Some More News - SMN: The Ben Shapiro Cinematic Universe / Part One: Conservatives vs. Hollywood
Episode Date: March 13, 2024Hi. Ben Shapiro and The Daily Wire are producing a whole lot of original films and TV shows lately. What's with that? - Go to ground.news/smn to stay fully informed. Subscribe through our link for as ...little as $1 a month or get 40% off unlimited access this month only. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/morenews Go to shopify.com/morenews to take your retail business to the next level today. So if you want to take ownership of your health, start with AG1. Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase exclusively at drinkAG1.com/morenews. That’s drinkAG1.com/morenews. Check it out. Right now, Hungryroot is offering Some More News listeners 40% off your first delivery and free veggies for life. Just go to Hungryroot.com/MORENEWS, to get 40% off your first delivery and get your free veggies. That’s Hungryroot.com/MORENEWS. Don’t forget to use our link, so they know we sent you. Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V3YeiwIY8XvZzyOUYzMMGjf3HqIiJ5E0D1JF6qpQSps/edit?usp=sharing Check out our MERCH STORE: https://shop.somemorenews.com SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts:
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Negative $50?!
But I need scratch tickets today!
How else am I gonna buy more scratch tickets?!
Alright, think, think, think, think.
How can I make money fast?
Alright, you're young-ish, you got some decent knees on a good day,
you got the camera on and you're filming a show as we speak,
you have zero empathy, maybe some kind of murder thing,
you know, there's gotta be a country where murder is legal,
but crap! I do have empathy.
Damn, I keep forgetting that for some reason.
Okay, come on brain, all right, juice me, juice me hard.
Juice me up brain, ha ha, I got it.
I use this camera that's on to make a video,
since we're already doing that.
A video you can't resist, something with sex and danger
and movies, what combines movies with news and sex?
Lots of sex! Slops of sex!
You know what, baby!
Into the Ben Shapiro-verse, part one, The Barbie Wars, episode four, Redemption of
the Dragon Sphere 2...4! Barbie Wars, episode four, redemption of the dragon sphere two, four.
Heck yes, it's been too long, Ben.
Time for some low hanging fruit, the tastiest of fruits,
like succulent elder testicles unfurling
from the loose leg sleeve of a gym short they are.
Gross, but also profitable.
We'll even make it two parts long,
like that elder's long, long balls.
Okay, so here's some epic news.
I don't know if you know this, and in fact,
I hope you don't because it means
that you live a healthy life,
but the conservative political news organization,
The Daily Wire, is making original
and apolitical content now.
Movies, TV shows, you know the stuff,
make believe, flim flam.
It's a real funded by a fracking billionaire
to riches story for them.
Because since their humble fracking beginnings,
The Daily Wire has grown to making a reported
$200 million in revenue with, according to them,
1 million subscribers as of 2022.
That number is probably right. Honestly, it's lower than I assumed and is probably higher now.
As of this year, The Daily Wire is the seventh largest publisher for podcasts in the United
States of America. In 2020, they moved to a subscription-based model in an attempt to establish themselves
as a sort of right-wing version of Netflix.
Because you see, movies are woke, all right?
And actually, they're so woke that they're way too woke.
Did you know that?
Did you know that mainstream movies are so woke
and the media is woke and full of woke lies
about woke stuff and women just need to like, butt out honestly.
And so what you gotta do, you see,
is you gotta get all your news and your media
from just a handful of non-woke guys.
In fact, what if they're anti-woke?
Yeah, that's the place to be.
Not because it's a grift or a way to trap you
into an ideological bubble,
but because everyone and every product is woke except them.
Gillette razors used to be the best a man could get. Then they decided that men are too toxic.
Unless you're the kind of man who teaches his daughter to shave her beard.
If that makes sense to you, keep buying Gillette.
But if you've had enough of the woke bullshit
and you're tired of paying companies like Harry's
and Gillette to hate you.
Then buy my new razor instead.
That's an ad for the Daily Wire's own Jeremy's Razors.
And did it seem oddly paced to anyone else?
Like when he says, keep buying Gillette,
and we get this weird silence as the camera pushes in
on the kid shaving, which we already saw
and didn't need an extra beat on.
There's no music either.
This ad clearly has a big budget,
but they're trying to do this snappy walk and talk thing
like one of those fast paced
Old Spice commercials from, you know, 15 years ago,
or those Dollar Shave Club commercials
from like 12 years ago.
The guy's doing a bunch of quote unquote random
and quote unquote awesome CEO things,
and we're supposed to be zipping through each of them,
but it feels like they don't quite understand
how to do that in the edit,
and so every transition takes slightly too long.
It's a four minute ad that has like 30 seconds
of information in it.
And I've already forgotten why we wanted to show it to you
in the first place.
Was it because the non-woke razors have gotten a ton
of really bad reviews?
No, but they have.
Bad reviews from one assumes assumes, Daily Wire fans
who wanted to support the Daily Wire
by buying a quality non-woke razor.
The most common complaints seem to be
that they break easily and are dull right out of the box,
which kind of makes them already broken.
But no, this was all just so you could meet Jeremy Boring,
also dull out of the box, who is in fact, quote,
"'The God King' and CEO of The Daily Wire."
Oh, hi, I'm Jeremy Boring,
CEO and God King of The Daily Wire.
So cool.
And while we put Ben's name in the title,
for sex appeal, obviously,
we're probably going to spend a lot of time
on this super boring fellow,
considering that you probably don't know who he is.
But it turns out that Jay Bor is not only responsible
for a small collection of poorly reviewed anti-woke products
and they are all very poorly reviewed,
but he's also the guy behind the current push
from the Daily Wire to make original content
focused on entertainment and who knows, maybe even art.
Content that coincidentally features a lot of bitter
and coincidentally explicitly conservative actors
and comedians.
There's of course, Gina Carano, who starred in the,
according to some right-winger reviews,
woke Daily Wire movie, Terror on the Prairie.
You may recall that she was fired from the Mandalorian
after a series of bizarre social media posts
about how hating conservatives is like hating Jews
during the Holocaust or something.
Anyway, Gina refused to bow down to the woke mob
and stood her ground and doesn't regret anything
and is happy over the Daily Wire,
but also is suing Lucasfilm specifically to force them
to write her back into the show that she doesn't need and doesn't miss,
but desperately wants to be back on by law.
Everyone clap by law.
Meanwhile, Daily Wire's also making
an adult animated series called Mr. Bertram
that stars such comedic icons as Adam Carolla,
Roseanne Barr, and says here,yn Kelly and Candace Owens.
Wow.
Can I get a taste?
Don't do anything stupid, or than last year.
Oof, bad taste.
That is not great line delivery, but that's okay.
It's not her fault.
She's not an actress.
They shouldn't have put her in this.
It's a political and news organization
made up of political pundits.
So of course the show is about a quote,
"'No nonsense shop teacher trying to survive
in an overly PC world.'"
The big boast or draw is of course that it's anti-woke.
And okay, yeah, sure, cool, all right.
It looks, it looks just so very okay.
You ever see a vegan wolf on the nature channel?
I'm a vegan.
Neat joke that Futurama made a better version of
24 years ago.
Turns out that Corolla has been trying to make this show
since 2011, a year after that first Old Spice commercial
and a year before that first Dollar Shave Club commercial.
And it turns out in 2011, nobody would touch it.
Probably because it's bad, but I don't know.
I haven't seen it.
According to Boring, Adam Carolla created Bertram
back before Barack Obama killed comedy.
Of course, Hollywood wouldn't make Bertram today
because they've stopped making comedies altogether
for fear of offending the wrong people.
So we realized we had to do it.
First of all, they've stopped making comedies altogether?
What? Well, they've stopped making comedies altogether?
What? Anyway, get ready to laugh with the comedic stylings
of Megyn Kelly reciting jokes
that haven't been updated in a decade.
Lots of entertainment on the horizon, actually.
Jeremy Boring has himself written a non-woke adaptation
of Snow White that The Daily Wire will soon produce.
He's also going to write and direct an upcoming series based on a book called The Pendragon Cycle,
which I'm sure will be thrilling and anti-woke.
And of course, the big meaty sports comedy
that is Lady Ballers.
You know, the film about a group of men
pretending to be trans women to win at basketball.
It's their big flagship comedy
that Boring not only wrote and directed,
but also stars in along with a bunch of other Daily Wire
personalities is generous, but personalities.
On top of all of this,
the Daily Wire is investing $100 million
in children's programming with a spinoff called Bent Key.
And this is all supposedly in the name
of making non-political shows.
To quote Jeremy directly,
"'Our entertainment content won't be overtly political,
"'but it will reflect our values.
"'Our mission is simple.
"'We will make great entertainment
"'that all Americans can enjoy,
"'regardless of their political views.
If you're fed up with the cultural edicts
of our country's self-appointed moral overlords
in Hollywood and legacy media, stay tuned.
Of course, based on their upcoming projects,
it sounds more like he means that Jeremy Boring
will make a great entertainment
that all Americans can enjoy.
That's interesting. But remember that quote. that Jeremy Boring will make great entertainment that all Americans can enjoy.
That's interesting.
But remember that quote.
It's the stated motivation for why The Daily Wire
is making original content.
Hollywood and big media companies and all movies and TV
are obsessed with an overly moralizing agenda.
And so The Daily Wire is aiming to make non-political
and non-moralizing content that any American can enjoy.
We're not gonna get too bogged down
with the premise that Hollywood is woke,
mainly because we did a whole episode about that,
but to meet them on their terms,
I think the criticism can be distilled down
to the idea that movies,
and more specifically mainstream movies,
should be considered a form of light entertainment
with the primary goal of distracting broad audiences
from their troubles.
And by injecting any political messages into films,
regardless of the lean,
Hollywood is failing to deliver on that promise.
And to an extent, I understand this.
A film like Transformers probably shouldn't have
some profound message about Palestine.
Families don't watch the Minions films
to hear about the next election.
I mean, I'd argue that these types of films
aren't actually doing that, but sure.
In a vacuum, I tend to agree that mainstream entertainment
shouldn't have niche messages in them
if it compromises the stories that they want to tell.
That's the key argument, right?
That these stories are suffering because of these messages.
Bob Iger agrees.
And so the Daily Wire is claiming
that this is exactly their goal, to let films be films,
putting story and entertainment first
and not getting bogged down with convoluted
or obviously partisan messages.
No politics.
And now that I've made a big show of setting that up,
can we get a few clips from Lady Ballers?
You can't tell a bunch of teenage boys not to steal.
Yes, you can, Gary.
It's one of the most important things
you should be teaching them.
It's literally in the Bible.
This is the first time, Mr. Gibson.
What's that? This is the first time. It's the obedience draft, lady. I can't hear anything through it. This is the first time. Our history teacher led us in a moment of silence for all
the workers exploded by the capitalistic system. You should ask your history teacher which side people ran to when the Berlin Wall fell.
That's from literally the first 10 minutes of the movie
that unlike Hollywood, isn't bogged down with politics
or overtly moralizing and instead tells the story
about how the Bible is good and right and socialism is bad
and the trans people are sick.
A totally non-political movie
that almost exclusively stars right-wing podcasters,
pundits, and in one case, a literal politician. Excuse me. Are these seats open?
Never mind. Told you we should have sprung for the box seats.
Hey, what's the joke there? Was there a joke?
What was that?
What was all of that?
The lady glared at him and then he said
he should have gotten box seats and then the scene ends?
Why would they do that?
You had Ted Cruz, America's rash,
and you didn't do anything with him.
Have him say he should have gone to Cancun.
Lean into it, have fun.
How boring.
But listen, we're not gonna talk about
how incredibly bad Lady Ballers is.
We're gonna do that in part two.
Like that's gonna be the entire second video to this.
But right now, I just wanted to highlight
how brazenly silly it is for Jeremy Boring
to pretend like he's making non-political content.
Matt Walsh, who, geez, is also in Lady Ballers,
even called them conservative media in his tweet
about how actors were apparently too scared
to be in this very, very bad, embarrassing film.
I guess no one told him to pretend this was non-political.
And look, we're not gonna spend a lot of time
convincing you that these clearly political things
are in fact political.
But what might surprise you is that some of their content
is in fact non-political at first glance,
specifically their children's content, such as Chipchilla,
which tends to focus on basic moral lessons for kids.
When they do talk about politics, it's fairly harmless.
Like this episode where the kids are president for a day
by wearing a wig.
Well, I have a new rule.
I get to have the wig longer.
What?
No fair.
Don't worry.
I just want to make sure you all stay as happy
as you are right now.
Hey, great point about how presidents
shouldn't be dictators.
Seems like a lesson a few people need to hear.
Unrelated fact, the dad is voiced by Trump
and RFK supporter Rob Schneider.
I don't know, pretty funny that even conservative-led
children's shows teach morals that adult conservatives
don't seem to learn.
And of course, it would be naive to say that Chip Chilla doesn't have any political leaning
when you stand back and look at what the show does
and doesn't do.
The show is commonly accepted
as a conservative rip off of Bluey,
a children's cartoon from Australia.
It's not hard to see why when the animation
and general premise are basically the same.
They're both about a family of gross animals
that go on role-playing adventures to learn or whatever,
who gives a shit?
And even Chip Chilla's theme song
sounds vaguely like Bluey's.
Bluey!
Chilla time!
They really are quite similar.
Of course, the Daily Wire denies this,
their reasoning being that Chip Chilla can't be a quote,
"'Conservative' rip-off of Bluey
because Bluey is already conservative."
You see, it's not a conservative rip-off,
just a normal rip-off.
But whether or not they were trying to copy Bluey,
which they probably were,
I mean, here's the original art style.
Why did they change it to be closer to Bluey?
This is all to say that the one actual difference
between the shows is pretty telling.
Specifically, that in Bluey, the mom has a job
and also likes to play hockey,
while the dad often stays at home with the kids,
otherwise known as communism.
As you can already guess, in Chipchilla,
the father is the singular breadwinner
and the mom cooks and cleans.
Which is all to say that the Daily Wire looked at Bluey,
a show they apparently considered to be conservative,
and decided that it still wasn't conservative enough,
and made the exact same show,
but with a few anti-woke tweaks.
A show that by the way, is apparently kind of bad,
despite not being overtly political,
Chip Chilla is poorly reviewed for being a generally boring
kids show, not harmful, just bland,
like having sex with oatmeal or I guess eating oatmeal,
if you're depraved like that.
But of course, all of the Daily Wire's endeavors
are popularly regarded as bad and derivative.
As we just said,
Chipchilla is very obviously a bluey ripoff.
And then Lady Ballers,
the film that Hollywood is too scared to make,
was already made several times by Hollywood.
Even that Razor ad I showed is, as I mentioned,
trying to pull their tone from Old Spice
and Dollar Shave Club ads.
Run, hide, fight, tear on the prairie.
We've made so many of these death wish style
home invasion films that it's hard to keep track.
Oh, is your Adam Carolla show about a funny conservative guy
who doesn't understand this liberal world
and his geeky quote, gaming streamer son?
Yeah, it's called American Dad.
It's been on since 2005 and many of their writers
are funnier and prettier than your writers.
They're just, they're adding nothing to the zeitgeist.
And by they, I specifically mean The Daily Wire.
Because I'd argue that unlike our video about comedy,
modern conservatives can make movies and TV shows.
Adam Sandler, John Voight, Gary Sinise,
Chris Pratt, Vince Vaughn,
these are all conservative leaning talents
who have done very good work.
Clint Eastwood is an incredible director
and also a right wing wacko who talks to chairs.
Heck, there are movies that I'm not even sure
were made by conservatives
that have extremely conservative messages.
Most comedies about an accidental pregnancy
hinge on the main character refusing to get an abortion
despite being unequipped for parenthood.
Those two movies are both from 2007 for some reason.
I guess we were really into that.
Or remember when Pixar made several films
about how the powerful and strong are being held back
by the mediocre need for equality,
or when the first Kingsman movie told us
that the Democrats were teaming up with the rich elite
to take over the world,
at least until they explode Obama's head at the end.
So no, this is not a video
about how conservatives can't make movies.
They can, and many of them are really good at it.
This is actually a video about how Ben Shapiro
and Jeremy Boring and The Daily Wire specifically
can't make good movies.
Because why not?
We like having fun here.
We're also going to investigate why they're even trying
and why this matters at all.
In fact, after the break, we're gonna dig into just that.
And also, we're gonna tell you
how you can double your brain power
for just $50 or some garbage.
Stay tuned.
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Anywho, hi.
We were talking about how Ben Shapiro and The Daily Wire
have decided to create an alternate,
non-woke version of Hollywood.
And at this point, you might be asking
why they even care at all.
Well, I can actually let Ben Shapiro answer that.
Quote, my mentor, Andrew Breitbart,
always said politics is downstream of culture.
What he meant by this is that more people
are shaped by the culture that surrounds them
than by politics directly.
We consume movies and TV shows.
We get together and discuss the latest in sports.
We join in churches and at universities and at restaurants to discuss our lives.
We swim in a sea of culture.
In large part, we're defined by the culture
in which we swim.
It's a cool metaphor about how culture is like a sea,
but also politics is downstream from it,
I guess, which that's not how seas work, Ben.
Rivers don't flow away from seas, Ben.
But sure, but also can't politics influence culture too?
Why is it a stream at all?
Seems like they're bad at words.
But what Breitbart said and what Ben was trying to say
is that people's politics are often dictated
by the morals in movies and TV and music and art
and culture they absorb.
And that's not entirely wrong.
Of course, as I already pointed out,
there are already plenty of conservatives
making movies and TV, but whatever.
If you're someone like Ben,
who believes he is losing this so-called culture war,
it makes sense to spin off his own entertainment company.
It also explains why the Daily Wire seems obsessed with,
let's say, parodying the aesthetic of mainstream culture.
I mean, our pop culture, all of our movies,
our social media,
they are all run by progressive mentalities.
It's obnoxious.
So we've decided to change that.
Like, we deserve better. We deserve content that is irreverent and fun, but without leftism being shoved down
our throat.
So this show was born.
I'm Brett Cooper, and this is the comment section.
You might be familiar with Brett Cooper.
Or not.
I don't know you.
I'm sure you're nice though.
I also don't really wanna pick on Brett
because she's like 20
and could potentially turn her life around.
But currently she's the host of the Daily Wire's
The Comments section with Brett Cooper,
which is basically a repackaged teen version
of Ben Shapiro's show.
Her mission statement reflects the exact strategy
Ben was talking about.
And heck, who am I to argue with the spawn of America?
After all, Brett appears to be just an everyday young woman
making her scrappy YouTube slash streaming show
from the comfort of her bedroom.
I'm sorry, studio set.
Her bedroom studio set.
It's on a set.
Like they aren't even hiding that it's on a set
made to look like the actress's bedroom.
It's got producers and grips and probably an onset dog.
What are they called?
Best boys?
Best boys.
And my goodness, that is the most cynical,
transparent, executive-brained attempt
to manufacture a youth grassroots movement I've ever seen.
And I've seen everything Democrats do.
Anyway, she's making some hard hitting Gen Z content
like this video about protecting the home
you definitely can afford to buy
and how Elon Musk is cool.
And the Office remake is unfortunately woke.
All the stuff the kids are into.
What makes this particularly embarrassing
is that they clearly don't understand
or care to acknowledge what Twitch streamers actually do
and just distilled it into this aesthetic.
She talks like she's talking to chat,
but like there's no chat, she's not doing anything.
It's a set.
They want to fight this so-called culture war,
so they make a set that looks like a teen's bedroom,
throw up the opposite of bisexual lighting
and tell you it's authentic.
It's pretty insulting.
And much like Lady Ballers or Chipchilla,
it all feels a little like a store brand copy
of a more genuine product.
And a lot of that comes from the fact
that they don't have genuine people to do these things.
Brett Cooper is an actress.
Yes, she's conservative and was apparently a huge fan
of Ben Shapiro before she got the gig.
But a lot of the stuff she's saying doesn't feel organic
or natural to people her age.
And so it all just kind of feels like when your school
principal did a rap about how drugs are bad.
Do we have a clip of that?
Let's look at the stats.
I've got the facts.
My money like Lizzo, my pockets are fat.
Homie, I'm epic, don't be a wap.
Dog is a yarmulke, homie no cap.
I'm gonna stop you right there, Ben.
So I've seen conflicting opinions
about the quality of the Ben Shapiro rap.
Personally, I'm not a rap scholar.
I don't have a fancy doctorate like Sir Mr. Dre.
I do think that if you're going to get Ben Shapiro to rap,
it's not funny or interesting or original
to have a dorky white guy say stuff like homie or dog,
you know, like another joke from 30 years ago.
If you're getting Ben Shapiro to rap,
have him use the language he uses when he speaks
in rap form.
Be clever, write the rhymes, do a good job.
That's what I want to see.
But I'm also guessing that no one deep into rap
can especially relate to the lyrics,
"'You defunded the police, now there's no one to protect you'
or, "'Where are the American flags at?'
Those are, no diggity, some of the lyrics in this song."
The main chorus repeatedly saying, quote,
"'I don't care if I offend you.'"
And like, don't worry.
I honestly don't think you could offend anyone if you tried.
Also, nobody defunded the police, you made that up.
Anyway, cool rap song about how American cops
are actually good by Tom McDonald,
the guy who just moved here from Canada.
See, the issue with trying to manufacture a culture
is that it's manufactured.
Things like rap artists and YouTube streamers
get popular because they're on the fringes.
Young people like to rebel,
to feel like they're remaking the world as they go.
You're not going to really wow them
when you're some 40 year old millionaire
rapping about how cops are good
so that you can drive the culture war
in favor of the even richer billionaires
funding your news outlet.
That shit is just very, very desperate.
And also a number one hit,
which we'll actually get to later.
Of course, it would also be silly to assume
that the only reason Ben Shapiro is making movies
and doing cool rap songs is to win a culture war.
If you recall our video from like 60 years ago,
Ben Shapiro has one of the most transparent
failed writer origin stories ever.
So obvious that even Ben Shapiro wouldn't write it
into a script.
And that guy is terrible.
He was born and raised in godless Los Angeles
to parents who both worked in the woke Hollywood system.
His mother was a TV executive for crying out loud,
which Ben did because despite that nepo baby start, he was completely unable to sell a TV executive for Crying Out Loud, which Ben did because despite that nepo baby start,
he was completely unable to sell a TV pilot
in his later years.
Now, I can't legally say I've read the pilot,
but for some magical reason,
I can tell you that the pilot was not good.
And that's okay.
No one starts out as a good writer.
Have you seen what babies write?
It is absolute dog shit.
And usually when your work gets rejected,
it's wise to figure out why that happened
and improve upon yourself.
Ben went a different direction and wrote an entire book
about how Hollywood was mean to him.
To hear Ben tell it, he was blacklisted by Hollywood
after a producer saw his conservative website.
Perhaps they stumbled on the article he wrote
about how ethnic cleansing is good, who knows?
Point is that Ben Shapiro isn't a bad writer, you see,
but rather he was punished by woke Hollywood
despite his talents.
And while art is subjective, it also sometimes isn't.
And so it is with extreme confidence that I can say
that Ben Shapiro is a pretty bad writer.
If you don't believe me, you can read his fictional novel
about General Brett Hawthorne, a large bear of a man,
saving America from a deadly border crisis.
Hey, Ben, isn't the New York Times liberal trash?
Get their name off your precious non-woke book, Ben.
Anyway, Ben's a bad writer and that's okay.
But what makes Ben, let's say special,
is that despite having very little experience
or positive feedback to his work,
he seems to think he's an expert in cinema and storytelling.
And because he so firmly believes in the importance
of influencing the culture, Ben has spent a lot of time
publicly critiquing popular media,
often using this very authoritative language
as if he's possessed by Roger Ebert.
And ironically, in doing so, he has shown a profound
inability to understand film and TV on a basic level.
For the most part, his opinions are exactly as predictable,
bland, and politically biased as you would expect.
For those of you who can't wait that long,
I'm gonna give my review of the Barbie movie
in the most Oppenheimer fashion.
What the?
Run.
Run.
I could make an entire video about Ben's terrible review of Barbie.
But just to be clear, it's okay to not like a film.
But not liking a film is different than critiquing it.
And Ben really wants us to think
that he's objectively judging movies for their craft,
while coincidentally always hating films
he thinks have left-leaning messages in them.
I was trying to separate this into problems with plot
and problems with character
and problems with the politics of the film,
but they're all intertwined
because the thing is just a mess.
It doesn't make any sense.
I hate to tell you this, Ben,
who is absolutely watching, thanks for that,
but you absolutely can untangle the politics of the movie
from the writing and story and filmmaking.
I mean, you can't, but people can.
The gist of Ben's review is him pointing out
a series of jokes or plot points
that he personally didn't like,
often because he sees them as leftist.
Anytime he tries to critique the film on a technical level,
it becomes painfully obvious
that he simply wasn't paying attention to it.
You might imagine at this point that the way the film is going to go is that Ken and Barbie are
going to have to some sort of agreement about seeing each other as equal human beings.
You might imagine that's where it's wrong. That's not where the film is going to go.
You might have thought that what you were going to get was Ken gets treated with respect
as a person and Barbie gets treated with respect as a person. And that's a better,
nope, wrong. In the end, not to skip ahead, Barbie Lynn just
gets restored and the men are still subservient. That's the best version of the world.
Wow. That would be a huge problem if the film didn't pay off the Ken storyline and
everything went back to how it was at the end. Do we have a clip from the end of Barbie?
I don't think that things should go back to the way that they were.
No Barbie or Ken should be living in the shadows.
They were.
No Barbie or Ken should be living in the shadows.
Right.
They literally say we shouldn't go back to the way things were.
No Barbie or Ken should be living in the shadows at the end of the film.
I'm guessing Ben didn't catch that and was too busy furiously writing notes about how there's a black woman president.
Who's the audience for this? At the reference points in this film, it references variously Marcel Proust.
It references Robert Evans
and the cinematography of The Godfather.
It references 2001, A Space Odyssey.
This is a movie made for moms
and their seven-year-old girls.
Right.
So Ben, a lot of kids' movies
have references to older films
for the parents who you keep mentioning
are in the audience.
Like, you know that.
Are you absolutely furious when you watch Aladdin
and the genie references Ed Sullivan, Peter Lorre,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senor Wences, Walter Brennan,
Groucho Marx, William F. Buckley Jr.,
Cab Calloway, Robert De Niro, Arsenio Hall,
Jerry Lewis, Jack Nicholson, and Rodney Dangerfield?
Are you so, so mad now, Ben?
There's also an entire plot point in Barbie
making fun of guys thinking women don't understand
the Godfather, and that's why it's in the film?
And it's pretty ironic, but not surprising,
that the joke went over your head.
Week one, this thing is gonna clean up
at the domestic box office.
My prediction is going to just absolutely
fall off a cliff after that.
The repeat business on this movie
is going to be non-existent.
Sad trombone.
He's just so predictably wrong about films
to the point that you can guess without looking
which movies he likes and which he doesn't.
Barbie, the Batman, terrible.
Rise of Skywalker, now that's cinema.
Embarrassing.
And ultimately, it just comes down to his feelings
based on his personal politics.
He wants so badly to convince us
that he's some sophisticated cultural critic,
but his opinions are the same as every
person who would buy an anti-woke razor
or anti-woke chocolate.
And that's because,
much like a lot of conservatives right now,
Ben Shapiro is obsessed
with injecting politics into everything he comes in contact with. Again. I was trying to separate
this into problems with plot and problems with character and problems with the politics, but
they're all intertwined because the thing is just a mess. It doesn't make any sense. It must be
exhausting to watch movies like this. And what's fascinating is that his grievances are so clearly emotional and impetuous
that he misses a lot of nuance.
Like, Barbie isn't really the left-wing film
he thinks it is.
It has a lot of commentary about fake corporate wokeness
and men being often overlooked by superficial feminism,
stuff that conservatives often talk about.
And Ben misses it all because he's so fuming
that the Barbie movie dares
to also have a disabled character or whatever.
He did the same thing with Get Out,
a film that criticizes the liberal-leaning tokenization
of black people.
Ben should love that message,
but was too obsessed with the idea of white people
being the villain that he seemingly missed it.
He's so bogged down with his bias and grievances
that he can't enjoy some of the best things
that have been made because his politics simply won't let him.
And also by politics,
I mean that he just gets upset
if a gay or brown character exists.
The biggest problem with the film is not the wokeness.
Yes, there's some woke touches.
You have Catwoman, who is a woman of color,
who is of course good.
And you have the black female mayor who is good.
And you have the black Jim Gordon who is good.
Yeah, great point about how it's woke when black people are good. I mean, a good Jim Gordon? Hell
unlike Batman. And with all those bad white characters like Alfred and Batman. But I don't
think the problem is just that Ben is obsessed with identity politics and anti-woke grievance.
It's actually funnier than that, much more rooted in Ben's personal creative frustration The problem is just that Ben is obsessed with identity politics and anti-woke grievance.
It's actually funnier than that,
much more rooted in Ben's personal creative frustrations.
And I will reveal this to you after our second
and final break, which you will have to unlock
for just four payments of $4 and let's say 50 cents.
Just shove it in the front of your computer
and I'm being told that money doesn't work like that.
Well, fuck you, okay? Fine.
You get the final part of the episode for free, I guess.
But you owe me.
Hey hey hey, it's Katie!
Geez, you know, I've been thinking about that new Dune movie a lot.
It's really cut into my personal life.
Grocery shopping, meal prepping, Who has the time when they're spending hours
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off your first delivery and get your free veggies. Oh, I love me some free veggies.
That's HungryRoot.com slash more news. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you.
That's part of this arrangement.
Hey Ben! Thanks for watching so far.
I know it's been rough for you.
And you know, taking care of your health isn't always easy.
But it should at least be simple.
That's why for the last 40 Ben years, I've been drinking AG1.
You know this Ben, you also do these ads.
It's just one scoop mixed in water once a day, every day.
And it makes me feel totally not woke,
but also energized in the literal sense.
That's because according to AG1,
each serving of AG1 delivers my daily dose
of vitamins, minerals, pre and probiotics, and more.
It's a powerful, healthy habit
that's also powerfully simple.
And unlike Ben's ads for AG1,
I'm gonna actually drink it.
Why don't you drink it, Ben?
Huh? Why don't you drink it?
Why not?
Do you see?
It's so easy and delicious.
What are you afraid of?
You coward.
Anyway, AG1 wants me to say that, quote,
"'If there's one product I had to recommend
"'to elevate your health, it's AG1,
and that's why I've partnered with them for so long.
End of quote.
So if you want to take ownership of your health,
start with AG1, try AG1,
and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3 plus K2
and five free AG1 travel packs
with your first purchase exclusively
at drinkag1.com slash more news.
That's drinkag1.com slash more news.
Check it out Ben, specifically.
Listen, bud, we got a whale here
and all we gotta do is that good long squeeze
on Anikot Steel, all right?
I don't throw darts at a board.
I bet on sure things.
Read Sun Tzu, the art of war.
Every battle is won before it is ever fought.
I just need you to explain to me very simply
what stocks are.
Is it the same as like, like a soup broth?
Well, you know, I didn't think so,
but I did want to check.
Okay, hi, it's that thing again where I notice you
doing some money stuff.
I'm not very liquid right now, but hey, I am rock hard.
Cool you're all still here, especially you, Ben.
Great band practice last week.
We were just talking about how hilariously bad
Ben Shapiro is at understanding movies
despite being obsessed with movies
as a way to win the culture war,
and therefore deciding to make movies,
including a film called Lady Ballers
that we are super going to watch.
And judging by the fact that Ben Shapiro seems to hate
every good movie and loves every bad movie,
it's probably going to be one of those bad movies.
And while it's really easy and fun to explain away
Ben's pop culture grievances with his very obvious bigotry,
because that's what's happening.
It's not the only, let's say, challenge he faces.
In fact, I actually think the main reason
why Ben completely missed the nuance in films like
"'Barbie' and "'Get Out',"
is because Ben just doesn't get nuance,
and you can really see it in another one
of his angry reviews.
Remember that really good Nick Offerman episode
of The Last of Us, the pretty medium fine show?
You know the one.
You're probably unsurprised to learn
that Ben hated that episode because it features the gays.
But in explaining why,
Ben accidentally revealed something
very embarrassing about himself.
Here's the problem with Brokeback Zombie Farm.
One, it's a zombie show.
There are no zombies in this entire episode, like none.
I understand simplistic critique,
but there are no zombies in a zombie show.
This is worth pointing out.
It literally has nothing to do with the plot of the show.
So it turns out that Ben has absolutely no idea
that The Last of Us isn't about zombies.
Yes, zombies are in it,
but the story is mainly about how desperately
we cling to each other,
even in the face of absolute hopelessness.
Also acoustic guitars, lots and lots of acoustic guitars.
But mainly it's about how love makes us do beautiful
and brutal things to ourselves and each other,
which is exactly what that episode is about.
Also in that episode,
that's not about zombies or the apocalypse,
spoilers for this episode I guess,
one of the characters is caught in a zombie trap
and they're attacked by post-apocalyptic marauders.
The setting of zombie apocalypse
was still weighing down on the plot the entire time.
Do you need to see a zombie every 20 minutes
or you'll forget what show you're watching?
Are you asking where Poochie is right now?
Are you a little fucking stupid baby, Ben?
Anyway, my point is saying The Last of Us is about zombies
is like saying that Starship Troopers
is about fighting aliens,
which I guarantee Ben also thinks.
See, this is a larger thing that's been revealed to us
more and more about conservatives
and their apparent lack
of media literacy.
And it's that the same people who keep complaining
that modern films are too woke or too political
seem to have no idea that the movies they watched as kids
were also extremely political.
It's as if they've retained the exact childlike
understanding they had when they first watched those films.
And it's often ridiculous to the point of parody.
I bet you think RoboCop is political.
And did you hear that the obvious civil rights allegory
X-Men is woke now?
Like, come on guys, are you doing a bit?
So of course they think Hollywood has gotten too political
if they don't realize that Hollywood was always political.
I wanna go back to our pal and my band manager,
Jeremy Boring, and something he told the New York Times.
Quote, you could construct my entire worldview
if you just listened to 90s country on a loop,
threw in every song ever recorded by Don Henley,
the CBS miniseries of Lonesome Dove, Braveheart,
The Wrath of Khan, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
It is extremely funny that he would watch a film
about a violent revolution or the dangers of eugenics
and think, well, now there's the good old
non-political films I loved.
They're just so obviously clueless
about what makes a good movie or a good anything.
If you don't believe us,
we will be breaking down the film Lady Ballers
in the next episode to show you how incredibly bad it is,
and spoilers, how much the movie absolutely hates women.
We actually had so much to say about that film
that we had to split it into a separate episode.
Sorry.
This attempt to create a competing non-woke culture
is just so embarrassing and transparent,
and as I already said,
apparently results in multiple successes.
As we said at the start of this,
they have a ton of subscribers.
That movie Lady Ballers was, according to them, a big hit.
But why?
Or for that matter, why was Ben Shapiro's rap a hit?
Well, it's actually not complicated.
And it's ultimately the same reason why Fox News
has been the number one watched station for decades.
And also why that Sound of Freedom movie did well.
It's simple, you probably already know it.
And it's that since ultra right wing conservatives
have decided that mainstream entertainment and news is bad,
they have completely isolated themselves from it.
And so of course, the few things they do create
get highly popularized.
And despite what they say,
that's specifically because of the politics.
Nobody's gonna be listening to the facts rap
a week after its release,
but they will make it number one on its first day
in order to culturally signify.
Going all the way back to Chipchilla,
do you think it's a coincidence
that their least political content
also gets the worst audience reviews?
While all their overtly political stuff
is beloved by their fans.
And not only does the Daily Wire know this,
but they're banking on it.
There is a war coming
in which all secrets will be revealed.
You're alive.
Are you?
Her name is Snow White.
Yes, that is the Daily Wire's extremely bad looking
Snow White adaptation, which I'm guessing
will be a huge hit with their fans.
The trailer features some of the worst
green screen imaginable in what appears to be
a knockoff version of that gritty one we already did.
That film was made and announced specifically
in response to Disney casting a half-Columbian woman
in their Snow White adaptation,
something that Ben shockingly didn't like.
It's Snow White, not Snow Half White,
not acceptable to Ben.
And going back to how everything they make
appears to be some kind of derivative copy
of something that already exists,
my suspicion is that this is exactly the business model.
Because literally everything The Daily Wire has made
was not only created specifically out of spite,
but proudly sold as that.
Our country's in trouble.
Conservatives are being canceled by Hollywood,
the media, universities, and now Harry's Razors.
Head over to IHateHarrys.com
and pre-order your Founders Series razor
and shaving cream set today.
Remember that shitty razor ad?
That entire product was founded to spite another company.
That Snow White movie, the children's programming,
it's all specifically marketed as a way to stick it
to the woke mob.
And I think we need a name for this.
I'm gonna call it Grievance Media.
Grievia, that sounds like a sugar substitute.
We can workshop it and maybe sell anti-woke sugar.
It's a bitter fan fiction is the point.
And when you realize that's their entire business model,
you may also realize that part of that model
is also declaring everything that isn't theirs is woke.
It's not just the Daily Wire doing it.
Elon Musk is in the middle of campaigning
against the wokeness of every AI company except for Grok.
How convenient that all AI is bad but his.
And thanks to the fact that wokeness
is just this broad concept for racists to glom onto,
you can basically slap the label on anything,
especially your competitors.
Are you a used car salesman?
Why not put out an ad saying
that all the other salespeople are woke?
I guarantee it'll work.
Because it's really working for the Daily Wire.
They are one of the only media companies that seems to be doing well.
And they have this grift down to a science.
They have their big quotes, journalism and pundit division declare something as woke.
And sure enough, their entertainment branch will put out a non-woke version to sell.
Also, it'll star those pundits.
It's very obvious and insulting.
And perhaps if you've been falling for it so far,
you should stop.
Because while their claim is that politics
is downstream from culture,
I actually think their real motive
is a lot funnier and sillier than that.
Remember how I said that Brett Cooper,
upcoming star of Snow White,
was an actress before she got hired by the Daily Wire,
or how Ben Shapiro
originally tried to write TV.
Well, they aren't the only ones.
That was, wow.
Hey now, that's Michael Knowles doing some gay ass sex scene.
You know, the guy who called for the eradication
of transgenderism that is also featured in Lady Ballers.
And wouldn't you know it, Knowles was a struggling actor.
He did a lot of student films and shorts.
Oh, he got a walk on in the Nick, good for him.
But of course, what ultimately got his name out there
was pandering to the far right and gushing over Ted Cruz.
Steven Crowder also tried to be an actor
before going into right-wing grifting.
Look at that headshot!
He was a background extra
in the hit Rennie Harlan film, The Covenant.
It explains a lot about that guy
who just loves to dress up, specifically in drag.
Boy, he's really gotta be fuming
about that lost role in Lady Ballers.
Ah, you should have taken the deal, Steven!
You could have been a, well, not a star, but you could have been in Lady Ballers, ah, you should have taken the deal, Steven. You could have been a, well, not a star,
but you could have been in Lady Ballers.
And then of course there's our boy, Jeremy Boring.
Like those other dips, Boring tried working
in the film industry and ultimately failed.
He's friends with Zachary Levi, Shazam!
And they had a company together
literally called Coattails Entertainment.
His first movie as a writer was called Spiral
and was a flop.
He also had acting aspirations during this time
and moved to LA specifically to follow that dream
of being an actor.
But in the end, he would meet Ben Shapiro,
also an aspiring writer,
and join forces to create The Daily Wire.
And in doing so,
Boring would have to face a terrifying reality.
In our partnership and our friendship,
basically the assumption was I was the business guy
and he was going to be the talent
because he'd always wanted to be a director
and he came to LA to be an actor.
And after the interview, he called me up and he said,
"'We have this completely backwards.
"'I'm the business guy and you're the talent.'"
Imagine how uncharismatic you have to be
that Ben Shapiro is the talented one.
Can we get a clip of the talent at work?
Guys, I'm getting paid like 50 bucks to be here.
I don't care.
Oh, way to struggle out that one line, Ben.
Yes, that's Ben in Lady Ballers.
Yes, Ben is in Lady Ballers.
Every right-wing pundit is in this movie
because they secretly want to be in movies.
And all these freaks realize
that much like that South Park episode
where they become a Christian band,
the bar for entertainment is so much lower
if you make it specifically for conservatives.
Gutfeld in point.
Grievance media doesn't have to be very good
or funny or memorable
because the audience will like it out of spite.
It's kind of like if, I don't know,
like if a bunch of basketball players pretended to be trans
and played women's sports
because they thought it was easier to do.
To be clear, I don't accept or believe that premise,
but that would be an apt metaphor
for this thing that I'm describing.
Anti-woke products might be the laziest
and most effective modern grift right now.
And they are objectively bad.
And so everything we've talked about brings us to
Lady Ballers, a sports comedy written and directed by
and starring Jeremy Boring and produced by Ben Shapiro.
The culmination of their claims that Hollywood is too woke.
This is their big response to that.
And more importantly, their big chance to prove
that they are actually very good at making movies.
Critics disagree, but of course the film does
have a 90% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes
because to hear them tell it,
the professional critics are actually biased leftists
and it's actually a good and funny movie
and people genuinely like it regardless of politics.
When you look at a movie like Lady Ballers,
and I think Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boring have said
The Daily Wire set out to make a movie
that only The Daily Wire can make,
when you look at an audience review score of 95%,
a lot of people have come out and said,
well, that's just because everyone who thinks
that men shouldn't play a women's sports went in and voted.
Well, it's like, well, one, that should tell you something.
And two, even if we got everyone who agrees
with like the political or cultural element of it,
you could only get up to like 75 or 80%.
At some point, it's just, it has to be a good movie
if you're relying on statistics like that.
See, if it was 70%, then sure,
that's all just political reviews.
But higher than that, it must be that the movie
is actually good and funny and well-made.
In fact, they are so confident of that
that they're totally open to any objective review
of the film.
I'd be interested to read that.
I'd actually be interested in someone watching the movie
who doesn't agree with us,
and just analyzing it from a creative, artistic standpoint.
And I'd like to hear what they,
I'm not afraid of, I don't think any of us are afraid
of feedback and critical feedback.
Yeah, I would love that.
Good to hear.
Hey, I just got an idea.
Let's do that.
The thing he said, me do thing.
In part two of this video,
we're going to review Lady Ballers,
the totally non-politically charged comedy
that is universally liked by everyone
and not just hardcore Daily Wire and conservative fans.
That's right, an entire episode about that one film.
Aren't you excited?
Will it be as bad as their anti-woke razors and chocolate?
Will it protect women?
Or maybe say something else about women?
The excitement is too much to bear.
Look how excited you are, but you gotta stay tuned
and it'll be in 3D.
But, oh, coming at you!
But not like conservative 3D.
This will be a special non-woke 3D.
And to see it, you gotta get our Some More News
dimension glasses.
Venmo, I don't know, like $4,000 to Some More News
and we'll, something will happen.
Man, I'm not good at this.
Okay, please just give me money.
Ben, I know you're still there.
All right, give me money, Ben.
I need my scratchers, Ben.
Listen, listen, listen, listen.
This is a stick up.
Give me all your money right now or I'll...
Just a couple of bucks.
Please.
Anyway, to be continued.
One dollar.
Ben.
Come on.
Wait for band practice.
Coming, Ben!
Oh, my glasses are broken.
Also, my Jeremy's razors are all broken.
I didn't buy Jeremy's razors.
Why would I do that?
Thanks for watching the show.
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