Bill Burr Launches Full Character Attack Against Ben Shapiro and MAGA Podcast Bros
Bill Burr has become a much more political figure than he anticipated and certainly more than he desires. His material against billionaires and the division of the working class has thrust him into the crosshairs of the very people who profit off churning said division, and it’s forcing him to use words like “left” and “right” much to his great chagrin. One of the people he angered by saying things like, “These fucking billionaires. They need to be put down. You know, like fucking rabid dogs. They’re rabid with fucking greed and just going out and just dividing everybody,” is aspiring billionaire and full-fledged shithead Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro complained after he attended a Burr show in February that the comedian had gone “woke.” Vulture’s Jesse David Fox brought up the comment while interviewing Burr on the Good One podcast. “Ben Shapiro talked about going to one of your shows and complaining about you becoming woke—”
Fox didn’t get to finish his question before Burr jumped in: “He doesn’t even know what that word means. His definition of woke is the white liberals’ definition of woke, and they didn’t even know what it was. They just took the word from Black people. That’s the worst thing about our people is not only do we take from other cultures, we don’t even take the time to understand the definition.”
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“He went there to be annoyed so he can then have something to talk about, and then he can make money off of dividing his own country,” Burr continued. “Those people, it’s treasonous what they do.”
Thief, traitor, sellout, idiot. In a handful of sentences, Burr cut through the Shapiro nonsense perpetually circulating in the MAGAverse and totally diminished the internet personality’s character.
Shapiro’s initial attack on Burr early this year whipped other right-wing supporters into a frenzy, resulting in some pretty despicable harassment of Burr and his wife. “They're racist,” Burr said. “They send pictures of monkeys to me and my wife. They’re fucking horrible people, and they’re cowards and they never say it to your face. They never do that.”
But it’s not just Shapiro who is guilty of encouraging and platforming this behavior. Burr connected it to the larger podcasting culture where figures like Trump can come on and get easy questions and laughter in response to their jokes.
“There’s an ugliness that’s out there right now where you know there’s certain podcasts
out there that if you’re a racist, if you’re an anti-Semite, if you’re a psycho nationalist and you want a softball interview, there’s a podcast out there where you can (go) and they will laugh at your fucking bad jokes and just give you this this pass,” Burr said. “There’s a really ugly thing that’s going on out there. We’ve already seen this, and we’ve seen what it does to a nation and it’s not the way to go.”
Don’t go calling Burr a hero to “the left” though. Fox made that mistake, and Burr launched into a tirade on comedy censorship post #MeToo and left-wing McCarthyism. He went on to say his job is to trash both sides, to call out billionaires, to cut through the constant distractions created by both political parties.
On that count at least, mission accomplished.
