Porn Generation, Pt. 3: Rise of the TaliBen
Ben Shapiro spends most of Porn Generation angrily chastising his fellow Americans for being licentious, disease-ridden skanks. In Ben’s world, young people are all degenerates who watch porno and have premarital sex. Teachers are perverts for teaching kids about condoms. TV stars are corrupt miscreants who make their living off of mocking traditional morality. And rappers are the worst ones of all, since they have lots of sex and they write songs glorifying girls with gigantic asses.
Ben Shapiro: Porn Loser.
In the book’s final chapter, however, Ben goes beyond the childish name-calling and makes a series of proposals designed to eradicate immorality from our culture. He says that these solutions won’t be very popular, but dammit, they’re necessary to save traditional virtue:
Standing up for morality means facing loud derision, especially for children of the porn generation. Those of my age group maybe hold a quiet admiration for the sexually moral among us, but it’s hidden beneath a facade of cynicism.
That’s not a facade, Ben. We don’t admire you.
Reversing the tide of our “live and let live” culture won’t be easy. I know. I’m twenty-one years old, a heterosexual, red-blooded American male, a graduate of University of California at Los Angeles, a student at Harvard Law School, a nationally syndicated columnist, a bestselling author… and a virgin. And I’m proud of it.
Look, there’s nothing wrong with being a virgin. One of my best friends abstains from smoking, drinking and casual sex. Nobody in our peer group ridicules or mocks him for it, mostly because he’s not a preachy, self-righteous jackass. Plus, he doesn’t write weekly columns for Townhall.com decrying how slutty we are.
After complaining that he can’t get no respect for not getting no sex, Ben tells us that our culture’s “live and let live” mentality has gone way too far, and that people shouldn’t have a right to privacy:
Libertarians and social liberals would have us believe that as long as those of us who adhere to traditional morality do so, we should allow opponents of traditional morality to live life their way, without consequences. This ignores the fact that these actions are social, not individual.
So when some guy sits in his room and jerks off to porn, he’s doing society irreparable harm. I’m not really sure how, but he is, and he should be punished by having his nads hooked up to a car battery.
The direction of our culture has ramifications for society. Tolerance of all behavior leads to societal immorality, and societal approval of immoral personal behavior has vast externalities. Just as a manufacturing plant that produces toxic waste may affect others by poisoning a river, so too may the immoral among us affect others by poisoning the culture.
And just like with toxic waste, exposure to immoral people will give you cancer, make your teeth fall out, and generally transform you into a mutant hell-bound flesh-eating zombie.
OK, so we’ve established that society has a sacred duty to stop people from having a good time. The question is: how do we do it? Lucky for us, Ben’s got a laundry list of ideas, starting with…
–Faith-based initiatives:
We must adopt faith-based community initiatives to revitalize traditional values among students.
Gee, that’s funny- I thought the point of faith-based initiatives was to allow the government to fund faith-based charities, not to bankroll religious conversion programs.
–School vouchers:
Competitive pressure can only help move public schools away from teaching amorality.
Yes, because competitive pressure and free market forces have done wonders cleaning up the entertainment industry.
–Dress codes:
Permissiveness in dress is an early and important step toward permissiveness in values.
Indeed:
![sluttycoulter].jpg](https://i0.wp.com/www.sadlyno.com/archives/sluttycoulter%5D.jpg?resize=150%2C204)
–Single-sex dorms or living at home for college students:
[P]arents should demand that their children live in single-sex dorms… or get apartments.
Of course, giving kids their own apartments means they’re more likely to have sex, since they won’t have to worry about roommates walking in on them. Good thinking, Ben.
–Monitoring alumni funding for universities:
Alumni and donors should consider directing their funding to universities where traditional values are still part of the curriculum.
I.e., don’t give money to any college that makes your kids read Nietzsche, Foucault, or anyone who isn’t named Jesus (though you might want to censor out that stuff he said about peacemakers being blessed. You don’t want them thinking that J.C. would’ve been against invading Iraq.)
–Governmental censorship:
We must press for government to use the force of the law against pornography, obscenity, and indecency across the board, from Howard Stern to Larry Flynt, from TV to radio to the Internet, from music to movies.
And you know what that means: it’s time to form a House Committee on Unwholesome Activities and hold Congressional hearings aimed at purging indencency from our culture. It’s time for Rick Santorum to stand up and say, “I hold in my hand a list of 80 members of the United States Congress who are card-carrying subscribers to Spice and the Playboy channel!” And yes, it’s time for Ben Shapiro to take his rightful place as the heir of Roy Cohn, helping Santorum lead criminal investigations against Madonna, Howard Stern and the entire cast of Desperate Housewives.
As I finished reading Porn Generation, I began to wonder: how is it possible for someone so young to be so lame? Being homeschooled by wingnuts doesn’t help, but as we noted last month, even young home-schooled conservatives like Kyle Williams go through wingnuttery withdrawal at some point in their lives. No matter what your ideology, rebelling against your parents is essential to growing up, as you learn to think critically instead of regurgitating things you were told as a child. Sadly, it looks like Ben has missed out on this critical step to adulthood, and will remain a boy for some time to come.
Wait, so live and let live is BAD? Does that mean
I get to go out and kill all the fundamentalists?
Wait, so live and let live is BAD? Does that mean
I get to go out and kill all the fundamentalists?
Sadly, no. Ben and his friends at FOX News are the only people who are in positions to judge good and bad behavior. Therefore, you’re the one they won’t let live, not the other way around.
that explains the huge mote in his eye.
I believe the correct spelling is “prevert.”
I believe the correct spelling is “prevert.”
Yeah, and if you don’t get the president of the United States on the phone, you’re gonna have to answer to the Coca Cola company.
“Nationally syndicated columnist,” my ass. He makes it sound like he’s George fucking Will or something.
Look, Ben: being “syndicated” on places like townhall.com, or having your books bulk-purchased by Scaife, doesn’t exactly make you a household word.
I fully advocate Ben’s idea of Government Censorship . . . in that I believe that his book should be censored because it is useless, talking-point, sanctimonious crap.
in that I believe that his book should be censored because it is useless, talking-point, sanctimonious crap.
No way! Then what would I have to make fun of? 😉
(Continuing the irrational Ben-bashing)
Ben reminds me of the Trip Tripler character in the Doonesbury strips from years ago. I suppose it’s never occurred to him that there may be reasons he’s a virgin that are beyond his simply “choosing” to be one.
“And just like with toxic waste, exposure to immoral people will give you cancer, make your teeth fall out, and generally transform you into a mutant hell-bound flesh-eating zombie.”
Yeah! and it can also “…Strip the paint off your house and give your entire family a permanent orange afro.”
Wow. So Ben is objectively equating a circle jerk with the Bhopal disaster? So that’s why fapping causes blindness!
I’m twenty-one years old, a heterosexual, red-blooded American male, a graduate of University of California at Los Angeles, a student at Harvard Law School, a nationally syndicated columnist, a bestselling author… and a virgin. And I’m proud of it.
Two thoughts, VBen. One, consider tattooing the highlighted parts above on your forehead. Wait, that would be redundant. Two, Uncle Sam wants YOU! When are you going to enlist?
Um, my post didn’t make much sense. I meant that VBen is so proud of his red-blooded American heterosexual virginity that he keeps beating that dead horse (ha!), so he should just go around with it tattooed on his forehead.
Ok, I’ll have some caffeine now.
Gaah. VBen really is a one-trick pony. Or, really, I suppose, a no-trick pony. What the fuck is this twerp gonna have to write about once he’s had-umm-a fuck? Social conservative jerks like VBen never really see eye-to-eye with fiscal conservatives when it comes right down to it, ‘cos all this government censorship they advocate requires funding, and that funding requires raising taxes at some point. It would be an enormous waste of the government’s time and our money. Oh, and I loved this bit:
Yeah, that woulda really cut down on my sex life during school. Oh, wait a minute-no, it wouldn’t have! In fact, drunken revelry, horny “straight” boys, me… you do the math! Bwah!
How ironic that we are rubber and Ben is glue–whatever he says bounces off us and sticks to, er, him. Uh, moving on . . . what I mean is that his certitude that his self-created enemy is the problem is reflected right back at him: I think people like him are as much a problem. He thinks creeping immorality infects the culture; I think creeps like him are immoral.Sanctimonious assholery is a huge and growing problem in our culture. In fact, it’s ruining us. Intolerance is a force for evil, not good, and people like Ben seek to force us to choose sides and set us against one another. We are two houses, both alike in visceral antipathy. Ben, darling, good for you for keeping the Shapiro bodily temple clean and holy, but believe me as a member of a generation one or two after the Sexual Revolution, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and you’re doing much more harm than good by condemning your fellow men for exercising their hard-won rights to bodily privacy and non-shame-based sexual expression. Study hard in school, and don’t play with forces you don’t yet understand. Someday you will, and this current career of yours is going to embarrass you no end.
Yeah! and exposure to immoral people can also “…Strip the paint off your house and give your entire family a permanent orange afro.”
Hey! I need to strip the paint off my house. Would you guys all come over and stand around the house (in a circle, holding hands to ratchet up the immorality level) so I won’t have to scrape the damn stuff?
On the other hand, I’ll pass on the orange afro.
Thanks!
I can’t think of a fellow UCLA grad who has embarassed me more. No drunken nights in the dorms or sex in the Sculpture Garden? Ben’s no real Bruin, let me tell ya…
Sandra- did you know Ben at all?
Did VBen organize boycotts when UCLA played USC or Oregon State?
Shapiro as the new Cohn? Wonder what else he’d do for Santorum?
It’s enough to turn me straight.
Brad, would that be “know” in the biblical sense? Don’t offend Sandra that way.
Well, no one has known been in the Biblical sense, so I don’t think she’ll interpret it that way.
Should be: “No one has known Ben in the Biblical sense…”
You know, I’m a “porn liberal” (TM Pandagon) and I can’t imagine being as obsessed with sex as these so-called moral people are.
I realize he’s pretty young, but do you think it’s too early to nominate Ben for the Wanker Hall of Fame?
[P]arents should demand that their children live in single-sex dorms… or get apartments.
Gee, when I went off to University, my parents were in no position to demand such a thing, since…well, I was an adult.
But, I’m all for labelling the trollops, harlots, round-heels and satyrs with scarlet letters. Why has V-Ben missed that one out?
I find that I actually *would* admire Ben’s virginhood if he seemed happier about the whole thing. Instead, he seems to be doing it to make the point that he’s a virtuous person, and the rest of us suck.
Which seems, not that this is an original thought or anything, pretty masturbatory in and of itself. It’s just that he’s fondling his ego instead of his dick. (Also, he seems kinda bitter about it, and I have a hard time believing that people like Ben, going around being resentful against most of humanity, does *not* have negative social consequences.)
That said, if Ben doesn’t think there’s a right to privacy, and he thinks that private sexual behavior has social consequences, and he’s going to make hay out of being a professional virgin (though admittedly of a much more well-paid variety than I’m accustomed to thinking of when the phrase comes up.), I don’t see why he’d object to a 24/7 webcam on him. You know, just so we can see exactly how sexually upright, so to speak, he is.
I don’t know how things are done where Ben’s from, but generally beating off to porn isn’t a ‘social’ activity.
It’s the little things in Ben’s writings that explain SO much.
Also, re: Ben’s Internet censorship plans. A wiser person than I once said “If they took all the porn off of the internet, there would be only one website left. And it would be http://www.bringbacktheporn.com“
Why doesn’t Ben just realize that this is the invisible hand of the market at work (and in the case of porn, I really do mean the invisible hand)? Ben’s problem isn’t with sex, it’s with free-market capitalism.
How exactly does Bencha Peero justify his attendance at Harvard Law? Isn’t that giving a seal of approval — and hard-earned money — to a den of iniquity, slow-dancing, bare ankles, and hand-holding?
You have to think that his peers at Harvard law look at him and say, ?Dude you are SUCH a tool!? I cannot possibly think of anyone less interesting than VBen. It?s like you could never talk about anything fun around him without hearing his endless moralizing about how ‘teh sex’ and ‘teh drinking’ is going to lead you straight to hell. For the first time in, well, ever I actually feel pity for his fellow Harvard law students.
I lived in both single-sex and coed housing when I was in college. A LOT more sex and even cohabitation took place in the single-sex dorms; some girls would get singles in a single-sex dorms with the express purpose of having their boyfriends move in. This meant that men and women were even sharing the same bathrooms in those dorms! And somehow, we all survived . . .
I went to college before there were many mixed-gender dorms, and none at the church-affiliated school I attended as an undergrad. I seem to recall that a lot of people still had sex. The old “tie on the doorknob” signal long predates coed dorms…
Indeed. Amazing the possible positions with one foot on the floor…
Can someone please explain how David “the next generation is more moral” Brooks explains Ben “all my peers are buying GTA: San Andreas and humping” Shapiro?
Ken- I think even Brooks would tell Shapiro to go get laid.
I’m twenty-one years old, a heterosexual, red-blooded American male, a graduate of University of California at Los Angeles, a student at Harvard Law School, a nationally syndicated columnist, a bestselling author… and a virgin. And I’m proud of it.
Does Ben realize that pride is a sin? The sin “from which all others arise”? That it’s just as bad as having all kinds of co-ed dorm sex?
In order to stop this “pride generation” that Ben is rapidly becoming involved in, I recommend the following:
-No bragging about what college you went to.
-Especially no bragging about the college you haven’t graduated from yet.
-No bragging about your glorified blog (or bog).
-If you spin your blog entries into a book, no bragging.
Hmmm, VBen clearly doesn’t get the concept of alumni. See Ben you give to the college or university that you went to, that is the one that you are an alumnus or almna of. If your alma mater doesn’t support advanced virgenics or fundamentalist non-science as core subject areas,… Oh never mind. Fucking idiot.
“Alumni and donors should consider directing their funding to universities where traditional values are still part of the curriculum”
Absolutely!!! If you’re an alumni of a university that DOESN’T include traditional values, you should send your alumni money to a university you DIDN’T graduate from…..I guess?
Gee, you suppose this is Ben’s play to get the UCLA Alumni Foundation to quit calling?
And why do these guys always call themselves “redblooded”? As opposed to other people, whose blood is maybe green?
***P]arents should demand that their children live in single-sex dorms… or get apartments.***
The word-choice here is telling–“children.” What a case of pathetically arrested development.
“{P]arents should demand that their children live in single-sex dorms”
Uh, at most schools, aren’t single sex dorms an option? No reason to “demand”, simply request.
Unless, of course, you want to be an asshole about it.
Um, Chris, calling Ben a “fucking idiot” just isn’t right. Ben’s a non-fucking idiot! Please pay attention.
And Jack, beating off, as you call it, is so a public activity. As far as the wingnuts are concerned all sexual activity is public. Why else would they be interested in what we do in our once-private bedrooms?
Mal said: But, I’m all for labelling the trollops, harlots, round-heels and satyrs with scarlet letters. Why has V-Ben missed that one out?
Wouldn’t it be easier to require virgins to wear a pure-white “V”? Although I’m guessing that vendors would make a lot more money if the scarlet letters were required…more demand, you see!
But, I’m all for labelling the trollops, harlots, round-heels and satyrs with scarlet letters.
Me too. Makes us easier to find, and hence throw parties with.
I remember reading once that men reach their sexual peak at age nineteen. If Ben The Believer’s God created the Universe, including the human reproductive system, might it not be Ben’s God’s will that Ben, at twenty-one, should have started screwing like fucking crazy over two years ago?
Will someone please tell TVB that the only safe sex is masturbation?
Face it, even in “monogamous” marriage you are only as safe as your partner is trustworthy. We are all human (except for gentle ben), subject to temptation, and prone (literally) to following our baser instincts. Unless he spends 24/7 with his virginal when they wed spouse, how can he be sure her curiosity won’t get the better of her? And spending 24/7 with her would mean living off the dole or working out of his home as a telemarketer (moving to Bangalore?)
Batshit
{P]arents should demand that their children live in single-sex dorms
Actually, smart parents demand that their children share a room with a Dungeons and Dragons nerd (gender is irrelevant). It’s a lot harder to get it on when your roomate never leaves the house.
My problem with Ben Shapiro isn’t that he’s a virgin, it’s that smirk. That “yeah, I’ve got a column and you don’t whatcha gonna do about it? Huh? Huh?” smirk that makes you want to smack that ego to its proper size.
Honestly, people like this are the hardest to make shut up and go away. You praise them and hope they’ll shut up, their egos get bigger. You mock them and tell them to shut up, they feel persecuted and therefore important, and their egos get bigger. You completely ignore them, and they accuse you of not recognizing how important they are. And their egos get bigger, somehow.
Actually, smart parents demand that their children share a room with a Dungeons and Dragons nerd (gender is irrelevant)
Hey, the friend of mine who gets the most action out of anyone I know is a HUGE D&D nerd. Owns pretty much every book ever printed and plays upwards of four games a weekend, and still manages to get absolute loads of ass. We gamers do alright for ourselves. (Plus, experienced D&D players, on a roll of 19-20, have a +10 chance to hit with Leomund’s Rapturous Orgasm. S’true, I swear.)
Apparently someone hasn’t seen the D&D porno manual.
“D&D Book of Erotic Fantasy”.
I would so love to tell you I’m making this up. Let’s put it this way. They have spells like “Impotency” and “Cursed Orgasm” and “Find a Soulmate”.
There’s a URL, but tragically, the site is under construction.
If Ben is so old-fashioned, he should just get married already. There has got to be a virginal girl for him out there somewhere.
Then, when he hits his tenth anniversary at age 32 he can have the triple dilemma of divorce, adultry or losing his fucking mind. That should make for some interesting nationally syndicated columns.
So is this difference in morality preventing Ben from living his life the way he wants to? Aside from being the butt of jokes and having to tolerate persecution, I don’t think so. If you want to live with traditional religious (more specifically, Christian) values, it’s possible… no matter how much persecution you have to endure. I mean, look at Jesus. I choose to live my life much like Ben does, but I don’t denounce others for living the way they want to.
I want to erradicate preachy moralists from our culture. What are my options?
To eliminate preachy moralists, try the biblical way: Gather them all in a temple, bar the doors and the slaughter them. Build an outhouse on the mass grave.
While surfing the blogosphere, I stumbled upon this and this is just too funny. I’ll have to warn my readers of the dangers of porn and the threat to our youth and Republic!
Ok, who wants to take up a collection to get Ben laid? If we put together enough for a real pro, she (he?) can probably get Ben to ahem — compromise in no time!
Then again, who knows what it would take to make wittle Benji’s crank turn? Probably a sexy madonna figure would fire both of his neurons at the same time.
Well, VBen has become a household name in my house. Of course, it’s only to mock the hell out of him. I’m a year younger than this guy, and I can’t see how he acts 30+ years older than me. That’s a sad existence. But I did want to mention that my mom (yes I live at home, but like Ben’s virginity, I wear it with pride) very much enjoyed it when I read both part 2 of this article and the comments of the article “Is My Child Becoming a Homosexual”. Quite enjoyable, and I will certainly be back to enjoy more.
You know, what is so funny about this delightful book is that its stands are absolutely preposterous.