A House Divided
Candace OWeNS Ben Shapiro with FACTS and LOGIC!
“The time has come,” the Wire said,
“To talk of many things:
Of Jews — and news — and genocide —
Of kibbutzim — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether Christ is king.”1
Back on March 22, the aptly named Jeremy Boreing [sic], co-founder and co-CEO of conservative media monolith The Daily Wire, confirmed via X what everyone already knew:
Except, well, it did not end there because Boreing and fellow founder Ben Shapiro have spent the ensuing weeks continuously assailing their newly-former friend and coworker with one of the most innovative attack lines that I’ve seen from the hallowed halls of the Righteous Right:
They called her a bigot for stating that “Christ is king.”
For those unfamiliar with Candace Owens, she is a spitfirebrand2 who burst onto the right-wing political scene in the mid-2010s following erstwhile left-leaning ventures and fallout from her doomed (and ill-advised) cyberbullying database, Social Autopsy.
In fact, the attacks on her resulting from the latter brouhaha were largely the catalyst for her renouncing her left-wing affiliation.
“I became a conservative overnight,” Owens told political hack David Rubin back in 2017. “I realized that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls.”
While I contend you obviously have racists and trolls across the political spectrum, I heartily agree with Candace’s assertion that "loving liberals” are overwhelmingly the most vile, vicious, racist trolls skulking anywhere near the mainstream discourse. In fact, I talked about this phenomenon when it was clearly on display following Dr. Cornel West’s apostasy from the Church of the Loving Liberal. I highly recommend giving that article a read as well, as it remains tragically relevant. Candace even makes an appearance!
Following Owens’s meteoric rise amongst the commentariat, she was recruited to The Daily Wire in 2021 amid much fanfare. She was jubilantly welcomed into their quirky, little family. Oh, what fun we all had! What could possibly go wrong? I mean, watch all this fun-having in this video here!
As great as that first day was, I was particularly struck by the wholesome, self-effacing antics of the whole DW family putting together a grab bag of chicken-fried festivities for Candace on her birthday. (Ornery ‘90s sitcom dad Matt Walsh even smiles. A little.)
In retrospect, Ben wearing the black hat and Candace wearing the white (Off-white? Beige? Close enough.) hat was a nice piece of foreshadowing. Part of me believes the real reason Ben cowboy-booted Candace to the curb had nothing to do with his throbbing Zionism, and everything to do with a long-festering grudge born the day he was humiliatingly forced to square dance in a stupid cowboy hat and dungarees in order to shoot Candace’s birthday hoedown video.
Either way, who could have imagined at the time that Candace would go on to break Ben’s heart. His achy-breaky heart.
Was some of that Get Along Gang routine just PR and photo ops? Sure. But, earlier I used the phrase “friend and coworker” advisedly. The Daily Wire gang was indeed largely constituted of people who were friendly prior its formation. The videos above showcase that comradery. It imbued much of their community and their content, right down to the business-casual, decanter-and-humidor, “Backstage” discussions for which they’d periodically gather. Candace’s joining was not treated like some savvy corporate hire: it was treated like she had joined the family.
And as we all know…
How do I know all of this, you ask? Why did I say “Oh, what fun we all had!”
Easy. I lived it.
I was a Daily Wire subscriber back in the early 2020s, both before and during Candace’s time there. Back then, in what seems like a millennia ago, I was living in Southern California and working in the video game industry: ground zero for the Wokexplosion that had just been detonated over the Zeitgeist. Given how far I have come since then, how much my views have changed, sometimes it is hard to even recall my life in “the before times.” My recollections are almost like watching a movie of someone else’s life. Or what I imagine past life regression feels like. Yet, in other ways, it seems like only yesterday. The confusion, the rage, the fear, the pain… it is all still so vivid. Perhaps, as a sexy elf boy once said: “For me, the grief is still too near.”
I was blindsided by that Wokexplosion: the COVID panic, the toilet paper shortages, the mask madness, the lockdowns, St. George’s martyrdom, the race riots, the Transanity, the “White Fragility,” the Trump Derangement Syndrome, Tiger King, the “vaccine” cult… I was unprepared for all of it, at least all at once. But, like Candace, it was the reactions from “friends and coworkers” that most surprised me. People whom I thought were friends shunned me the instant I posted to Facebook (Remember Facebook? Pepperidge Farm remembers.) merely questioning the logic of rushing out to mosh in mass protests on behalf of Racial Justice, Inc.™ when only a day earlier they’d been shrieking that leaving the house was committing genocide-by-contagion. And that was nothing compared to how I was besieged by so-called friends when I expressed skepticism toward the Savior Sacrament of “Vaccination.” (That is, of course, once Supreme Leader Biden told his flock to “roll up their sleeves” and save the world. They adamantly opposed the shot when their cult leaders had ordained that to be the correct opinion.)3
One of the first articles I ever wrote was inspired by my confused and bitter observations during that time, which I later re(culturally)appropriated as a Black History Month article once I blew up like Firestone tires.
Like a lot of you, it felt like I just woke up one day in a different world, a parallel universe… a Woke nightmare. It was like living in an open-air lunatic asylum. I know I can be prone to purple prose and artistic liberties, but I’m not exaggerating here. It felt like the world went insane.
Because it did.
It did go insane.
And we are still living in the wake of that Woke lunacy today. In the ruins of that authoritarian madness. That putrid cocktail of mysophobia and Munchausen syndrome, neo-racism and the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Back when this was a newly coalescing catastrophe, The Daily Wire crew was pushing back against the draconian “vaccine” mandates. They were standing up to the shrieking lunacy of the Tranz Agenda that seemed to have spontaneously sprung, fully formed, into existence like a deformed Athena from the skull of some demented Zeus. Heck, some of their movies were even pretty good. For all of its faults, I will be forever grateful to The DW for what it did back then, along with others who showed extraordinary courage, compassion, and perspicacity in daring to be “first against the wall,” people like the wonderful Bret Weinstein,
When I stumbled onto The Daily Wire, I was elated to find a news outlet that admitted its bias, while daring to tell at least some truth in an age of lies. The Daily Wire provided me, of all people, welcome shelter from the lacerating winds of the Woke sandstorm raging across the countryside. ME! Then largely a bleeding-heart liberal/lefty/progressive who had supported Comrade Bernie and only days earlier had been defending Andrew Yang’s UBI proposal and Jimmy Dore’s push for a Medicare for All (M4A) vote against attacks from my supposed fellow lefty friends!4 And for the record, I still support UBI and M4A in a country that isn’t run by power-mad sociopaths who will clearly weaponize these programs to control the masses and crush dissent, but we are ruled over by such abominations, and so I have tabled my support for such things here indefinitely. This is why we can’t have nice things.
And so it was that I tumbled down the the dreaded “PiPeLinE tO Da ALt RiGht!” Perhaps a bit like Candace Owens had before me. Now, I even oppose liberal tentpoles like censorship, disarmament, infanticide, forever wars, and forced experimental injections! (Four of which I never supported anyway, but don’t tell anyone.) Look at that list; I’m practically a Groyper for Christ’s sake!
Speaking of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that brings us back to the subject at hand.
Apparently, The Daily Wire stars who spent years haranguing everyone about the superiority of the West’s foundational Judeo-Christian principles and boasting of their own pious bona fides were only interested in the first half of that construction because they were aghast at Candace’s brazen, baseless, bigoted assertion that “Christ is king.” Dear God, think of the children! After all, Matthew 7:6 tells us pearls are not to be cast before swine: they are to be clutched!
The Daily Wire’s top brass’s assault on Candace Owens showed their true colors:
Ben Shapiro ripping her behind her back on his Love Boat, white suit, dinner tour.
Jeremy Boreing labeling her a “blasphemer and an antisemite [sic] and a piece of crap” for saying “Christ is king,” after his tortured cornbread analogy attempting to justify his accusations. To quote the great Chris Rock, “Cornbread: there ain’t nothing wrong with that.” And a somewhat odd tack from the man who has crafted an entire persona around his “god king—lowercase ‘g’, lowercase ‘k’” sobriquet. Mocking God? A-OK. Professing faith in God? Blasphemer. Got it.
Even host and author Andrew Klavan, whose work I generally respect and enjoy, jumped on the dogpile and then jumped the shark, leading him—like Saul on the road to Damascus—to this blindingly epiphanic syllogism: Candace tweeting “Christ is king” evinces “a hatred of Jews, this level of hatred of Jews is a hatred of God, is a hatred of Christ—it’s a hatred of Jesus Christ!” Such logic! Saying you love Christ means you hate Christ! War is peace! Freedom is slavery! I swear, watching an intelligent guy like Klavan stumble through that formulation felt like watching the witch trial sequence in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (There are no “E”s in Klavan by the way.)
Fellow show hosts Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh seem content to cower under their desks like a bomb raid drill, despite their endless evangelizing of Christian values and years of cordial co-working with Candace (see videos above). “Swarthy Mike” Knowles in particular, an ardent Catholic, is the actual godfather to Candace’s child, yet he could only seem to muster a sheepish, lukewarm non-comment on the issue. Walsh, in turn, may want to spend less time asking people what a woman is and more time asking himself what a Christian is.
The most recent recruit to The Daily Wire familia, Dr. Jordan Peterson, the Lobster King himself (and I’m not just talking about the man’s ability to tear through a basket of Cheddar Bay biskies, bucko!) also seems conspicuously quiet on the matter. He certainly is no stranger to lecturing about the truth and the beauty of the Christian myth, along with the importance of free speech.
Not a good showing, boys.
Their behavior is even worse contrasted with Candace’s, as she actually walked their talk.5 She was the only host to dare to have on my beloved Alex Jones (So dreamy!), to go after the CIA pedophile ring story, and to take a strong stand against Big Boy Ben’s (and Trump’s) Beloved Jab,6 among other topics. Candace—a very young woman grappling with these complex topics in real-time in front of the whole world while juggling life as a newly-wed with three successful pregnancies within this time frame—has still shown more curiosity, courage, and cojones than virtually any one of her peers in that space.7 She was also The DW’s most strident defender when fellow conservative commentator Stephen Crowder trashed them, and this is how they repay her: petty, unprofessional attacks on her way out of the building. Speaking of which, Crowder is still a terminally unfunny, sleazy scumbag, but it turns out he may have been right about The DW.
You may say, “The Daily Wire can do what they want, private company, yada yada yada.” And, yup, sure can! I agree. Doesn’t make it any better of a look to me.
“Candace crossed a line when she defended DUh hamASS TerRorisTz!!@!” Nope, she didn’t defend Hamas, for starters. She condemned genocide, spoke to people from various sides of the debate (acknowledging she may have some things wrong), and occasionally cited Scripture in some tweets.
By the way, have we ever gotten a satisfactory explanation for how a herd of Hamas savages managed to handglide over the most secure, militarized border wall on Earth, on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, and perpetrate abominable atrocities despite the world’s most sophisticated intelligence agencies and the IDF admitting to foreknowledge of an attack? Or is it anti-Semitic to ask that, too? I did a deep dive on that likely false flag along with the current linguistic and legal war being waged around Zionism and anti-Semitism in the article below. Give it a read!
In that same article, I also presciently called out “Blindside Ben”—ol’ “Sneak Attack Shapiro”—for that initial potshot he had taken at Candace. To quote a wise and handsome man:
We’ve seen any number of cases where the Republican Right has once more succumb to the siren song of censorship, wielding fear and feelings to seize power and push agendas.
Speaking of feelings, most heartbreaking of all, is the freefall into madness of my beloved Ben Shapiro. (So dreamy!) Despite the Neocon pundit extraordinaire assuring me at every opportunity that “facts don’t care about my feelings,” he has spent nearly every waking moment since October 7th rapidly reciting feeling-fueling diatribes and rushing out specious stories in defense of killing Palestinian civilians. The only time he took a break was to attend a swanky dinner in his Love Boat cosplay where he… OK, he once again launched into a feeling-fueled diatribe, but this time it was to bash his fellow Daily Wire political commentator, Candace Owens, for asking questions and, apparently, for her “absolutely disgraceful” insistence that “there is no justification for a genocide.”
With heavy heart, I must join my old friend Tucker Carlson in humbly suggesting that it may be time for Ben to consider finding a new slogan.
Hate to say I told you sooooooo…. alright♪
You may not like Candace or her views—your prerogative, there are thing I don’t agree with her on, either—but watching The Daily Wire leadership, who “championed” free speech and their “diversity of views,” which included Candace herself when she was challenging the “correct” narratives by their standards, immediately devolve into feelings-over-facts attacks based on “muh racism!” like the same Woke weenies they have been battling admirably for years is a bit rich, if you ask me. And if they want to put to rest the old bromide from an actual anti-Semite, the loathsome Kevin Strom, correlating rulers and criticism (oft misattributed to Voltaire), then this ain’t it, chief. Though a good friend has pointed out that Strom’s proclamation falls apart pretty quickly under scrutiny anyway. For example, you can’t really criticize retarded people nowadays either, but it’s not like we are ruled by retar—OK, you know what, never mind. Just forget I brought it up.
Bear in mind, these attacks are coming from the same Jeremy Boreing who flatly stated in November that he would not fire Candace (or any host) for disagreeing with him and Ben, assuring everyone:
… we would not fire Candace because of another thing we have in common - a desire not to regulate the speech of our hosts, even when we disagree with them. Candace is paid to give her opinion, not mine or Ben’s. Unless those opinions run afoul of the law or she violates the terms of her contract in some way, her job is secure and she is welcome at Daily Wire.
Then, he fired Candace because she disagreed with him and Ben.
And it wasn’t just Jeremy and Ben who were deeply wounded by Candace’s horrific anti-genocide, pro-Jesus stance. One of her most notable detractors was a creature with the hysterical moniker of Rabbi Shmuley (a name that would not be out of place in a Mel Brooks comedy), and their feud led to this gem:
That is a real tweet.
And here I bet you thought that picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger with his Elrond’s Covid Council of Domestic Donkeys took the cake! Well, it’s got some serious competition now. Every word in that tweet is a self-contained, cold-fusion, dumpster detonation. It’s actually quite impressive.
You may roll your eyes at Candace’s tradcon take on kosher sex products (That is impossible to type without laughing.), but to attribute it to anti-Semitism is just amazing. Remember how all us wisenheimers pointed out that the Left was devaluing meaningful words like “racist” and “Nazi” by constantly, indiscriminately spamming them at everyone who pissed them off like an Adderalled tween emptying SMG clips in Fortnite? Yeah, well, the Right said, “Hold my Manischewitz,” and now we’re getting it from the other side.
Make no mistake: anti-Semitism is bad. Very bad. It does little to help us combat it when people haphazardly lob that accusation at anyone who won’t buy their daughter’s lube.8
In the same way that the Looney Left has been taking a page from Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” skit, proclaiming all dissent the deeds of dastardly “phobists,” the Righteous Right is also once again running the same play.
“Now why wouldn’t someone like my daughter’s kosher sex products? Oh, I don’t know. Could it be… anti-Semitism!?”
In many ways, this is really just a return to the Religious Right of my youth, as I discuss at length here, except we swapped the New Testament for the Old. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Pardon my French. Still, growing up during the Bible-thumping, Jesus-loving, Satanic panic era that inspired Carvey’s “Church Lady” character, it is shocking to watch the mere mention of Buddy Christ, The Big J, face this kind of vitriol from some members of the Right.
“Oh, Apollo!” I hear some of you saying. (Yes, you talk out loud. To your monitor. Which is kind of weird, but I love you anyway. I just realized how very Ryan Reynolds these 4th-wall breaks are.) “Thou hast been trolled! Shmuley is just one, kooky provocateur. Soooo what?”
Yes, he is that, to be sure. He certainly does not speak for, or represent, all Jewish people. But, kooky though his antics may be, the underlying line of reasoning is not unique to him.
The most extraordinary, elucidating, and excruciating example of this came during a debate Candace held with another rabbi, one Mr. Rabbi Barclay. Candace’s clearly anti-Semitic attack on Rabbi Shmuley (Haha! Shhhhhmuuuuuuley!) prompted M.C. Barclay here to basically pen a maniacal diss track about Candace, spitting bars like: “... when we look at her life and words from her victim lawsuit at 17 to now, one thing is clear: Candace Owens hates Jews.”
BARS! They don’t call him M.C. BAR-Clay for nothing, baby! Ain’t no party like a West Bank party ‘cause a West Bank party don’t stop♪
So, when Candace kindly invited this fourth Beastie Boy to join her for a civil discussion about his mad ravings, of course, everything went swimmingly.
Just kidding! No it didn’t. It was a complete disaster!
If this already-too-long article was twice as too-long, I could still not adequately convey how vile and disgusting Rabbi Barclay comes across here. Sure, he seems to me to be a liar and a bully, but those are a dime a dozen. His true repugnance arises from his incessant, condescending, unctuous, manipulative browbeating of Candace—all while plaintively bleating about his own gloriously unique victimhood. It is nauseating.
If you have the stomach for it though, or conversely if you just accidentally ingested poison and need an ipecac, I suggest giving it a watch to understand the kind of insidious, gaslighting garbage that is being heaped upon Candace Owens. It’s like watching Dancer in the Dark, Requiem for a Dream, and Martyrs back-to-back. (I had a different, hyphenated, three-word phrase at the end there for the Requiem fans, but this is a G-rated Substack.) If you don’t side with Candace by the end of that, then we are just built different. I like Candace and I root for her. But, I can’t repeat this enough: it is not even about liking her or agreeing with her. It is just about being honest and defending someone who is being actively, unduly targeted for social obliteration… by the supposed Left and the so-called Right.
The embedded video above should be appropriately timestamped, but there can be issues with that on Substack, so just in case, around the 29:10 mark M.C. Barclay; reeling like Clarence at the end of 8 Mile from Candace’s real-time, stone-cold dismantling of his fatuous diss track; attempts to repel the savage onslaught of impossible “gotcha” questions—like “Is it sad when an innocent Palestinian child dies?” I mean, how could anyone possibly navigate that moral labyrinth!?9—with the salvo below:
“Candace. I cry every day. And it’s not just for Israel. And this is one of the things you clearly do not understand. The same that most don’t, who are anti-Semites, you don’t get it. I cry for what is going on in Israel, but I cry just as much for what we are forced to do. Golda Meir [former Israeli prime minister] had a great quote. She said that one day we may be able to forgive them for killing Israeli children; we will never be able to forgive them for kill—for making them—for making us kill their children.”
He didn’t exactly stick the landing there, as he Freudian slipped all over the thin ice he was skating on. His stammering riposte harkened back to Monkey King G-Dubs’s classic attempt to regale us with some of that good ol’ fashioned, down home, Tennessee-Texas wisdom. So, allow me to take a stab at it for him:
“We will never be able to forgive them for making us kill their children.”
Oh, sorry, I forgot the Virgin Mary is probably anti-Semitic too.
Regardless, that strikes me as some serious “YOU MADE ME DO THIS TO YOU!” abusive husband energy that the good rabbi is channeling there. The entire “discussion” is like that: him viciously attacking Candace while crying about how much pain he is in. Just like with Strom’s infamous quotation, if we want to put to rest ugly, old, anti-Semitic bromides—in this case a certain Polish proverb—then this ain’t it, chief. And to be fair, this tactic is far from unique to any particular group anyway; it is the modus operandi of most modern psycho-political warfare across the illusory aisle.
Even I don’t have the stomach to go scrolling back through that video to find the part where the good rabbi subjects Candace to this seemingly interminable struggle session where he tries to make her say the October 7th attack (or maybe the Holocaust. It was one or the other; he succeeded in conflating them in my mind.) was a singular evil unlike any other in all of human history… and thus justified any and all atrocity the nation of Israel would commit in perpetuity. OK, I added that last part for him.
Maybe all of that is why PJ Media, where Barclay’s unhinged hit piece first appeared, actually retracted his insane article.
In this day and age, a retraction like that is a veritable miracle from the Virgin Mary herself. And you do love the Virgin Mary, don’t you?
A bit of inside baseball for a moment. I had intended to get this article out much sooner, but various delays arose. At one point, I had even considered scrapping it entirely, but a few factors stayed my hand.
I endeavor to write articles in such a way that, though they may springboard off of current events, they explore related concepts and anecdotes in ways that keeps them relatively evergreen.
I had already typed a lot and didn’t want some of the jokes to go to waste.
The Daily Wire just kept fucking up. Pardon my French.
OK, it was mainly that third one. And the second one.
Longtime readers will know that I love Handsome Boy Glenn Greenwald, and it was while perusing his work that I stumbled on a development that inspired me to return to finish this article.
Undoubtedly heartened by how well those discussions had been going, on April 5th Candace would go on to invite her old line dance partner, Buckaroo Ben, to a friendly debate about the new-style anti-Semitism.
Long story short, it still hasn’t happened. However, what Glenn turned up was that while The DW camp was disingenuously blaming Candace for derailing the blockbuster event the same DW had furtively obtained a gag order preventing Candace from discussing any of the relevant topics in the first place.
Not a good showing, boys.
“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.”
— Jesus H. Christ
On one level, this is a tale of a beleaguered young woman finding herself persecuted now by both fractious factions of our so-called society.10 From coworkers, friends, even family. My struggle (poor choice of words) my tribulations during the height of Covidmania inclined me toward empathy for her situation, and that has only grown as I, too, have since been bounced from other prospective landing pads for continuing to speak my mind or ask unwelcome questions. I lament this momentous age where newly-minted ideological purity trumps time-forged interpersonal bonds.
On another level, though, this is the tale of a house divided.
“A house divided.” It has become shorthand for the inevitable collapse of any group that succumbs to internecine strife.
The origin of this phrase is, appropriately enough, the Bible, specifically the Book of Matthew 12:22 through 12:28.
22Then one was brought to Him who was demon-possessed, blind and mute; and He healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw. 23 And all the multitudes were amazed and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”
24 Now when the Pharisees heard it they said, “This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.”
25 But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. 26 If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? 27 And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. 28 But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.
I’ve heard it said that the Left, collectivist by nature, is good at circling the wagons when the chips are down, and the Right, individualist by nature, has a harder time doing so. This seemingly simple observation could spawn another hundred pages of analysis about the fractures and factions within the respective parties, as well as what really constitutes “the Left” and “the Right” in modern America. I’ll leave that for another day.
For now, I will content myself to pluck a piece of lower hanging fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and simply point out that the Religious Right has a real issue on its hands if we continue to see this push to transubstantiate the hyphen in “Judeo-Christian” into a minus sign.
After all, as the great Christian theologian George Carlin famously preached:
“Christ didn’t come to Earth to give us the willies; he came to help us out!”
Amen to that, and God bless us. Every one.
[If you enjoyed this article, for the love of God, please consider clicking the button below and sending me money so I can buy a single, lukewarm cup of overpriced coffee thanks to Bidenflation. Muchos gracias.]
This is a parody of Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” which first appeared in his 1871 novel Through the Looking Glass and can be read in its original form here. Perhaps this very article can serve as a glass, darkly, by which to discern the shape of unfolding events.
I took some artistic license here to fuse “spitfire” and “firebrand” together to make a new word describing someone who is both. They got together like lamb and tuna fish.
I would be terribly remiss not to also express my eternal gratitude and respect for the actual friends and coworkers who not only refrained from joining the mob, but actually went out of their way to also speak the truth and even defend me, often in absentia, despite real personal and professional repercussions. You know who you are ;) Thank you. We certainly have been vindicated.
Yes, I am admitting to having been both a Daily Wire subscriber AND a Bernie Sanders supporter IN THE SAME ARTICLE! It has been nice having you as a subscriber. I wish you well, even as I can see you hastily clicking “Unsubscribe” there.
This is not a real phrase, but I like the idea of using to it describe when someone “talks the talk,” but someone else actually “walks the walk” that the prior’s posturing should require. Besides, you can read real words all over the place! You come here for the freshest, homebrew phrases you can’t get in stores!
There a few things on YouTube as revolting and bizarre as watching videos of shitlib cringelords like David Pakman, whose entire existence is shrieking about how Trump is “literally” Hitler and Lord of Lies and will kill us all, basically climaxing while praising that same evil-incarnate Fat Orange Retard for defending The Holy Clotshot against infidel Candace.
Disclaimer: the following footnote is just some stream-of-consciousness meta-musings that I shall later neither avow nor disavow, so feel free to skip it. You were warned.
Yes, I realize Candace’s critics will say that part of her problem is precisely the vehemence and celerity with which she rushes to assert her, at times, incipient, jejune views on complex topics. I don’t think that is an entirely unfair critique. I do, however, find that Candace does a great deal of research on topics, candidly shares relevant personal experiences, and is willing to openly engage with any person or viewpoint (perhaps to her own detriment), which is more than we can say about most people in that space. Of course, she still gets things wrong; we all do. I am also aware that some people think she is simply a dunce, a liar, a bigot, or a grifter who brought all of this on herself anyway, and may even be laughing all the way to the bank. That’s fine. I respectfully disagree overall, while acknowledging she can be snide and calculating too, and that may include her infamous tweet to some degree. Her role in the failed attempt to seemingly offload her husband’s failing social network, Parler, onto her pal Kanye West was suspect, in my opinion, as was her promotion of the farcical “Freedom Phone.”
I also expect some will say: “Who cares about some rando, online, ditzy, right-wing talking head anyway, you palaverous simp!” While I admire their vocabulary, their sentiment strikes me as similar to reading Aesop’s fable about “The Tortoise and the Hare” and then complaining, “Who cares about some stupid turtle and bunny anyway!? What is this, a PETA meeting? Boooooriiiiing!” Reflecting on various characters and the situations they encounter—real or fictional—and extrapolating logical lessons and emotional resonances from them is one of the most fundamentally didactic endeavors upon which we can embark. I find that true in the tale of “The Woman and The Wire” here, and, God willing, we were able to explore those elements and have a bit of fun along the way.
Zooming out from Candace for a moment, if you’ve read my Elon Trilogy, you know that I resist applying purity tests or absolutes with people in general. I don’t need them to be perfect or right about everything (whatever that would even look like) to find their views worth considering or speech worth defending. To paraphrase the great Scott Benzel, I don’t place faith in human beings or in the new regime. I loathe the modern, Manichean “Avow! Disavow!” game. Frankly, I am biased by a visceral repugnance at “cold and timid souls” taking potshots from the stands at the man—or woman—who “strives valiantly” in the arena, regardless of how adroit or ultimately successful the latter may prove in their striving. I am not saying that all detractors are such souls by any means, nor that one does not invite a certain degree of scrutiny by choosing to enter said arena. And, of course, I am not above such behavior as well, at times. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. The muses are delightful, but they are capricious. And with that, I’ve spent enough time arguing with my inner Cathy Newman for one article.
It should go without saying, but just in case: nothing in this article is to defend or support actual anti-Semitism or any other bigoted, idiotic ideology. Quite the opposite, it is to say that such things are to be combatted with free speech: their stupidity exposed and hatefulness denounced. Specious, scurrilous accusations of something diminish the impact of those accusations when leveled justly.
Obviously (to me, at least), there are countless exceptional Jewish individuals who are very proud of and vocal about being Jewish and who draw great strength from their heritage, faith, traditions, and community. There are also countless exceptional Jewish individuals who couldn’t care less about the fact that they are Jewish. And everything in-between, as it goes for most such characteristics or beliefs. Also, being critical of individuals or even organizations associating themselves with a particular identity, belief, or trait is absolutely not the same as saying everyone with that particular identity, belief, or trait is to be uncritically lumped together. For example…
/s
After concluding this article, I read about the prior termination of Katie Halper and the subsequent termination of Briahna Joy Gray, both from The Hill, both apparently for similarly spurious charges of “anti-Semitism.” I have added a note about this as a kind of ersatz appendix here. Naturally, each case has its own unique circumstances requiring individual consideration, but they also have value in triangulating our position on the larger cultural landscape.
Great work here, very thorough and comprehensive. I'm writing a series on the Daily Wire now (mostly pertaining to The Daily Wire+ and their attempts at "conservative entertainment", though when it will be done, I can't say), but as an outsider looking in who knows little of their operation outside of Ben Shapiro, Jeremy Boering's razors and chocolate, and... literally nothing else, this is immensely helpful in understanding the situation. I vaguely knew Candace Owens had gotten in trouble and split ways with the company over a tiff with Shapiro but I didn't realize it was so acrimonious and that their relationship went all the way back to 2021.
I also live by the rule that I never want to work for a company that constantly calls itself a "family", or coworkers that try to act like it - been there, done that, got the t-shirt, had it signed, and then had it taken away because every time I worked for a company that pretended to be a family, they got abusive the second it was convenient for someone higher on the food chain had a problem with you.
Fascinating article. I don't have a huge dog in this race as I have never really cared about Owens or the Daily Wire crowd in any meaningful way, but you make a strong and compelling case for her (and against a lot of the kneejerk reaction against any policy of a foreign government being used as a case for bigotry).
The one point you made I would contest is when you mention that would support M4A and UBI except that the government would use them as a means to control people. The thing is, I don't think that's true. I think the reason we don't have those things is because they would absolutely be liberating for people. If those things are granted in an inalienable way (much like many rights/public services), that takes away a lot of power from both government and businesses to control people's lives, offering a great deal more freedom to live as they want, not to mention it's tax money essentially going back to the people rather than off to foreign wars or multinational corporations.