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Feb. 6, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
24:54
Ep. 248 - Super Bowl Advertisers Won't Stop Their Leftism
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During the Super Bowl, Lady Gaga shocked the world by not taking an enormous political dump all over the stage.
She warbled her usual agglomeration of overproduced garbage, and she strutted around the stage like a maimed llama wearing Beyonce's old outfits, and she also appeared to commit suicide.
Two times.
In the same...
Routine.
But although Laura Ingraham thought that she went political, she actually didn't.
Laura Ingraham originally tweeted Gaga had ignored the phrase under God in her recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, but Lady Gaga actually said it.
And although Lady Gaga did sing Born This Way, which has officially been named now the second worst song ever penned after John Lennon's Imagine, the halftime show was actually pretty free of politics.
And this drove some people on the left out of their minds.
Here's Michael Wood of the Los Angeles Times, quote, Lady Gaga misses her Super Bowl moment to say something profound.
Wood complained that 30-year-old singer offered up a disappointing 12-minute medley that lacked any edge or tension.
You wish she'd taken in more of what was going on offstage.
Here's Chris Richards at the Washington Post.
Lady Gaga calls herself a rebel, but at the Super Bowl, she played it safe.
He then complimented Beyonce's ridiculous pro-Black Panthers routine at the Super Bowl last year, and he wrote, quote, with forceful elegance, Beyonce had set a precedent for what could be done on this stage, musically and politically.
By comparison, Gaga whiffed.
Here's Piet Levy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Gaga's overall performance overshadowed a potentially meaningful moment.
The word safe appears in reviews from Variety, the New York Daily News, which said that Gaga landed flat, Newsday, and a bevy of other outlets.
For today's media, it is a sin to merely perform the hits for which are known.
If you're given a big stage, you must immediately begin spouting protest lines from the Women's March or Uricella, no matter how many times you campaigned with Hillary Clinton.
You will be forced to take a position to shout about politics, to destroy your audience goodwill by insulting at least half of them.
Lady Gaga didn't So here's a phrase I never thought I'd say.
Thanks, Lady Gaga.
Most Americans who are watching the Super Bowl wanted a break from the partisan rancor that now consumes most of our event-driven lives.
You provided that break.
That's a statement in and of itself in a time when everybody needs to calm down and take a deep breath.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Okay, so we're going to get to the Super Bowl in just one second.
We're also gonna get to Donald Trump and his comments about Russia.
Donald Trump has been very active on Twitter.
I think that he realized everybody had the weekend off and decided, okay, you know what?
Now's my time!
Back to the Twitter!
While everyone is away, he grabbed back his BlackBerry, hacked into it, and began tweeting out random things.
So we'll get to all of that because there's a lot to get to.
Plus he did an interview with Bill O'Reilly that was quite...
Insane.
But we'll get to all of that.
You know, good Trump, bad Trump, the whole shebang.
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I was the unluckiest person in America yesterday, other than Matt Ryan.
I was on a plane for virtually the entire Super Bowl, because that's why we're now in a deep, dark, dank hotel room.
And we brought—Mathis was unlucky enough to have to travel with me, so both of us missed the Super Bowl in its entirety.
I watched a lot of it last night after we got to the hotel.
I watched some of it this morning.
And of course, it figures that the one time I missed the Super Bowl, it ends up actually being a phenomenal game.
But there's a lot to talk about at the Super Bowl.
I talked about Lady Gaga before.
First of all, I do have to say that my favorite moment from the Super Bowl was the very beginning of her halftime show when it appeared that she'd actually finished her musical career.
It sort of looked like this.
Yeah.
There it is.
Yeah, I thought, for a second I was like, wow, that was the shortest halftime show in history.
But it turns out, no, there was more.
She actually did it again later.
At the very end, she also jumped off a high object and she survived.
Which, you know, is good, I suppose.
And so there was that.
But she didn't end up being political.
Everybody thought she was going to be super-duper political.
The entire left was very disappointed because everything must be political now.
It is imperative.
That all the things have to be political.
It is deeply important.
So she was she was saying beforehand that she was going to do all sorts of stuff about inclusion and equality.
And instead, she basically went up there and she's saying, God bless America and this land is your land with a bunch of drones in the background.
And then she danced, as I say, like like a crippled hyena while singing her her patented Highly produced auto-tuned song.
So that was not the actual political side of the of the Super Bowl and the game itself You don't need me to do the analysis of the game Although I did I will say I think I did have the most the most politically oriented tweet the most retweeted politically oriented tweet of the evening It's now been retweeted, I think, 27,000 times.
So it just shows you that apparently I should go into sports commentator mode more often.
I tweeted, I can't believe the guy with the foreign model life and a sketchy history with the rules just won after being written off.
And that was retweeted.
That has now been retweeted 27,000 times.
So that is...
You know, says something.
In any case, the real political side was the ads.
So, here's something I've never understood about the advertising of the Super Bowl.
First of all, you pay all this money, and then obviously you get a lot of earned media.
So if you do an ad, people are talking about it, it gets replayed now online, it's worth the money.
But why would you absolutely ignore half the audience?
Why would you ignore half the audience?
A lot of these ads were clearly geared, very clearly geared, toward the audience of the left, and not geared toward the audience of the right.
And the NFL audience is going to tend to skew to the right, because a lot of the NFL audience exists between the coasts.
And this is why it's always been weird to me that you have, like, Beyonce and Lady Gaga playing halftime.
And my guess is that if you had Leonard Skinner playing halftime, you'd please more of the NFL audience than you would if you had Lady Gaga playing that halftime show.
In any case, some of the ads were very political.
And the one that got a lot of attention was Audi's Equal Pay ad.
Here's what that sounded and looked like.
What do I tell my daughter?
*Screaming* Do I tell her that her grandpa's worth more than her grandma?
I don't know, is grandma worth more than grandma?
That her dad is worth more than her mom?
Do I tell her that despite her education, her drive, her skills, her intelligence, she will automatically be valued as less than every man she ever meets?
Or maybe I'll be able to tell her something different. - She drove in an Audi.
This is Audi of America's commitment to equal pay for equal work.
Progress is for everyone.
So what that has to do with Audi, I have no clue whatsoever.
I'm just confused as to why Audi thinks that driving away in an Audi makes up for the fact that she's gonna be paid 71 cents on the dollar and have to bear children from her womb.
But nonetheless, what was hilarious about this, Audi runs this ad, and so people immediately begin slapping Audi on Facebook and Twitter and saying, guys, you pay women less than you pay men.
And so Audi immediately writes back, like within 20 minutes of this ad running, they immediately write back, well, if you take into account the different job positions and the number of hours worked, then actually we pay women and men the same.
It's like, uh, right.
Because that's for everyone.
It's not just true of Audi.
Like, if you can name the companies that are not doing that, then you're going to need to actually talk to federal investigators because that's a crime, right?
That's actually against federal law.
You're not allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex under federal law.
So Audi runs this ad.
And it immediately falls apart.
So that was funny.
That was one of their political ads.
And it just shows how ridiculous the pandering is.
And when the left says fake news, that's fake news, right?
I mean, this wage gap myth has been a myth for a long time.
In 2010, in 147 out of the 150 biggest cities in America, women were paid more than men if they had the same number, if they had no children and they were fresh out of college with the same degree.
Women were paid significantly more than men in many states, in many cities, they were actually paid Like double digits more than men in terms of percentage.
Like 10-12% more.
It's according to Time Magazine, 2010.
Widespread, wide-ranging study over pay.
It's also true that 55% of the people in college are women.
55% of the electorate is women.
58% of all graduates of graduate school are women.
So this idea that women are being unaccountably discriminated against on account of their vajayjays is just not true.
There's no basis for that.
But Audi runs that anyway.
And then we wonder why people believe lies.
Well, it's because you see this in Audi commercials.
Okay, that wasn't the only ad that garnered a lot of attention.
There's another ad for... What was this ad for?
I don't even know.
It's called The Journey Begins.
And I'm not a big fan of ads that have nothing to do with the actual product being sold.
It's kind of irritating to me.
But here is the ad, The Journey Begins, which was seen largely as a critique of Donald Trump's immigration policy, again, at the Super Bowl.
What's the point of this?
Mama.
Is it ready?
Yes. - Thank you.
So it's people waking up in what looks like a Hubble and looking at pictures.
Yes!
And obviously not speaking the English.
And they're jumping on a truck now. - So let's see. - And now they're driving toward the border.
And very likely they're driving.
And little girl is very, very happy that she's driving toward the border.
And now she has reached a fence.
It's like a barbed wire fence.
She's smiling because she realizes that she's going to cross the Thais now.
They're journeying.
The journeying has continued.
And she's taking little samples all the way.
She's picking up pieces of garbage.
She's cleaning up all the littering between Honduras and the United States, apparently.
Now she's walking along railroad ties and picking up all the garbage.
Which is nicer.
There's a lot of garbage.
I mean, I've seen that backpack she's carrying.
It's pretty big.
Okay, they're crossing a river.
I don't know whether they're getting food or water in all of this, but this is like the end of the Sound of Music.
They just sort of run up into the hills with nothing and start singing again.
Okay, so here they are.
They're sitting at a fire.
Everybody is very contemplative.
And then it says, "See the conclusion at journey84.com, 84 Lumber." And then at the very end of that ad in the Super Bowl version, they come upon this big, big wall, right?
Like the Trump wall, and then there's a big door that opens and lets them in.
And so here's the question: Are they coming illegally?
Are they coming legally?
Should that make a difference?
What does this have to do with anything?
No one knows.
And again, this is just panzering for clicks.
Are you going to buy something from 84 Lumber now?
I don't even know what 84 Lumber is after watching that.
Did you see a piece of lumber in that commercial?
Like seriously, I don't know what product 84 Lumber is selling other than backpacks for picking up garbage along the road.
I'm just confused.
You're right.
Now that you slapped Trump, he's no longer president.
Congratulations.
You've discovered the secret.
You ran an ad on the Super Bowl about people traveling, and now Trump is no longer president, so congratulations to you.
Okay, so here is the third ad that we'll play, and this is one that got a trend started on Twitter that said, but the Boycott Budweiser sign on Twitter, somebody didn't know how to spell Budweiser.
So it says, Boycott Budweiser, W-I-S-E-R.
So I don't know which beer you're boycotting, but it's not Budweiser.
So basically, everybody is stupid is the theme of today's particular Super Bowl show.
So here is the ad from Budweiser that generated the Boycott Budwiser hashtag on Twitter.
You don't look like you're from around here.
Okay, so it's a dude traveling across the ocean Presumably this is the ancestor of Bush.
Okay, and his immigration passport is stamped.
And now he's in and people are being mean to him.
And he's traveling out west.
He sees a black dude.
And he's traveling some more.
Jumping into a river.
Seems like a real nice journey over here.
Welcome to St.
Louis, son.
Finally he's reached St.
Louis.
Thank you.
The next time, this is the beer we drink.
Über den Anheuser.
Topos Busch.
He meets Anheuser, and there's Busch, and now they're friends, and they make beer.
They make really, really not great beer.
Okay, so that's the... So that's the commercial.
So I have a question on this.
I don't understand why this commercial is bad.
Like some of these, like the Audi commercial, I understand why the right is ticked over it.
I really don't get particularly why the right is angry at this commercial.
He's a legal immigrant.
It is true that a lot of legal immigrants had a tough time when they first got here.
And guess what?
The government didn't help them out, and then they became some of the most successful magnates In the history of the United States.
So that actually seems like a pretty good origin story for the US, right?
A bunch of people come here, they brave the weather, they brave the people who are jerks, and then they make their way and it turns out they become some of the wealthiest people in the history of the country.
So, that seems like a pretty pro-America ad.
I don't understand why you'd boycott Budweiser over that.
I mean, is the implication that all immigrants are bad?
Because that's weird.
Again, I'm fine with the people smacking Audi.
Audi smacked itself in the face.
They jumped on a rake in that ad.
This boycott Budweiser 1 is really silly to me and I don't see the point.
I also just think that, generally, if you're an advertiser, it's smart to stay away from politics.
The best ad actually was apparently that Melissa McCarthy ad where she gets thrown into the side of a whale.
Um, that was, that was sort of the best one.
We'll get to Melissa McCarthy later, by the way, because Melissa McCarthy had the best weekend of anybody in America this weekend, other than Tom Brady, who not only won the Superbowl, but then went home to Gisele Bundchen, which is, that's a pretty good life right there.
If you're Tom Brady, uh, Plus, he's going to be happy when he goes to the White House.
Martellus Bennett, by the way, is not going to the White House.
He's another one of these Patriots players.
He says he's going to boycott the White House.
Again, people are kind of going nuts over all of this.
Yeah, well, I remember when there were a bunch of players who wouldn't go to the White House to see Obama.
There were a couple of NHL players who didn't want to go to the White House to see Obama.
It's his prerogative.
He doesn't want to go to the White House.
That's his problem.
Everybody needs to just take a deep breath.
Okay.
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Okay, so.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is back on Twitter and Donald Trump is also doing his Super Bowl preview with Bill O'Reilly routine.
So, this has become an annual thing.
I think it's really dumb.
This whole routine where we mix politics with the Super Bowl.
I don't know why the president is doing it.
I hated it when Obama did it.
I'm not a big fan when Trump does it.
Look back, I was very critical of Obama putting his face on every major event in the United States.
I'm not a big fan of politicians becoming celebrities because it seems to me Do you respect Putin?
Politicians are there to do a job.
They're not there to be celebrities.
Again, I think the politicians should be treated basically like DMV workers, except with more scorn.
And that does not seem to be the way that the United States is moving.
In any case, Donald Trump does this interview with Bill O'Reilly before the Super Bowl.
And in this interview, he says a very, very stupid thing.
And here's the exchange with Bill O'Reilly.
It's about Vladimir Putin and the Russians.
Do you respect Putin?
I do respect him.
Do you?
Why?
Well, I respect a lot of people, but that doesn't mean I'm going to get along with them.
He's a leader of his country.
I say it's better to get along with Russia than not.
And if Russia helps us in the fight against ISIS, which is a major fight, and Islamic terrorism all over the world.
Right.
Major fight.
That's a good thing.
Will I get along with him?
I have no idea.
It's very possible I won't.
He's a killer, though.
Putin's a killer.
A lot of killers.
We get a lot of killers.
Why, you think our country's so innocent?
Oh, God.
And this is the politics of somebody who's watched politics for five minutes.
And again, he may do policy that you like, but that does not justify him saying things that, if they came out of the mouth of Obama, you and all of your friends would be protesting in the streets, as would I. Okay?
You're not supposed to say things like, America is as bad as Vladimir Putin and we're all killers.
This is just a routine, as Jon Podhoretz pointed out.
This is just a routine from Godfather.
You remember when Michael is supposed to be this kind of sophisticated about politics and he's now become the Godfather?
And she says, politicians don't have people murdered.
Senators don't have people murdered.
And he says, now who's being naive, Kay?
Okay, that's the routine that Trump is doing here.
But the question is, to what end, right?
What's the purpose of this?
First of all, is it true that the United States kills just like Russia?
No, it's not true that the United States is just like Russia.
No, it's not true in the Godfather that senators have people killed.
If senators could have people killed, I've lived in California my entire life, I assure you, Barbara Boxer or Dianne Feinstein probably would have done it by now.
Kamala Harris would have me on the hit list.
But that's not how our politics works, thank God.
That would be a corrupt oligarchy in which rights didn't matter.
That is not here.
That is Russia.
Okay, Russia is an oligarchy.
Lots and lots and lots of Vladimir Putin's enemies have died under mysterious circumstances, including people who have been poisoned in England by Russian agents.
Okay, here's just a list of some of the political rivals and journalists who have died under Putin.
Alexander Litvinenko, that's the guy who was poisoned, Anna Politskova, Okay, so those are just a few of the people who have been killed under Vladimir Putin.
Not all of those is Putin responsible for.
We can't say which ones of those he approved, but there's no question that to be a political dissident in Russia is a very, very dangerous business.
Beyond which, Vladimir Putin acted as an agent of the Soviet KGB.
He said that the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, a regime that was responsible for the murder of tens of millions of people and the oppression of hundreds of millions of people.
He allegedly greenlit a bombing of apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999 that gave him an excuse to crack down on Chechen dissidents.
He invaded Georgia in 2008 for no reason other than he wanted to grab the territory.
That resulted in hundreds of dead.
He invaded Ukraine.
That's now resulted in over 10,000 dead.
Again, these are international war crimes.
What he's been doing in Syria, they've purposefully been bombing hospitals.
They've purposefully been bombing civilian areas.
Emboldened Russian hardliners in Ukraine shot down a civilian airliner in 2014.
Vladimir Putin, he's manipulated election results.
The idea that Vladimir Putin And American presidents are on the same par.
When people do this Noam Chomsky routine, or they do, well, Obama.
Well, Obama.
Okay, again, this is a leftist routine, and you're just doing it because Trump said it.
I'm gonna be intellectually honest here.
I like a lot of things Trump is doing.
It's a whole different thing.
We're gonna get to some of the things I like that Trump is doing in a second, but...
It is intellectually dishonest to pretend that you would not be upset if the President of the United States had a D by his name and was saying that Vladimir Putin's Russia is no worse than Barack Obama's America or Donald Trump's America.
Also, I fail to see how you can constantly say things like, if you criticize Trump, you don't like America, and in the same sentence say, America's just like Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Those do not match up.
This is really silly.
And here's the problem.
A lot of conservatives are falling into this trap of, I like some of what Trump is doing, therefore I must like all of what Trump says.
So Mike Pence has unfortunately begun to do this.
It's kind of yucky.
Here's Mike Pence, the vice president of the United States, going after media for commenting on Trump's comments about Putin.
What you heard in that quote was a commitment to explore the possibility of starting anew and looking for common cause with Russia and with President Putin.
Now you also heard skepticism there.
The president said it'd be better if we got along with Russia.
Maybe we won't.
But he's absolutely determined.
And he told the American people this in the campaign.
He's absolutely determined to explore ways, particularly in confronting and destroying ISIS, to work with Russia.
And that's the spirit of those comments.
A president speaks with a moral voice when he's reengaging the country.
He suggested that America was on the equivalent par with somebody who was a killer.
I simply don't accept that there was any moral equivalency in the president's comments.
Do you think America is morally superior to Russia?
What you have in this new president is someone who is willing to and is, in fact, engaging the world, including Russia, and saying, where can we find common interests that will advance the security of the American people, the peace and prosperity of the world?
And he's determined to come at that in a new and renewed way.
But America morally superior to Russia, yes or no?
I believe that the ideals that America has stood for throughout our history represent the highest ideals of humankind.
I was actually at Independence Hall yesterday, and I stood in the very room where the Constitution of the United States was crafted, the very building where the Declaration of Independence was held forth.
Every American, including our President, represents it.
We uphold the highest ideals of the world.
Shouldn't we be able to just say yes to that question, though?
I think it's without question, John, that American ideals are superior to countries all across the world.
Just say yes, my God!
What the hell is wrong with you?
We're going to have to have a Good Pence, Bad Pence segment if this continues.
Again, this is what Pence did during the debate.
He also pretended that Donald Trump didn't exist.
So you saw the tape of Trump saying that Vladimir Putin is... Okay, so he's a killer, so there are killers here too.
People, there are lots of killers, okay?
Okay, no, not okay.
And there's Mike Pence pretending it never happened.
Very, very frustrating.
Now I'm gonna tell you what this exposes about some splits in the Republican Party in a second.
But in order for you to see that, in order for you to see the good Trump portion of today's broadcast, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com.
Go over to dailywire.com right now.
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