DEAR BEN SHAPIRO — Thank you, sir, for recently testifying before Congress with Cyrano-like verve about liberal censorship. You and I point out that the emperor has no clothes. No surprise. Half (of our people) of the House of Representatives grudgingly agree. Half swear our eyes lie, that our mooncalf mini-emperors are grinning goofily and walking around stark naked in front of the camera in full homecoming band regalia.
I grew up in this relatively peaceful if quirky ranching community of Santa Clarita and watched it evolve from a village into a sea of Taco Bell-planned urban yuppie concentration camps. For more than a century, we have been blessed with a swashbuckling and unique newspaper, The Signal (661-259-1000, if you don’t have a subscription yet, Ben). Its motto is “Eternal Vigilance.” I started working for The Mighty Signal when I was 14. That was 1964. I know. That makes me flirt with middle age today. That heroic magazine basically let me get away with poetic murder. I pointed out that it’s hard to buy shoes for Democrats because of their cloven hooves. I noted that an elected official should be “…sanded down, lightly salted, and thrown to cannibals.” So much for my persuasiveness. Last time I checked, he still wasn’t in the digestive tract of a cannibal.
Years ago, I was buying a pair of jeans at a local ranch supply store. The clerk called out my name from my credit card. A little old lady — I add, “hunched over, shriveled up, smelling of cat urine and talcum powder” — poked me in the kidneys. She growled and asked if I was that newspaper guy with the “double dollar sign/middle of a doughnut.”
She said I had no right to make fun of Democrats or to live in America. I interrupted her. I lied that I did not THE When John Boston had the misfortune of having to reveal his name, I whispered conspiratorially my disgust for this community’s beloved and award-winning columnist (I have 119 points, Signal editor Tim Whyte has 1.3 points).
She warmed herself up with relief. She told us what a completely leaking paper bag with chimpanzee diarrhea OTHER John Boston was a guy and someone should “…take him to the back.” Sigh. I’m a hopeless romantic, Ben? Maybe she was finally coming to accept our people’s point of view.
Since I am not a liberal, I did not whistle in her face, nor shout that her words were violence and that I was being torn apart by farm horses, nor did I stick my hands to her in protest. Besides, it is actually quite liberating to insult yourself, with joy, especially in a feed store.
While I’m given a lot of freedom when it comes to passing off my armpit crunching noises as commentary, it’s not the same in the outside world. I’ve struggled with social media and mostly lost. Over the years, I’ve launched a few business ventures online. I noticed this. If I wrote an article poking fun at Hillary or Obama, its reach on social media would shrink to a microscopic minimum. Years ago, my slightly conservative humor outlet, FooF Magazine, had a few thousand Facebook friends. I’d post articles and they’d reach less than 50 souls. During the 2016 election, I wrote an article called “37 Good Reasons to Vote for Hillary!” Actually, there isn’t a single reason. It was satire. My tech guru called. Had I seen the daily demographics? From zero dozen, my reach on Facebook shot up to nearly 100,000 souls. Apparently the sleazy little lackeys of the left mistakenly interpreted the article as being positive toward Mrs. Clinton, the only presidential candidate with a four-foot-long, red, crawling tail.
I’ve been demonetized, canceled, kicked out, put in social media jail. I didn’t call for a boycott of Barbra Streisand or oat milk at Starbucks. I didn’t speak out against the WNBA. Well. In so many words. Kickstarter, the fundraising site for art projects, wouldn’t let me join to promote my magazine, saying they “…don’t fund magazines.” I pointed out to a snooty twenty-something rep that they had a list of magazines that they proudly displayed on their website. had He said they were not really “magazines,” although the word “magazine” appeared prominently on their covers.
Liberal censorship. It lives with us. I recently started my own publishing company. My last book was The Unauthorized Autobiography of Joe Biden. It traces Joe’s career, from medical school in Alaska at age four to his time as a teenage pro wrestler in Delaware, seriously injured in his first match against an empty gorilla costume. It continues with his internship in communist China and his terrified fear of being in the same room with Michelle Obama. Just got a message from Amazon. They’ve pulled the book.
The Democratic Party can sit in front of freeway traffic, set fire to tennis shoe sales, spray paint priceless works of art, assure us that gas and groceries are the most expensive since 1932 at the January White Sale, and explain why Kamala Harris giggles like Dracula’s best friend Renfield eating flies. But – draw a lonely circle around your temple with your index finger and point at the establishment?
This is hate speech.
I don’t have millions of viewers or tons of likes. I would like to. I would like to make a few people laugh, throw a few little cream pies at the rich, powerful and insufferable. I want the American dream to have a chance – a chance — to make money doing what I’m good at. Thank you, Ben, for standing up for something that was once taken for granted: freedom of speech.
Oh. A little unsolicited advice?
Just in case you experience even more “accidental” censorship from the left, you might want to think about using hyphens. If you start identifying yourself as “Ben-Shapiro” or, better, “Abou Ben-Shapiro,” like the protagonist in Leigh Hunt’s famous poem “Abou Ben-Adhem,” you might confuse the hungry little censorship robots and make them think your views are more in the vein of Lawrence of Arabia…
Santa Clarita resident John Boston is the most prolific satirist in world history. Unless he gets censored again, he’ll soon be launching a new multimedia website: johnlovesamerica.com. You can still visit johnbostonbooks.com and pick up some fun summer reading material…
