“Just Say That You’re On the Left,” Ben Shapiro Says to Famous Right-Winger

Scold-happy whine merchant and “conservative thinker” Ben Shapiro appeared on the BBC today with Andrew Neil, and at one point during a conversation about Georgia’s abortion ban, the two had this hilarious exchange:

Stick this in my veins. pic.twitter.com/j2XEekjwe7

— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) May 10, 2019

The hilarious part doesn’t come from Shapiro’s predictable views about abortion, but rather in his insistence that Andrew Neil is a liberal figure disguised as an objective journalist. In fact, Neil is a famous conservative in the U.K., and is chairman of The Spectator. Here are a few lines about that magazine, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Its principal subject areas are politics and culture. Its editorial outlook is generally supportive of the Conservative Party…Editorship of The Spectator has often been a step on the ladder to high office in the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom. Past editors include Boris Johnson (1999-2005) and other former cabinet members Iain Macleod, Ian Gilmour, and Nigel Lawson.

And again, Andrew Neil is the Chairman. He was also the editor of the Sunday Times for a decade, which is a conservative newspaper owned by none other than Fox News mastermind Rupert Murdoch. So as you see, Neil isn’t just a conservative, but a very famous one. In fact, most of the complaints about him working on the BBC come from the fact that he’s too conservative, as Slate‘s Jordan Weissman pointed out:

Here is a sample headlines about Neil in the UK. pic.twitter.com/RW3ygi98P3

— Jordan Weissmann (@JHWeissmann) May 10, 2019

It’s easy to understand why Neil laughed at Shapiro’s accusation. What’s harder to understand is how on earth Shapiro didn’t know about him in the first place.

Tell you what, it’s very interesting that America’s It Boy conservative isn’t intellectually curious enough to know who the chairman of The Spectator is!

— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) May 10, 2019