Ben Shapiro's Terrible Book: The Saga Continues | BEHIND THE BASTARDS 

"The last non-Islamic cafe in Tehran," what the fuck does that mean, Ben? Instead of milk, do they stir pork lard into their tea?

I said it before. This book is the Kobayashi Maru test for Editors. Dealing with absolute terror and facing the no win situation.

The thing is, the reason he can't have the character use a shooting, which happens all the time anyway, to further his agenda isn't just bad writing. Ben, and his audience, believe that none of these are problematic shootings. Either each one was justified self-defense against a scary criminal, or he imagines it being a staged political event like the one he describes here.

Cody's exasperated delight puts a huge smile on my face.

"She's a doctor, she has THINGS to do" I like to imagine that sums up most of Benny's interactions with his wife

1:08:37 I love hearing the switch from narrator voice to genuine bafflement as the sentence progresses

He *shut* the door... _stealthily_

"We have returned returnedly". That was f-----g funny, Robert. Well done.

The blonde reporter bit feels like something that happened to Shapiro. I get the feeling Ben was a "nice guy"in college, and an absolute chad 6'4", leftist, blackman was spitting Marxist Theory. Swooped in and took Ben's crush.

Hard to believe this man failed as a writer.

The funny thing about the Pickett's charge reference is that in the actual Pickett's charge... Pickett's Confederate soldiers got slaughtered. And slaughtered so badly that after it was over he is reported to have told General Robert E. Lee that he no longer had a division to command. Oh yeah and it was an infantry assault... that is... men on foot, with no horses (even officers would've dismounted, because riding a horse would've made them easy targets). Why not use a similar example from history like the Light Brigade?

The swat team scene makes it sound like they are all in a firing line, rotating to face the incoming cavalry charge of the racist 5th. Their squadlead lifts his saber, but before he can shout fire, the helicopter they stored all their nitroglycerin in randomly fell on them and exploded. Ben wants to be this military realist that knows guns and will list the caliber of the ammo used but also thinks a helicopter will just fall out of the sky and explode when you shoot it with a handgun.

Listened to this twice and still can't get over how Ben couldn't help but refer to a dead 8 year old as a 'black MAN' and not a child.

I appreciate the pronunciation change from LeVon to Leevon, it makes the story exponentially funnier

He shut the door... _shuttily._

He made his senses *sensitive*

Dolph Lundgren actually is huge in Slavic countries, and it actually is specifically because he played a Russian once and made them look really cool

This is a really helpful series because I know how bad writing can be, and my writing is not like that. Super encouraging.

I'd have to say, any kid regardless of race for the most part knows not to literally draw down on a cop with a toy. I'm white and I'm 100% sure I got that message as a kid from multiple sources

Sealthily closing doors is the exact opposite of what SWAT officers do

The fact Ben can get published gives me hope

Ben Shapiro, King of Adverbs

Maybe it's because I just finished one of the books, but it sounds like he's trying to imitate Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive without understanding worldbuilding, pacing, character writing, or humanity in general. The Stormlight Archive is an excellent series with how it handles the world, character motivations and varying philosophies, moral ambiguity in war, and the struggles of individuals against their selves (mental health) and societal structures. It feels like Ben thinks he's doing that, but he definitely isn't. The Stormlight Archive books are structured into multiple "parts" that are often closed out by a dramatic event that changes your perspective on something or shifts a dynamic in the story. There are interludes between the parts showing the viewpoints of "minor" characters that may shed light on wider happenings in the world or how the world works. That can be setting up chekov's guns or just exploring the world. The big climactic battles in the Stormlight Archive tend to jump between different characters' viewpoints as the battlefield shifts and changes. Those are always different parts of a larger conflict all happening simultaneously, not just changing viewpoints for the sake of it. They're also switching between well-established characters in the heat of a conflict that has been built up for over 600+ pages. It helps that there are "* * *" line breaks between the viewpoints. When done well, and not by Ben, it builds tension and gives a sense of time and scale in a large conflict.

He blacked the door... blackily

Now I understand why Benny never had the success in screen writing he thought he so richly deserved

My favorite parts of this series are when the gang just pulls an objectively better plot out of their ass.

And then -Ben Shapiro- Commander Braun Steele *wordily* wrote a book

I know this is an old-ass post, but Benny boy does, in fact, have a movie now! "Run, Hide, Fight." Y'all should review it, it'd be a hoot.

This book wasn’t even proof-read, much less edited. The completely mangled sentence structures, misused punctuation, perspective shifts and tense inconsistencies in the middle of sentences is stunning. Who read this and said, “This is a masterpiece.” MS Word’a grammar checker alone would turn the screen into a Jackson Pollack painting. The story itself is a glimpse into his insanely incorrect understanding of how the world functions.

"Yusef, he'd heard one of the others call him. He wouldn't forget that any time soon." It's hilarious how meaningless that is. Yusef is a common Arabic name, which might not even be his real name, and Arabic naming conventions being as they are, Yusef is only one of however many different names he has.

I'm with Cody on this one, I desperately want to read Ben's re-write of Pride and Prejudice XD I want to read his version of every book ever written it'll be Endless comedy.

I liked the part where Bruce Willis punched Ivan Drago and one shotted the chopper at the same time while jumping all the motorcycles through the flaming gas station as the Swat Tank exploded from Martian War Machine heat ray. Bravo Ben, good job.

I wrote a short story for a creative writing class where the point of view switched between two characters with very distinct voices, and as their paths meet the POV changes get faster, before one kills the other and the story briefly changes to third-person. I won't claim that it was a great story, but the perspective changes were a deliberate decision that I executed with care, which certainly isn't the case with Ben's writing.

bens writing style reminds me of tumblr girl fanfictions

My goodness, when he keeps making thse descriptions that would apply to 2001 era Al Qaeda when trying to paint a picture of the government agents of Iran in the middle of their capital city, it drives me wild

1:16:43 Cody is so excited whenever ben goes mask off

1:08:39 I couldn’t believe my ears and had to listen to this multiple times, because it’s straight out of the opening scene of The Naked Gun.

I love tall man Bent Hawpiro.

“Smiling. Smilingly.”

Yard, will never be forgotten

It's worth remembering that this is mid-2010s, the Rust Belt, a black child with a toy gun being shot down by a white police officer... this is Ben Shapiro's version of the Tamir Rice killing.

Some how listening to these now is retroactively making the 2020 lockdown more bearable.

With a stealth bourne of primordial stealthiness, he shut the door, stealthily.

these episodes really could use numbers, just saying editors...

26:13 This section of the book might be the most rascist thing ive ever read

I'm getting the vague sense that a man who never leaves his wealthy suburb, spent most of his life getting told he was a prodigy, rejects all criticism, and is prejudiced against 80% of the global population might not have the worldly experience or technical skill to publish a book without an editor.

Ben has crushed my dream of writing one of the worst novels ever.

sometimes its about the worst people in all of history, sometimes its about the worst novel in all of history

7.62x51 isn't a handgun round, I think Robert must be thinking of the pistol AR craze which uses 5.56x45 (and is now dying off quite a bit because all the 'pistol braces' - that were obviously only ever used as stocks to get around SBR restrictions - were just overtly taunting the ATF) I mean 7.62 still isn't what I'd call a 'heavy caliber' round, whatever the shit that phrase means.

This book is essentially him dancing for peanuts.

I did not know Ben Shapiro as a novelist, but wow! Makes me think of another "great writer2 (who stands like 6,4 feet with loinfire..) The one and only Toad Daybell. Top of the pops LOL

I haven't laughed so hard in months.

Needed fun after Industrial Disaster one.

The suitcase chapter was critical, because he needed to fit in the Dolf Lundgren line.

Brett Hawthorne has the exact same personality as a member of Team America.

Christ alive! I guarantee you good money that Little Ben read the Turner Diaries and decided that it needed a retelling, just without all the explicit Anti-Semitism.

I do keep circling back to the idea that somehow, a cop shooting an unarmed kid is okay if someone else put the kid in the bad situation. I mean, you could even have the gang leader be morally gray -- he set up the kid to die because the ends justify the means. But Ben isn't a smart man or a good writer.

So I'm just curious about one thing, Robert -- I mean, as far as writing goes, what do you think about that Ben Shapiro fellow?

Bodily works as a term meaning "forcefully," or "to use one's body." Though he could have used other words for that. I wish I weren't defending Benny's shitty writing.

28:14 It’s a „Robocop 2“!!!

Two things:it’s funny that Dolph Lundgren was actually mentioned because that’s who I picture in my mind when hearing descriptions of Brett Hawthorne and this is even funnier and more detailed than the Chapo Trap House Reading Series and that’s reaaaally saying something.

Bad sentences is a valid writing tool, if you know what you're doing. The best example is if you're reading a characters thoughts(so not Ben's outside narrator perspective), having a thought break off mid way through before a swear is a great way to show realising something bad. "That voice, it was Julia's. Then the person who tried to kill me was... F*ck" I think one of my favourites is in a fanfic story where the MC suffers aphasia after a head injury 2/3rds of the way in. The sentences in the MCs head are fine, but all spoken words from then on are garbled, sometimes in ways you can understand "laughed, laughed. Torn laughter" is clearly "left, left. Turn left here"; while others are just completely incomprehensible until later in the story.

This is still more entertaining than Critical Drinkers book 😂

To be fair, most people probably look tall to Ben Shapiro.

to pick one up, bawdily

Wait, 2016? I thought he wrote this in high school or something, wow.

Ok so it's Republicans version of threat level midnight

Aside from bad writing, bigotry, shite overall story line, reeks of written by someone who's never been a fist fight much less a fire fight... I have found new levels of 'WTF😂 Ben'

Not being executed might be the one thing Ben got right, accidentally, and still incorrectly. They do actually do a lot of dry runs of the execution so the victim doesn't know when the real thing will happen. But... they don't record them, so he still screwed it up. His protagonist should know this, and probably note this, as it makes him seem smart. Which is why I suspect he doesn't actually KNOW this because it means he didn't try to make himself sound smart.

Our generation's The Eye of Argon.

Wow, I guess I'm not that bad of a writer after all

Ben Shapiro strikes me as that kid who read what he wrote aloud in English class and everyone praised him because his story sounded cool to his peers, so he thought he was hot stuff. I'm making the guess because I was that kid. Granted, we were definitely not taught to actually critique writing beyond some spelling and grammar mistakes, and what people liked and disliked. Reading some of my fiction from high school makes me cringe, which I'm glad for because that means I've improved beyond a high school level... unlike some people, who truly enjoy, who write words, sometimes with adjectives. Slammed the door attentively or something. Not to mention Hawthorne sounds increasingly like Alex Jones, so that's whose voice I hear when he speaks. You can still encourage writers while pointing out actual mistakes. Not ever critic is wrong.

Did he lie about graduating Magna cum laude from Harvard, or did he bribe someone or something?

See I always thought that if you were too lazy to come up with a name for a black character you just called him a letter, like D. I really did think that was the bare minimum, but facts do not care about my feelings.

Jesus, hearing these passages reminds me of shitty TV fanfiction I have read and (embarrassingly) have written as a younger person. The writing styles are similar. At least I was writing about superheroes and not racism...

Pronoun Trouble the book. Between overusing the pronouns and tossing in a ton of adjectives like cognitive landmines, Ben makes it nearly impossible to follow who's doing what.

I've read somewhere that Dolph Lundgren was cast in Johnny Mnemonic because he was a big star in the middle east, but I can't find the reference.

I'd like to open the floor to this question: "Does Ben Shapiro know that he's a racist?" I'm not sure if he's consciously aware of it or if he just has a bunch of racist nonsense rolling around in his head that informs his behavior.

SoldierDads Unite bro

sure, options for "bodily picking her up" would be "mentally, magically, philosophically, sexually"

7.62 nato is not legally a handgun round outside of those AR "pistols" which are only pistols in a pedantic legal sense.

Heck................... ................................................................................................................................................................

👍

idk why you guys are so surprised at all the ambiguous uses of "he". it's a well known fact ben shapiro doesn't understand pronouns

7.62 actually is a bigger caliber and .308 is also a larger rifle round.

{sarcasm:} Brett Hawthorne is that new Gwen Shapiro chick at DW right? {Also bad sentence structure}

Small nitpick, but 308 is a pretty heavy caliber, I dont think anyone would call that a "handgun round".

A clipped accent is a real thing. Kinda surprised none of them had seen it written before. I guess it's easy to get carried away with criticism when nearly every sentence is embarrassing as hell

Go rent an apartment in the shitty part of Memphis for 3 months... you will change ur tune real quick. I'm not afraid of the local fauna and I am capable of coexisting when forced to; however it is far from ideal

Ben has just pulled everything from his fantasy for this book. He doesnt even know anything about the Middle East or Islam or black people or gangs he knows NOTHING and he didn't bother to learn. If I was Ben I would be so ashamed of this book.

I know that Robert is just reading and commenting aloud in real time, but, and I mean this with all due respect, when he says that he must have a thing for cutting off testicles because he writes the phrase twice in a single sentence, he gets confused as to who he is talking about. ... I! I get confused about who he is talking about. Sorry; I got confused,

ben wants so badly to be the big leather daddy dom but he will only ever be a pocket gay 😔 a classic tragedy

The short jokes are awful.