Move over, Geraldo! Recently, we reported that “moderate Republican” Geraldo Rivera threatened to climb down off his virtual bar stool at Fox News Channel and knock co-host Eric Bolling silly for daring to suggest that he “exploits and sensationalizes everything.” The evidence of Rivera’s exploitive tendencies are so numerous and well-documented that including another example here would be carrying coals to Newcastle.
Nevertheless, the incident provides another inconvenient reminder of how hollow the left’s holier-than-thou lectures on civility ring.
Yet, when it comes to threatening bodily harm on a cable news program co-panelist, Rivera’s temper tantrum was nothing more than a warm-up act for transgender reporter Zoey Tur (né Bob Tur), who was a guest on Dr. Drew Pinksy’s show along with Breitbart’s Ben Shapiro. The topic was whether onetime decathlete Bruce Jenner, who now goes by the name Caitlyn Jenner, was deserving of the “ESPYs’ Arthur Ashe Courage Award.” For the record, the panel also included entertainment journalist Segun Oduolowu and “Pop Trigger” host Samantha Schacher, but it was Tur who ultimately threatened to send Shapiro home in ambulance.
Here is the exchange. A video capture follows:
ZOEY TUR: Did she deserve the honor? Probably not. Is she brave? Of course she’s brave. All those years invested as the sports legend, to come out transgender is horribly difficult. It is the most difficult thing you can do. I’ve been overseas, I’ve flown helicopter missions, surveillance missions, I’ve been shot, stabbed. Being brave is being yourself. And being transgender is about the bravest thing you can do….
BEN SHAPIRO: Why are we mainstreaming delusion?
[…]
SAMANTHA SCHACHER: Why would you call it a delusion?
SHAPIRO: Because, Bruce — Caitlyn Jenner, I’ll call him Caitlyn Jenner because that’s what –
SCHACHER: No, it’s her, you’re not being polite to the pronouns, it’s disrespectful.
SHAPIRO: Okay, forget about the disrespect, facts don’t care about your feelings. It, turns out that every chromosome, every cell in Caitlyn Jenner’s body, is male, with the exception of some of his sperm cells.… It turns out that he still has all of his male appendages. How he feels on the inside is irrelevant to the question of his biological self.
SEGUN ODUOLOWU: I don’t agree with that, I am not on that train…. She wants to be called she, I’m going to call her she. I just have a problem with the message and the messenger.
[…]
TUR: We both know chromosomes don’t necessarily mean you’re male or female…. You have a thing like Klinefelter’s syndrome. So, [pointing to Shapiro] you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re not educated on genetics.
SHAPIRO: What are your genetics, sir?
DREW PINSKY: I’d stay away from the genetics and back to the brain scans.
TUR: You cut that out now, or you’ll go home in an ambulance. [Emphasis added]
SHAPIRO: That seems mildly inappropriate for a political discussion….
TUR: You are being rude.
SHAPIRO: I’m sorry, it’s not rude to say that someone who’s biologically a male is a male.
TUR: You just called me a “sir.”
SHAPIRO: Someone who is biologically male is a male…. it is not a matter of insulting of inflammatory. It’s a fact. You are a male. Dr. Drew is a male…. It’s not a matter of aggressively insulting.… The entire discussion is whether we are embracing mental illness and delusion as a society, that’s the entire discussion.
I realize liberals will accuse me of perpetuating another stereotype, but Tur’s actions validate Shapiro’s claims. Putting aside the mixed metaphor — an injured person doesn’t go home in an ambulance but to a hospital — threatening physical violence in response to a verbal insult seems pretty masculine; anachronistic one, too, in this age of liberal enlightenment.
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