“Go woke and go broke” is an article of faith among the MAGA faithful. It’s shorthand for the belief that diverse casting in TV shows or Hollywood movies is entirely the result of pressure from the all-powerful left, and that bottom-line considerations play no role for these mega-corporations. It can’t be possible, according to the right, that audiences are eager to see women and people of color in heroic roles. Hollywood would be wise, according to this worldview, to return to a system where heroes are white men, people of color are merely bit players, and women stick to their God-given roles as sex symbols, servants or damsels in distress. This is not, we are assured, a matter of placating the fragile egos of MAGA men, but hard-boiled dollars and cents.
Hollywood would be wise, according to the Daily Wire, to return to a system where heroes are white men, people of color are bit players and women stick to their God-given roles as sex symbols, servants or damsels in distress.
Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire has a long history of milking his audience’s resentment toward contemporary casting decisions, especially when those don’t conform with the expectation that women in movies should be pliant, white-bread sex objects. Shapiro was outraged by rumors that Marvel might cast a woman as the Silver Surfer. He was mad about Colombian-American actress Rachel Zegler playing Snow White in a recent Disney adaptation — even though the actress bears a strong resemblance to the original cartoon character — deeming her skin not “white as snow.” (Never mind that no one’s skin is literally “white as snow.”) He flipped out over a rumored “Lord of the Flies” remake with female actors, which never actually happened. He’s furious that Meryl Streep is being considered as the voice of Aslan from “The Chronicles of Narnia,” because it’s supposedly sacrilege for a woman to play a male talking lion. Famously, he set a Barbie doll on fire to protest Greta Gerwig’s movie portraying the doll as a woman with agency, rather than a passive plaything.
“Barbie” grossed $1.4 billion at the box office, which might suggest that Shapiro, who failed at screenwriting before building a career on conveying right-wing schlock, doesn’t exactly have a good read on what sells to mainstream audiences. Indeed, it seems likely he never really believed the “go woke, go broke” nonsense. His company, the Daily Wire, has long practiced its own version of the practice, hiring and aggressively promoting female hosts in order to make its ugly ideology more appealing to mass audiences. It’s amusing to note that these women have become so popular with right-wing audiences that Shapiro loses his ability to control them, a delicious irony in a realm that aggressively clings to the idea that women must only support men, and never be stars in their own right.
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The latest example is Brett Cooper, a 23-year-old right-wing commentator whose vibe is “young female Ben Shapiro,” right down to her failed Hollywood career and the pompous tones she uses to deliver pandering, half-baked opinions. Cooper even looks like Shapiro, with a similar face, similar coloring and the same permanent smirk. She was hired by the Daily Wire in 2022 for a show called “The Comment Section,” in an apparent bid to reach a younger audience, It’s not clear whether she actually accomplished that, or it was more like creepy older MAGA men enjoy looking at her. Either way, she soon rivaled and often surpassed Shapiro in views for her videos, whose inspiring titles included “Leftists Are Sterilizing Themselves” and “Hot Girls Love Trump.”
It’s a myth that affirmative action rewards less talented people, and the conservative media system provides a shining example.
Cooper’s popularity isn’t the result of talent or originality. Her takes are cookie-cutter MAGA outrage stuff, second-rate photocopies of Shapiro’s diatribes. It’s a myth that affirmative action rewards less talented people, and the conservative media system provides a shining example. Right-wingers are so desperate to hear their prejudices validated by a woman, especially if she’s young, cute and reasonably upbeat, that mediocrity rises to the top. Cooper has the hypocrisy of so many anti-feminist women, taking advantage of all the career opportunities and rights that generations of struggle have made possible, while at the same time constantly complaining that too much freedom has ruined other women. It’s worth observing that Cooper continues to work under her original name, although she was married in 2023.
Cooper appears to have faced a dilemma that feminists have spoken out about for decades — being undervalued at work by your male boss. She left the Daily Wire late last year, offering only vague rationalizations like, “I am ready to take on a new direction.” She has said she wants greater “autonomy” and more say over who she “wanted to work with,” while declining to offer specifics. Her fans were delighted, celebrating exactly the kind of “eff you, pay me” moment they castigate when avowed feminists do it. Will Sommer of The Bulwark reported on rumors that Cooper had conflict with Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boering, which seems plausible. After all, Boering wrote a movie in which the hero, played (naturally) by him, explains that women are naturally unable to play sports, drive cars, work in STEM fields or play in rock bands — but that’s OK! Their job is to nurture others.
Cooper has indeed paid a price for leaving the Daily Wire. Her independent show has already amassed over a million subscribers, but her audience at The Daily Wire was much larger, at 4.5 million. This transition may also have taken a personal toll. Boering, who abruptly resigned as CEO in March, hired producer Reagan Conrad to replace Cooper. Conrad was maid of honor at Cooper’s wedding, but, as Cooper confessed on a recent podcast, they aren’t friends anymore. I’m not saying anyone should pity a woman who built her career pandering to sexism, even if she doesn’t like being on the receiving end. She’s still got a massive audience and the low-work career of reciting mindless bigoted talking points for an audience whose only goal is killing off their last remaining critical faculties.
Cooper was preceded in Daily Wire-land by Candace Owens, who similarly outshone her male bosses with a combination of utter shamelessness, race-baiting and a level of downright MAGA weirdness that even Shapiro can’t equal. Owens had a popular show there that launched in 2020, but was forced out in March 2024, largely thanks to her unwillingness to conceal overtly antisemitic attitudes behind code words and dog whistles. Hating on LGBTQ people, racial minorities and women is one thing, it would seem, but bigotry against Jewish people crossed their line. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the actual MAGA audience, which has stuck with Owens, to the tune of 4 million-plus subscribers on her YouTube channel.
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It’s unlikely that Cooper will ever get that kind of audience. Owens brings a blend of loony energy and sincere malevolence that Cooper can’t quite muster. That’s not to say she is markedly less evil, just that Owens is a uniquely terrible person, in a way that’s difficult to replicate. But there’s no doubt that the Daily Wire has lost something with Cooper’s departure — not so much in talent, but certainly in visual interest. Bring up the Daily Wire website now and, at least in the headline shows, you’re greeted with an enervating sameness: one show after another advertised with similar-looking white men in what MAGA probably thinks are “smart” poses. It’s not clear why you should bother with these Michaels and Matts and Andrews, if you’ve already consumed Ben’s content.
At least having a lady on board mixed it up a little, offering what passes for novelty in the conformity of right-wing media. No wonder audiences loved Cooper, in the same way that drinking iced tea after five glasses of tepid tap water can feel like a revelation. How much it must annoy the men at the Daily Wire to learn that, yes, diversity actually is a strength.
