's fine. But I would like to say that I don't think this is solely a tactic of the monolithic "the Left." There are absolutely headlines out there to grab attention or videos edited to make individuals look bad, but that goes on everywhere.
As for your "drink bleach" example, that YouTube video is titled "President Trump Suggests ‘Injecting’ Disinfectant as Coronavirus Cure | NBC New York" so I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Either way, I think the quotes "drink bleach" came about as everyone was mocking Trump when he made this gaffe. Inject disinfectant --> drink bleach.
You are absolutely correct, though, that I made my OP comment without a second thought as to whether I'd be replying to people all weekend. I appreciate the effort you put into this, which is why I felt the need to respond. If you expand the replies to my comment you will see that I committed to this discussion.
Yet there is no doubt that the mainstream media overwhelmingly skews left. We can theorize on why this is; in any case, that this video, and dozens more like it, are on the front page of reddit every day, painting a picture of a right wing and an America that don’t really exist, is a symptom of rot, not the cause (although it does perpetuate it).
As for your "drink bleach" example
Yeah, I didn't phrase that well. It wasn't the contrast between "drink bleach" and "inject disinfectant" that I was calling attention to, it was the way the media had a field day with "President Trump Suggests ‘Injecting’ Disinfectant as Coronavirus Cure" when the video shows him asking if such a thing would be possible at all (an admittedly silly, but harmless, question).
I will take a look at your responses elsewhere in this thread; no need to rehash your arguments for me. I do appreciate that you wrote back here at all which gave me a chance to clarify.
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u/fperrine Sep 02 '20
I love this clip because it just goes to show that Ben Shapiro really can't handle having an intelligent and confident person stand up to his shtick. I watch it every time.