(UPDATE: Tur contacted Salon to dispute Shapiro's claim that she confronted him after the show. Her emailed is reprinted below.)
Four days after repeatedly insulting trans woman Zoey Tur on "Dr. Drew on Call," Brietbart Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro filed battery charges against her with the Los Angeles Police Department.
On the program, Shapiro continually insulted the transgender community by refusing to refer to Caitlyn Jenner with her preferred pronoun, then deliberately provoking Tur, asking her "What are your genetics, sir?"
Tur responded by putting a hand on his shoulder and saying, "you should cut that out now, or you'll go home in an ambulance." Shapiro alleged that after the show, Tur said the two should meet in the parking lot. Breitbart News is also reporting that "Tur tweeted out on Friday that he would like to "curb stomp" Shapiro, which Breitbart Editor-at-Large -- who also refused to refer to Tur by her preferred pronoun -- claimed is an anti-Semitic statement because he's only familiar with the practice from the film "American History X."
Tur was clearly in the wrong to threaten Shapiro -- though whether her words and endorsement of a tweet amount to battery are a matter for the Los Angeles Police Department to decide -- but Shapiro and his adoring fans utterly ignore Shapiro's complicity in creating the hostile environment in which the threat was uttered.
And Shapiro is continuing to create such an environment on his Twitter feed, retweeting people who approve of his statements:
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Shapiro is playing a coward's game here -- doing everything he can to provoke someone to violence, then running to the police the moment anyone threatens him -- but it's of a piece with his belief, epitomized in "Liberal Bullies," that conservatives are the victims of a violent culture of silencing and suppression that could potentially turn violent.
"Just because the left has designated someone a member of the victim class does not mean that that person gets to infringe the rights of others," he told Breitbart News. “Until the left learns that, their aggression will not stop."
That he was allowed the opportunity to repeatedly and pointedly provoke a trans woman on national television for nearly 10 minutes before Tur threatened him would, if he actually thought about, seem to invalidate that argument utterly -- but Shapiro's not really one to actually think about things.
UPDATE: Tur emailed Salon and wrote that "the only conversation I had with Shaprio was on camera. I left the studio for home before he was off the set. CNN can confirm that. I didn't know what curb stamp meant until Saturday. Oh, and I'm Jewish. Even saved an IDF soldier during a Katyusha rocket attack (Israel's war with Hamas/Lebanon)."
"Shapiro and his rag made that anti-Semitic stuff up," she added. "How can a Jewish woman that performed a tracheotomy on an IDF soldier during war be a neo-Nazi?"
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