I admit, Jim Jeffries makes me laugh. I find his comedy hilarious, his stories are gripping and as a comedian he is funny, most of the time. I’ve watched all of his specials and have been a fan since before he was a household name. As such, I see it as a tragedy that he has fallen into the trap that so many famous artists seem to have fallen into lately. That being, he thinks people care about his political opinions and he thinks his opinions are informed, intelligent and worth listening to. They are not, nor are the opinions of any of the “Hollywood elite”.
A great example of his approach to politics is evident in his special “Bare”. In it he attacks the right to own and bear arms using the same boring Left-wing logic that anti-gun campaigners always use. He quickly dismisses the strongest argument in favour of free gun rights, to resist a tyrannical government, by pointing out that “governments have drones”. Like all Left-wing arguments, this only sounds good if you are not given all the facts. In making this argument he ignores very simple questions such as, so why has America basically lost in Afghanistan and why is terrorism so effective as a strategy of war? How did America lose Vietnam? Surely if technological superiority is an automatic win, America would never lose a war and terrorism would be useless as a strategy.
Yes, I know it’s just a comedy show, but he is also making a loud political statement, and an uninformed and poorly argued one at that. When I heard his rant on gun control for the first time I just ignored it; the rest of the show was funny enough to ignore the five minutes of ignorance masquerading as comedy. Unfortunately, his next special had more of the same and since then he has started regularly expressing his opinions on other platforms. Just the other day he felt the need to “blast” Piers Morgan (ironically an advocate of gun control) over his ‘support’ (read: not entirely negative assessment) of Donald Trump and his statement that the immigration suspension is not a Muslim Ban (it’s not – this is a fact). It has all that you would expect from an uninformed member of the Leftist “elite”. Abuse, vitriol, use of the audience to bully a dissenter, everything other than a substantive and informed argument. He even Godwin’s himself, just to complete the parody.
As such, to help counter the current plague of uninformed and unwelcome celebrity opinion, I thought I’d take a leaf out of the biggest Left-wing rag site there is, BuzzFeed. I have decided to make a “listicle” to help these pig-headed celebrities figure out whether or not they are, what I have termed, a “Hollywood Tool”.
Let us begin; you are a Hollywood Tool if:
1. You have a platform to speak, your audience does not, but that doesn’t stop you from preaching at them.
Yes, I know this might seem obvious, but think about it. Where do you get most of your news, current affairs and commentary from these days? Is it from the television where the news is broadcast to you, or is it online where you are able to comment and give your opinion on the story/video itself? Giving people the chance to respond to your points, or even vote up/down, makes us part of the journalistic process. It makes us truly part of the national, and international, discussion (which is why the establishment utterly hate it). I have read many articles, only to find the comment section has more value in it than the article itself. So long as the comments sections is free from censorship, you can get a great indication of how good the article is just by reading the comments.
Speaking of which, have you noticed how many articles with a Left-wing slant don’t allow comments? Have you noticed how many Left-wing writers will block anyone who disagrees with them? Twitter have even started censoring comments they don’t like, in order to give the impression that non-Leftist views have more opposition than they really do. None of these celebrities have YouTube channels where they put their opinions up and let people vote them up or down. None of them let people comment and say exactly what they think of their opinions directly to them.
They are cowards and they are bullies.
2. You are paid to be an artist, not a journalist/commenter, yet offer your opinion anyway, without being asked for it.
When Bruce Springsteen uses his stage to push his political views on his audience, an audience who have not paid to hear them, he is abusing the privilege given to him by his fans. Why do these people seem to think their opinions are somehow worth listening to simply because they have a microphone and an audience? Why do they think they are somehow more “informed” than people who follow politics for a living?
How many debates has Jim Jeffries taken part in? How many debates has any Hollywood Tool taken part in? How many times have they had their views genuinely challenged? How many times have they presented them outside of a blatantly Left-wing panel, on a blatantly Left-wing show, hosted by a blatantly Left-wing Bill Maher or some other Left-wing platform? How many hours did he spend working, thanklessly, on a political YouTube channel, only to have his videos permanently demonetised for no other reason than they don’t fit the Leftist narrative? If he wants to have an opinion that’s fine, go and debate someone with a balanced moderator where each person is allowed to respond clearly to points being made. Better yet, go and debate Stefan Molyneux, Ben Shapiro or Milo Yiannopolis on their home ground. Why not debate Piers on neutral ground? Now that would be good viewing.
Jim won’t do it because he is a coward and he is a bully.
3. Your opinions are the same as the mainstream media’s, but you think you are being “edgy”.
Ever notice how every single Hollywood celebrity opinion comes straight out of the “mainstream” view? All they seem capable of is repeating the same, dull, clichéd garbage that the Left-wing media has been shoving down our throats for decades now. “Be more tolerant”, “be nicer”, “if you disagree you are racist/sexist/bigoted/whatever”. There is not a single original opinion between them.
This is understandable coming from actors and actresses, who are paid to recite lines and play make-believe, but comedians and musicians? They are people who are paid to be creative. Jim Jeffries makes his living saying offensive things to make people laugh, yet his political views are highly sanitised political correctness; guns are bad, Trump is bad, anyone who disagrees is stupid. It is not “edgy” or “cool” to regurgitate the views of the mainstream media. It’s not even intelligent. In fact, it shows a distinct lack of intelligence and creativity in thought.
They are bullies, they aren’t very smart, and Conservatism is the New Punk Rock!
4. You think you know better than your audience and you are going to tell them so.
As Jeffries points out in his own special, he knows that many of the people in his audience disagree with him. He states clearly that a large chunk of the audience will zone out when he goes on a political rant. He even realises that some will get angry at him, and he thinks this is funny. Clearly, he thinks his views are so worthy of being listened to that he would antagonise a large part of his audience, on purpose, to express them.
“But he is an offence comic! He is there to offend you! If you can’t take it, you have no sense of humour!”
Yes, his act is to be offensive and say shocking things, his act tests the boundaries of what is acceptable. Again, it is not “edgy” to parrot off views agreed upon by almost the entire mainstream media and establishment. I like his comedy – when it’s actually comedy, he makes me laugh a lot; he is funny. But that doesn’t make it OK for him to blatantly and shamelessly call a large part of his audience stupid. That’s not being “offensive”; that’s being a complete dick. That’s taking people’s money in bad faith.
Nobody, not a single person, goes to see Jim Jeffries to hear his political views. Just as not a single person goes to a movie to hear Meryl Streep lecture us on the “evils” of a democratically-elected President. Just as nobody pays top dollar to hear Bruce Springsteen tell us all how bad he thinks Donald Trump is.
It is the height of arrogance, not to mention stupidity, to alienate a large part of your audience in this way. They are arrogant, and they are bullies.
5. You think you are virtuous, not just right, and think anyone who disagrees with you is evil.
Arguably the most insufferable aspect of the celebrity desire to preach is their unanimous “holier-than-thou” approach towards doing so. We are forced to suffer through their pious rants simply because they believe they have some sort of unearned higher morality, that we “peasants” don’t possess. They genuinely think they are virtuous and moral therefore we must be forced to listen to them.
It begs the question, where do they get this moral self-righteousness from? Why do they think they are oh-so-much better than us mere mortals? I can only speculate, but I would imagine it has everything to do with the fact that they are surrounded entirely by those who think exactly the same. They are never challenged and never step outside their own thought bubbles. Anyone who does have an opposing view is considered a bad person for having it and this attitude is shared by everyone else in in the group(think). Anyone who disagrees must be shamed and attacked and is deemed a lesser human being, thus pushed to the outer. To the Left, they are the virtuous moral defenders of goodness, everyone else are the “The Others”.
They are puritanical thugs and they are bullies.
6. You respond to counter-arguments not with reason, evidence and facts, but with abuse and vitriol.
The Piers vs Jeffries debacle highlighted, perfectly, what these Left-wing celebrity types are reduced to when they are countered by someone smarter and more informed than them (which is anyone who will debate them). All they have are insults and personal attacks. All they have is “shut up, shut up, shut up”. Not all are as crude as Jeffries, who literally just said “f— off” and jeered at a world-renowned journalist in the most childish and idiotic fashion imaginable. It’s true, most Leftists have a bit more class and will at least call the people they are debating “racists” or some other insult that is “not an argument”, but it all amounts to the same thing: “You have opinions I don’t like, but can’t counter, so I am going to shut you up instead.”
Yelling over and over that Donald Trump is a “fascist” doesn’t make it so. Especially not when your side is literally burning books. Yelling abuse and calling people names is “not an argument”. Punching people in the face and saying it’s OK to do so because they have views you don’t like is “not an argument”:
Saying “I am against fascism” whilst acting in a way that only fascists act is idiotic and “not an argument”.
They are abusive and they are bullies.
Which brings me to the final point:
7. You are wrong about essentially everything, but you are too stupid to realise it.
Whether it’s ignoring the facts on gun control, calling a temporary freeze on a handful of countries a “Muslim Ban” despite the fact that the majority of Muslims can still get in, preaching about global warming from a private jet or getting it hilariously wrong on Donald Trump, they just can’t seem to be right about anything. Even a broken clock is right twice a day and they can’t even manage that. This is what tends to happen when you spend your entire adult life in a groupthink bubble and never learn anything for yourself. You tend to be uninformed whilst having an inflated sense of your own correctness and moral virtue. This is why they have had such a massive meltdown since Trump won. Coming face to face with their own inadequacies must have been a hard pill to swallow. Mature adults confront being wrong and not getting their own way with self-reflection a change of mind and a commitment to do better in the future. Children face being wrong and not getting their own way with a tantrum and a sook.
Jim Jeffries got immediate positive feedback from the audience during his little tirade. They were well and truly on his side. That’s a powerful biological and emotional reward, the dopamine kick must have been fantastic and he would have felt great about his “right think”. The problem for him is, it’s artificial and not representative of the real world around him. It’s not even representative of his market and those who might pay him to make them laugh, many of whom will now give his show a pass. Most people would have seen his tirade and thought him a rude, arrogant bully and a fool, because that’s exactly what he looked like. That’s exactly what every celebrity looks like when they preach at us from their soap box while receiving awards handed to them by other celebrities, with a solid pat on the back and a wink.
They are in a bubble and they are bullies, but soon they will have nobody to bully, because we have all stopped listening and are not taking it any longer. Being called a “racist” no longer works, tearful speeches of no substance no longer work, nothing works other than good arguments. We have all seen these people for what they are and there is no unswallowing that big Red Pill. The voice of reason has woken up to the need to fight back and we are not going back to sleep. The bullies of the Left have finally been hit back and, like any bully, they do not like it one bit. Time to hurt these fools where it hurts most, their wallets.
Time to boycott any celebrity who uses their stage to preach at us and not for the sole purpose of what we pay them to do; time for them to just shut up and entertain us.
Mattys Modern Life writes regularly and brilliantly at https://www.minds.com/MattysModernLife.
Photo by Ben Sutherland 