As the most popular conservative currently on the campus lecture circuit, Ben Shapiro earned a bizarre critique in the op-ed pages of the New York Times on Thursday.
Author Jane Coaston sought to argue Shapiro, and other conservatives who cast themselves as underdogs in the culture war, are hypocrites who decry groupthink but routinely throw red-meat into their own echo chambers.
“What Mr. Shapiro does on campus is shadow boxing meant to pander to his conservative fans whose values dominate mainstream American culture,” she wrote. “If he wanted to be genuinely brave, he’d challenge some of the wrongheaded ideas held by his right-wing fans.” Oddly, towards the end of her op-ed, Coaston also concedes that “[t]o tell strident college students to examine their own politics and embrace real debate is brave,” which she admits Shapiro does in his campus lectures.
Coaston cites several polls of white conservatives and Republicans on racial issues, and a YouGov study on how Americans perceive transgenderism as proof that conservative publications are really just “spoon-feeding screeds to their right-wing readers,” rather than “embracing the kind of real debate that they pay lip service to on campuses.” Coaston appears most irritated that conservative writers see their work as “the last redoubt of objective journalism,” an odd stone to throw from the glass house of a newspaper that essentially admitted it didn’t understand why some Americans supported Donald Trump in 2016.
The op-ed’s argument overall posits that conservatives who advocate for free speech and debate are not truly brave because their own outlets publish articles aligned with their audiences’ viewpoints. Coaston’s strange assertion that conservative values “dominate mainstream American culture” is laughable (especially from the pages of the New York Times), but ultimately not germane to the article’s real point. Perhaps the important distinction she misses is that conservatives aren’t trying to shout over and shut down every expression of liberal belief that pops up in their world.
Criticizing The Federalist and Ben Shapiro for “spoon-feeding” readers red-meat was a critical mistake on Coaston’s behalf. Of course, both regularly publish articles that confirm their conservative audiences’ opinions on race and gender, just as every single major liberal publication does. But The Federalist in particular is known for publishing a diverse range of conservative viewpoints that challenge readers, and Shapiro has been a prominent Never Trump voice who doesn’t hesitate to disagree with his own audience.
What she really appears to want is for conservatives such as Shapiro to push their audiences by publishing and embracing things they don’t believe in on race and sexuality. Though she inadvertently argues this point with herself, Coaston’s admission that it’s brave to challenge the dogma on college campuses would be difficult for anyone to seriously contest. Shapiro and other campus speakers face serious threats of violence and endure brutal character assassinations from progressive students, professors, and administrators who slander them as bigots.
Rather than merely churning out red-meat clickbait that confirms their audiences’ viewpoints, Ben Shapiro takes his arguments to the most hostile venues imaginable, from college campuses to panels with transgender individuals on unfriendly television networks. If Coaston’s criteria for true bravery is that Shapiro also challenge conservatives, he does that too.
Shapiro does all this with the knowledge that he will be subject to criticism across major media outlets and denounced by the arbiters of popular culture. Nevertheless, as they say, he persists. Shapiro’s bravery is not hollow, it is rare, especially in a world where the values he champions without apology earn reflexive condemnation from the most influential outlets and from writers like Coaston.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
