Cardi B, Lizzo, Stupidity, and Fatness. Stop Judging!

[Ben Shapiro]

The federal government, our media, and our society at large have
decided that it is very, very important we promote fatness, stupidity,
and laziness.

There's a fascinating piece by Dr. Ryan Burge, a professor and
religious scholar, in which he examines data showing that as education
increases, religious practice or religious belief also increases to a
certain extent, which is essentially the reverse of what we've been
told.

Burge states, "Those who are the most likely to attend services weekly
are those with a graduate degree." And that correlates with income. So,
the more educated you are and more income you have, the more likely you
are to attend church on a regular basis, which is precisely the reverse
of what society and the media tell you.

What the media tell you is that it's the most educated among us who
never go to church, and it's the least educated among us who always go
to church. That is not true.

The identifiers of success in American life - educated, married with
children, earning a high income - correlate with religious practice.

One way to read this is that the church needs to be more welcoming and
it needs to find ways to reach out to people who are not married,
people who don't have middle-class income, and people who are not
college educated.

But there is a different way to read this as well: The rules that the
elite of our society - marital elite, the parental elite, the income
elite - have applied to _themselves_ are _very different_ than the
rules they have promulgated to the rest of society.

They have decided the measure of true virtue is to say the opposite.
They send their children to private school, they get married, they get
an education, and they follow the rules of a traditional, religious
society, _but_ then they say, "Because I'm an elite, I am going to
promulgate a new morality for _everyone else_."

The dirty secret about this is, it's a form of ugly paternalism in
which people at the top are saying that people at the bottom are
incapable of rising. And that's not true. The same things that got
people to the top are the things that can take anyone to the top.

But now we have a society dedicated to the opposite proposition, that
there is some sort of injustice in the measuring stick itself. Thus, we
are no longer even willing to aim for what we all know to be good and
true.

Once you _remove_ the measuring stick, you end up with chaos. You don't
end up with equality; you end up with turmoil and chaos and unsuccess
because you are subsidizing lack of success by removing the measuring
stick _for_ success.

We have decided at the elite levels of American government and American
media to obliterate all of those rules and pretend we have done
somebody some good. But it's precisely the opposite. The precise
opposite of what brings success is what our society promotes.

Here's an example: Cardi B.

She is a perfect example of virtually everything wrong with our
society. She is a rapper and former stripper who bragged on tape about
drugging and robbing men.

She also happens to be a person who is deemed by our society as the
height of sex appeal, that sexual satisfaction is supposed to be
attained by acting like or imitating Cardi B.

But the reality is that when Cardi B lives Cardi B's values, she ends
up very unhappy.

Cardi B is married to a person named Offset. These two lovebirds
married one another and they've had a rather fraught relationship.
Their marriage is the model for millions of people in the United
States. We used to model in the United States a solid marriage that
lasted for an entire lifetime in which you were dedicated to the
raising of your children.

But Cardi B's marriage is now splashed across the media. So the latest
news about their beautiful marriage is that she took to her Twitter
Space to address her husband, who had claimed she slept with another
man.

By the way, they have two kids.

He later took it down, but she responded in her Twitter space, saying,
"First of all, let me say, you can't accuse me of all the things you
know that you are guilty of. Sing it with me, y'all. And I see that it
is easy for you to blame everything on me."

This is what the upper echelons of our culture present as high culture.
This is an example of what is promoted by every major media outlet in
the United States. It is promoted by every single major streaming
service in the United States. It is promoted as the height of American
culture.

You are not supposed to say things like, "This stuff is ugly and bad
and her music sucks." You're not allowed to make those kinds of
statements without people angrily arguing against you. Instead, we are
supposed to pretend that it's a form of female empowerment and that
people who follow its diktats are likely to lead happier lives.

But Cardi B is not leading a happy marital life. The people who are
leading happy married lives are boring fuddy-duddies, while the people
our society is promoting as models for marriage are people like Cardi
B.

It's a society that promotes stupidity. It's a society that promotes
failed marriages.

There is an ideal. It's not insulting to people who don't meet the
ideal to point out that the ideal exists.

The same thing exists in the physical realm.

We have decided that it's very mean and very bad to point out that
people should be in shape.

Now, most people do not form their values based on politics. They get
their values from either the local institutions in which they
participate or from the surrounding milieu, which is usually social
media.

Cardi B has a huge number of fans and followers because she is in the
cultural realm. And the same is true of Lizzo.

The Washington Post published a piece this week titled, "What the Fat
Shamers Don't Get About Lizzo." The writer opines:

I understand why Lizzo took a beat from Twitter. Last month,
the Grammy-winning multi-hyphenate artist - a classically
trained flute-playing rapper, singer, songwriter, actress and
fashion mogul - was under attack (again!) from internet trolls
bombarding her with vicious messages about her weight. This
time, it got so bad she locked down her Twitter account,
writing, `Y'all don't know how close I be to giving up on
everyone and quitting.'

Lizzo embraces inclusivity for everyone who has a body. She
chants the mantra of body positivity for all humans, not just
the fat ones.

Here's the truth: If you want a path to failure, you should follow the
pathway of "empowerment" and "self-acceptance." The best people are
people who are always striving to better themselves and to better the
people around them. You should not feel empowered just being you.

You shouldn't wake up in the morning feeling, I am my best me. You are
not your best you. There is a better you out there and it's just a
short distance away, if you strive to change yourself.

When it comes to the treadmill of life, the treadmill is moving
underneath you. If you are standing still, you're moving backwards;
either you're moving forward or you're falling off the treadmill.

The media claim Lizzo is a beautiful, beautiful woman. She's got to be
at least 150 pounds overweight. But this is the new standard.

It's not a recipe for your success to imitate Lizzo's actions.

But our culture tells us that to even say such things is judgmental and
very bad.