Obviously Time To Start My Birthday Fundraiser

Since it looks like I have a lot of catching-up to do.

Because while there is a lot of yadda yadda in this article about what a clueless, sleazy little hatepimp Ben Shapiro is --

Welcome, Ben Shapiro
What a precious snowflake.

Ben Shapiro is the kind of person who talks about opening the door to civil, genuine conversation, then slams it on your foot and taunts you if you say “ouch.” ...

-- here is a cold, hard fact, with a little emphasis added to liven up your field of vision:

His speaking tour is sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation, a big-budget conservative youth organization that uses its outside money to coordinate and pay speakers who come to campus, ostensibly at the invitation of their campus YAF chapters. The organization is more top-down than its preferred, heroic, resistance narrative of “small campus conservative group takes on the liberal goliath” and standing up against the “self-perpetuating aristocracy” that is the public university. The YAF holds over $71 million in assets. Thanks to a $10 million gift from the DeVos family, the national organization recently bought the Ronald Reagan ranch, and a 2016 $16 million bequest has turbo-charged their national speaker initiatives. The YAF is also closely affiliated with the State Policy Network, a web of conservative think tanks awash in Koch brothers money and the organizational power behind the ALEC initiatives to get ultra-conservative template legislation into state legislatures. Real outsiders. Alumni of the YAF include Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller and Ann Coulter, while current speakers range from the anti-Islamic Robert Spencer to the questionably credentialed Ted Nugent.

Simply put, the kind of money the Right puts behind even a clueless, sleazy little hatepimp like Ben Shapiro buys him and his filthy agenda a place at the table.

With that kind of money, you can buy your way into national media conversation and onto the national agenda.

With it, you can buy your way back into the spotlight no matter how miserable an excuse for a human being you are:

Fox was trying to convince the public that its culture had changed. But they were determined to keep Bill O’Reilly. https://t.co/0ykzHam7Ik

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 21, 2017

Without it, you're just another crackpot standing on an orange crate, annoying the passers-by.

So here's the deal.

If I can raise just a tiny fraction of what Fox News spent to buy Bill O'Reilly out of prison time and back into prime time ... just a wee percentage of what the Young America’s Foundation is willing to drop to keep America's media pantry stocked with human toe-jam like Ben Shapiro ... say, a million dollars ... I solemnly promise to run right back down to the Dollar General and buy this very copy of Newt Gingrich's Brick Of Turgid-Bullshit (assuming someone hasn't snapped it up by then) -- 

-- and send it -- autographed by me -- to the person who puts me over the top!

Behold, a Tip Jar!