Conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro is upset that black people are excited about "Black Panther."
The editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire and and host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" ranted Tuesday that he wasn't sure why there was such joy and acclaim in advance of the new Marvel film that featured mostly black artists and creatives in front of and behind the camera.
"'Blade' was not enough," Shapiro quipped, referencing the 1998 film and subsequent two sequels that starred Wesley Snipes.
"Everyone in the media is talking about the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity, or at least since Caitlyn Jenner became a woman — a transgender woman," Shapiro said. "And that of course is the release of 'Black Panther.'"
"We've heard it's deeply important to millions of black Americans, who, after all, were not liberated from slavery 200 years ago, and liberated by the civil rights movement with federal legislation, and have not been gradually restored to what always should have been full civil rights in the United States," he continued. "None of that has mattered up until they made a Marvel movie about a superhero, who is black, in a country filled with black people."
Shapiro's sarcasm was confusing, especially for someone whose broad point was that the U.S. is a land of equality. But his monologue went on.
"'Blade' was not enough. 'Catwoman' with Halle Berry, no," he said, listing off the superhero films that featured black stars, but ignoring the much longer list of Marvel and DC films that had an all-white cast.
"This is the most important moment in black American history, not Martin Luther King, not Frederick Douglass, not the Civil War, not the end of Jim Crow, none of that," Shapiro said. Because, according to the man commonly described as a leading intellectual among conservatives, black joy should only exist after an era of white brutality or terrorism against black people.
Settling into his riff, Shapiro extended his critique of "Black Panther," deriding the film as poorly disguised identity politics, and pulled former President Barack Obama into the fray."When Obama was president, we were told it meant everything," Shapiro said, "And then, it turns out, it didn't mean anything, because we needed Chadwick Boseman to somehow make sure that black people felt accepted in American society, because a bunch of white executives at Marvel green lit a film about black people in a fictional country in Africa."
As Slate political correspondent Jamelle Bouie said, "I guess we can add 'black people being excited about a movie' to 'things that trigger Ben Shapiro.'"
It's certainly a long, long list.
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