The highly anticipated movie Black Panther is set to come out this weekend. So naturally, Ben Shapiro—noted racist, man the New York Times has repeatedly anointed as a leading conservative thinker, and bowl of potato salad that has been sitting in the sun for four hours—has thoughts.
Yesterday, on his podcast, Shapiro aired some extremely inarticulate grievances that barely concealed his real beef with the movie: that it stars and celebrates black people, and that black people are excited about it.
For two minutes, Shapiro tried to take the excitement and joy surrounding the film down a peg by not-quite-sarcastically claiming it’s been made out to be the greatest thing to happen to black people ever, even surpassing the end of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. Since literally nobody thinks this, has ever thought this, or will ever think this, all Shapiro managed to communicate was his unironic contempt for black people.
Shapiro then criticized black America for not being satisfied with Blade and Catwoman existing (because god forbid there are more than literally two comic book movies about black people), attack black parents, AND randomly rope in Barack Obama! It makes absolutely no sense, but it is pretty entertaining watching a human version of Sylvester the Cat’s son lose his mind at black success and joy.