Mark Duplass, Ben Shapiro and the Very Stupid, No Good, Absolutely Idiotic (Yet Well-Intentioned) Tweet
About two years ago Mark Duplass, the wildly prolific writer, director, actor, creator and mumblecore pioneer with a slew of film, TV and literary projects to his name as a workaholic multi-hyphenate had an idea.
Duplass was concerned about the heated nature of online political discourse. He hated how polarizing the internet could be, how it divided us into warring tribes perpetually ready to do furious linguistic battle to prove the rightness of our beliefs.
So, in an exquisitely misguided gesture that would soon make him a laughingstock on the very website where he hoped to bring people together in a spirit of bipartisan solidarity Duplass made an endorsement that proved controversial.
In a tweet he would later both delete and apologize profusely and sincerely for, Duplass wrote to Progressives looking to understand the other side, “Fellow liberals: If you are interested at all in ‘crossing the aisle’ you should consider following @benshapiro. I don’t agree with him on much but he’s a genuine person who once helped me for no other reason than to be nice. He doesn’t bend the truth. His intentions are good.”
To say that the response was bad would be a wild understatement. If there was a Hall of Fame for Well-Intentioned Gestures Gone Horribly Awry, Duplass’ exquisitely misguided plea that Leftists give Ben Shapiro a try on account of him being a sweet man who means well and has a heart of gold regardless of his politics would have made it in on the first ballot.
The origin story that exists in my mind for Duplass’ disastrous initial tweet is that Shapiro and Duplass once lived in the same rich neighborhood and moved in the same exclusive circles and Shapiro once helped him move without asking for anything in return.
Surely a mensch like that must be a good person, right? I mean, who but an absolute saint would help someone they barely know move without even asking for a 12 pack of beer or pizza in return?
The internet, being the internet, instantly and brutally corrected Duplass on his hilariously wrong conception of Ben Shapiro as a sweetheart of a guy whose ideas and opinions deserved to be heard and considered by even the staunchest leftist.
With varying degrees of venom and mockery, people directed Duplass to Shapiro’s long, ugly history of racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic statements.
What a great guy! Hard to believe anyone could look at these tweets and see anything other than a wonderful human being with nothing but kindness and good in his solid-gold soul.
Duplass’ infamous initial tweet suggests that he most assuredly did not do his due diligence when it came to endorsing Ben fucking Shapiro as a Conservative Liberals should listen to on account of him being such a wonderful human being with pure motives. It seems like Duplass skimmed a few of Shapiro’s articles, followed him on Twitter and liked him personally enough to assume the best of him.
Duplass’ initial tweet displays a surreal lack of understanding about Shapiro, his persona and his cult. The League star seems to be mistaking Shapiro for David Brooks, who may be a superstar Conservative writer but who seems like a guy it would be fun to have brunch with even if you disagree strongly with his politics.
Brooks cultivated an image as a Conservative it’s okay for Liberals to like. Shapiro has cultivated a much different persona. Shapiro carved out a lucrative, high-profile niche for himself as a preeminent intellectual bully whose massive brain DESTROYS woke pretenders with FACTS and REASON.
Shapiro has gone out of his way NOT to be seen as someone leftists consider genuine, good, truthful and well-intentioned. So it’s crazy that Duplass would make what are extremely strong assertions regarding the goodness of Shapiro’s soul and the purity of his intentions and motives despite seemingly knowing next to nothing about him.
Duplass made the mistake of assuming that his friendly relationship with Shapiro represents the Conservative provocateur’s true essence, that it allows him to stand before God and the internet and piously proclaim that a figure wildly and rightfully hated for being a hateful bigot is actually a really nice guy if you get to know him.
People are complicated. They’re flawed. They’re erratic. That helps explain why superstars like Jodie Foster, Whoopi Goldberg and Robert Downey Jr. can all be staunch friends and defenders of Mel Gibson despite everything that he has said and done.
Mark Duplass is a rich, white, straight, powerful man who has enjoyed tremendous success in show-business in myriad fields. Why wouldn’t Shapiro go out of his way to be nice to a dude like that, what with his whiteness, straightness, fame, money and power?
Shapiro may have been nice to Duplass and helped him once solely for the sake of being a good dude but that does not describe Shapiro’s relationship with the LGTBQ community. Or African-Americans. Or immigrants. Or the victims of police brutality.
To these people, Ben Shapiro is not a nice guy who will help you move and not even ask for a free pizza in return: he’s the enemy, an unfortunately huge cultural figure who has used his vast power and visibility to try to tear them down.
Shapiro could very well have found the original tweet as embarrassing as Duplass did but when Duplass apologized for his misguided endorsement, and for promoting the ideas of a giant asshole Shapiro whined via social media, “So in 24 hours I apparently went from being a person with good intentions to a racist sexist bigot. Twitter toxifies any attempt to cross the aisle. There's no conservative Mark could have recommended who wouldn’t receive the same blowback.”
In reality, Shapiro was ALWAYS a racist sexist bigot. Twitter did not toxify Duplass’ staggeringly misguided attempt to reach across the aisle and unify a divided country; it merely pointed out to Duplass that the public Shapiro was not at all who Duplass imagined him to be.
Duplass withdrawing his staggeringly misguided endorsement of Shapiro as someone Liberals can and should learn from seems to have hurt the precious little snowflake’s fragile feelings but if I might paraphrase the words of a braying, self-aggrandizing jackass no one should take seriously or pay attention to, facts don’t care about your feelings, bitch.
Duplass wanted to reach across the aisle and make the perpetually apoplectic realm of online politics a little more civil. He wanted to prove that we’re not so different after all. Instead Duplass illustrated just how fraught with landmines our political landscape currently is.
Despite what Duplass might want to believe, the left and the right don’t want the same things but have different ways of going about their goals. One party blindly supports an unhinged Fascist who hits new nadirs of racism and sexism seemingly every other day. The other party is also racist and sexist and horrible in many ways but not in anywhere as egregious a fashion.
So, you know, it’s TOTALLY day and night between the Democrats and the Republicans. Honestly, the main things us progressives have going for us at this point is that Shapiro is on the other side.
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