Ben Shapiro: what the right-wing commentator said about Cardi B’s song WAP - and why he’s being ridiculed online

The right-wing commentator described the rap song as “really, really, really vulgar”

Ben Shapiro is an American conservative political commentator (Getty Images)

Ben Shapiro has been ridiculed for his bizarre reaction to a hit pop song.

The song in question, WAP by rappers Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, contains sexual imagery which drew a prudish response from the American right-wing commentator, who read a censored version of the song to listeners of his podcast, The Ben Shapiro Show.

Cardi B is among those who have mocked Shapiro, stating that she “can’t believe conservatives soo mad about WAP.” The proudly explicit song has also been criticised by a number of Republican politicians.

The morally outraged figure has drawn controversy in the past for his incendiary views, once tweeting: “Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage”.

What did Ben Shapiro say?

Shapiro, who has previously said that rap music is for stupid people, read the lyrics aloud to his audience while providing his own commentary on the pop song.

Criticising the singers for singing about female sexual pleasure, Shapiro sarcastically questioned whether the song was what feminists fought for.

“This is what feminists fought for. This is what the feminist movement was all about,” he said, adding, “And if you say anything differently it’s ’cause you’re a misogynist, see?”

On the contents of the song he says: “It gets really, really, really vulgar.”

How did the internet react?

The commentator’s stone faced reading of the sexually explicit lyrics instantly drew ridicule with memes and remixes of the reading quickly produced and circulated.

Many questioned why the commentator, who has previously criticised Cardi B’s Bodak Yellow, opted to criticise a song which celebrates female pleasure from consensual sex, but remain silent on the lyrics of male-produced songs, such as Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”, and Rick Ross and Future’s “U.O.E.N.O” which have both been accused of promoting date rape culture.

Ben Shapiro controversies

Ben Shapiro’s career has been punctuated with controversial and incendiary statements.

In 2016 he was heavily criticised for a tweet about the death of teenager Trayvon Martin.

He tweeted: “Trayvon Martin would have turned 21 today if he hadn't taken a man's head and beaten it on the pavement before being shot.”

Shapiro, who practices orthodox Judaism, was criticised by the Jewish community when he labelled Jewish people who vote Democrat Jews In Name Only (JINO).

In 2007 he wrote an article calling the Arab Palestinian population “rotten to the core” and once tweeted "Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage".

In 2002 he wrote: "I am getting really sick of people who whine about 'civilian casualties'... when I see in the newspapers that civilians in Afghanistan or the West Bank were killed by American or Israeli troops, I don't really care", adding “one American soldier is worth far more than an Afghan civilian". Shapiro has since apologised for these claims.