But, but, Benny’s been told since he was a boy that he is “smart as a whip!” In addition to being a midwit’s idea of a smart person, Shapiro has always been a sell-out, and he’s not even within a standard deviation of me. There is a reason he contents himself with beating up on low-IQ college students, but has always run like a rabbit from a debate with me, or Milo, or any of his many intellectual superiors in the media space.
It is amusing to see him using rhetoric of my coinage, though. As one wit on SG suggested, no doubt we’ll soon be hearing him tell us what a “Sigma” he is. I despise the Littlest Chickenhawk, but I don’t hate him. To the contrary, I pity him, because I know for a fact that he never wanted to be what he eventually became. He’s rather like Gaiman and Scalzi, a mediocrity who was ultimately willing to take the ticket in order to achieve his ambitions, only unlike them, he knew ahead of time what it was going to cost him in terms of freedom and self-respect.
Kate Moss once famously said that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. In like manner, there is no success or fame that feels as satisfying as freedom and self-respect.