These are the 'dumbest' and 'silliest' things that 'triggered' far-right culture warriors in 2022: podcast

27 December 2022

Far-right Republican culture warriors have a long history of becoming deeply upset over things that, unlike health care, the economy or foreign policy, have absolutely no effect on voters’ lives. Fox News’ Sean Hannity, in 2009, was relentlessly mocked by his critics after throwing a temper tantrum because then-President Barack Obama put Dijon mustard on a hamburger. During the 2012 GOP presidential primary, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich insisted that now-Sen. Mitt Romney (who ultimately won the nomination) wasn’t a true conservative because he spoke French.

In 2014, Fox News pundits were outraged because Obama wore a tan suit during a news conference.

The U.S. has had two different presidents since Obama left the White House, but one thing that hasn’t changed since then is the ability of far-right GOP culture warriors to become outraged over unimportant things. In a late December edition of the Daily Beast’s podcast “The New Abnormal,” host Andy Levy and Media Matters’ Andrew Lawrence look back on some of the “dumbest” and “silliest” things that “triggered” and outraged Republicans and right-wing media pundits in 2022.

“Conservatives get triggered over the darndest things,” the Daily Beast says in a description of the podcast. “From Lizzo playing a Founding Father’s flute to a gay PDA in a Disney movie, 2022 was full of right-wing outrage so dumb that ‘The New Abnormal’ politics podcast host Andy Levy and Media Matters’ deputy director of rapid response Andrew Lawrence decided to round up the most ‘offensive’ instances in the show’s latest episode.”

Levy and Lawrence noted that a long list of right-wing media figures, including Ben Shapiro, became furious when R&B/hip-hop star Lizzo played James Madison’s flute. Lawrence explained, “She’s incredibly talented, and all it was just a Black woman playing James Madison’s flute that no one knew existed. It just sent them off the deep end…. Three or four days that we waste just talking about this nonsense.”

Levy noted that Fox News’ Tucker Carlson was outraged over an M&Ms commercial, angrily claiming that the commercial was making the female cartoon characters more “androgynous.” And Lawrence interjected, “It’s so silly. It’s so ridiculous. But it feeds into — you know, especially with Tucker Carlson — the whole gender roles and masculinity is disappearing is such a huge part of his program. And those kind of insecurities are what he feeds into to draw viewers to his show.”

Lawrence added, “For the rest of us, it’s just silly…. The rest of the country is: Who cares?.... But if you’re a conservative and you’re looking for something to get angry about, this fits. It gives them something to be angry about.”

Levy and Lawrence both stressed that as “silly” and “dumb” as right-wing media pundits can be, their “nontroversies” fit into the us-versus-them narrative that Fox News and other media outlets are pushing.

Lawrence told Levy, “All of these things are dumb and they’re silly, and they’re good to make fun of. But they all have sort of a deeper cultural meaning and a much more dangerous cultural meaning.”

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