Bill Burr Says Ben Shapiro Only Called Him ‘Woke’ Because Buzzwords Make Money
Ben Shapiro publicly declared that Bill Burr is “woke,” an “asshole" and “both a moral and an economic idiot.”
To which Burr replied, “Who are you?”
Earlier this month, Burr inadvertently made himself the main character of the conservative media cycle when he went on his latest of many righteous rants about the state of income inequality in America during an episode of The Monday Morning Podcast. While responding to a write-in from a fan who, as a single mother, is struggling to make ends meet, Burr blamed “rabid dog” billionaires for the fact that the richest country in the world has so many hard-working citizens living in poverty, and he angrily suggested that such robber barons “need to be put down.”
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Clearly, a certain conservative social media pundit was jealous of the attention Burr was getting from right-wing circles, and Shapiro launched an all-out attack against the comic on Facebook, on his podcast and in his online “news” outlet The Daily Wire in an attempt to insert himself into the discussion.
However, in Burr’s recent interview with The New York Times, Burr admitted that he still doesn’t know who Shapiro is, despite how the diminutive wannabe demagogue has elbowed his way into the “rabid dog” news story. But, now that Burr is vaguely aware of Shapiro’s existence, he already understands the grift — nobody gets easier attention, clicks and, consequently, paychecks than the little boy who cries “woke."
During one of his many Burr-focused meltdowns last week, Shapiro accused Burr of “going not just woke, but the wokest of the woke on everything from race to economics.” Burr, who has spent all 33 years of his career thumbing his nose at the easily offended and mercilessly mocking political correctness, has long maintained that bad actors on the liberal side of the culture wars have hijacked the phrase “woke” and reduced it to a punchline. But, more than that, Burr understands that the buzzword is an automatic trigger for the other side of the aisle, and he correctly called out Shapiro for turning the right’s Pavlovian response to hearing the word ”woke" into a quick buck.
“All he knew is if he put ‘woke’ on what I said, he would make more money," Burr told NYT about Shapiro. “I don’t know who he is, but that guy is a jerk-off.”
While Burr may not follow the alt-right figureheads who have declared him Public Enemy Number Woke, he certainly understands their angle — simply searching “Bill Burr woke” on YouTube or Twitter will return clips of various conservative crybabies from Matt Walsh to Andrew Schulz complaining about Burr's anti-billionaire remarks on various podcasts with tiered memberships on Patreon.
Burr is right that the word “woke” has lost all meaning on the left, but he has enough experience triggering snowflakes to intuitively understand that it still has one important definition for the other side: “easy money.”
