If you’re looking for slapstick and bloodsports in the intramedia The recent cat battle with Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire and right-wing YouTube sensation Steven Crowder has been a pleasure to watch. It’s an absurd but shocking spectaclethat has both sides boasting that they are acting in the highest moral standards while throwing dirt and seeking out profits even at the expense of selling off friends and cosying up to suspected enemies of Big Tech.
The story began with a tweet by Crowder declaring that the journalist is ” done being quiet,” and then the release of a video of a contract dispute with an unknown potential employer. The potential employer was The Daily Wire, which also clapped in response. On January. 23, the tone of the exchanges changed after the daily wire’s Candace Owens made a subtle threat to label Crowder to be gay.
While it’s easy for people to see Crowder, Owens, and Shapiro as nothing more than YouTubers, they’re actually billionaire-funded millionaires inside the oligarch-funded media world. The billionaire from the evangelical movement of fracking Farris Wilks contributed $4.7 million of seed money to The Daily Wire, and is one of the media owners of the company. Similar to the left, where media is funded by such people as Laurene Powell Jobs Jeff Bezos, and Pierre Omidyar, the right’s current media stars aren’t models of free-market, competitive capitalism, but rather the recipients of billionaire wealth.
The most recent episode of this soap opera featuring a popular conservative is centered around Crowder who is among the most well-known political pundits who is a household name on YouTube and a prominent figure in the rapidly growing media industry of the digital right. The creator of brash and flamboyant culture-war-related humor and commentary for a predominantly younger male population, he boasts more than 6-million subscribers. That’s a few hundred thousands more than MSNBC’s YouTube channel. The main reason for Crowder’s popularity is his macho and camp image, which is a mixture of frat-guy enthusiasm and Rush Limbaugh’s right-wing politics.
With his scruffy beard, iconic gun holsters, and a slender physique reflected in his tight clothes, he rages in support of “traditional masculinity” and mockingly impersonates stereotypes of gays. Strangely enough, Crowder additionally has frequently dress with drag–seemingly to achieve a “comic” effect–and throws the phrase “fag” around with the frequentity I’ve only seen in the presence of homophobes who are virulent and most gay twinks on Earth. The mix has led to him becoming a victim of gay rights activists, as also anti-gay bigots who claim that he may be a closet shopper his own self.
Up until recently, Crowder’s naive however wildly popular show was broadcast through The Blaze, Glenn Beck’s online network. However, at the close of the year when the contract was about to come to an end, Crowder went looking for his new location. On January. 17, he issued ” It’s time to stop …” in which he vehemently attacked his “slave contract” offered to the journalist by a conservative website that was not named that could have slapped the creator with financial penalties in the event that the content he created lost the support of the company or was taken down by tech platforms such as YouTube. While Crowder graciously declined to name the company he claimed was bowing towards Big Tech and described as “Big Con,” the apparent target of his anger is The Daily Wire, the right-wing powerhouse founded by Ben Shapiro.
Two days later, the Daily Wire’s chief executive, Jeremy Boreing –Crowder’s former friend — released the video, which ran 53 minutes long that addressed the allegations in detail. Boreing gently suggested that Crowder was acting foolishly and added some additional details Crowder was unable to include that the opening contract contained a price of $45 million spread over four years, which included weekend off, four weeks of holidays, full editorial control, as well as the option to extend the contract for a second two-year period. Boreing also pointed out that Crowder’s agent had rebuffed this offer by requesting $120 million.
In response to the post of Boreing, Crowder released audio that was secretly recorded from an exchange he held with Boreing. Crowder had released this audio for advertising his new venture at StopBigCon.com in which Crowder supporters were urged to take part in fighting for freedom and battling Big Tech tyranny by becoming paid members.
Boreing and Shapiro typically kept their mouths neat in their responses The two portrayed the whole squabble as a promotional guerrilla and Crowder taking on his former friends to stir publicity for his subscription service. However, that all changed when the underlings of Shapiro and Boreing were able to do their dirty. On Jan. 23, Candace Owens –the self-appointed, Kanye-loving, Hitler-loving “Red Pill Black”–called Crowder everything from a “bitch” to a “socialist” before abruptly changing her mind and releasing a sombre segment dubbed “Pray for Steven Crowder,” in which she stated:
If Owens believed she was doing something discreet, listeners quickly noticed that shift and concluded that her argument is that Crowder is a gay and closeted man. It’s an old method of homophobic blackmail to destroy one’s credibility reputation, and professional standing by the assertion that they are actually a lesbian. What’s interesting about this instance is that the individuals who are driving it do so in portraying the left as the society’s most insidious busybodies and even scolds.
According to Tablet Magazine columnist Jamie Kirchick writes about how the stigma that gay people were homosexuals was thought to be so grave that gay government workers were considered to be as a threat to national security. It was believed that they were able to be targeted for blackmail, and would rather betray their country than come out. According to Kirchick writes, the alleged homosexual traitor who was used as an example, Alfred Redl, was forced to leave his country because of his financial prudence not by his sexuality. But threats to reveal homosexuality were not fiction. The criminalization of homosexuality in Britain created an industry of blackmail that was thriving and forced gay people to pay or else be identified and charged.
“The insinuation of homosexuality was once the most dangerous weapon in American politics–more likely to destroy a reputation or a career than the accusation that one was a communist,” Kirchick stated to Tablet. “Thankfully, that’s no longer the case, which is why Owens’ veiled threat against Crowder seems impotent in addition to being craven.”
In the past the talkers of The Daily Wire have insisted that they’re not concerned with pursuing people’s private preferences and they are opposed to the state’s involvement in the public arena to spread concepts of gender or sexual beliefs. They’ve promoted themselves as a truth-telling organization who preach about the ideals of conservatism and attempting to educate a growing online audience from the insanity and morality associated with their “radical” left. However, that argument falls apart–even even if Shapiro isn’t in the debate when Shapiro’s Daily Wire underlings turn gay reports into a scuffle.
