Ben Shapiro Mocks Sarah Silverman Over Mistaken Swastika Spotting

By Daniel J. Solomon February 13, 2017

Ben Shapiro took aim at comedian Sarah Silverman on Monday, mocking her for mistaking construction signs for badly drawn swastikas.

“Sarah Silverman is one of the dumbest human beings on planet Earth. She’s this comedienne who’s made her fortune from basically doing the little girl voice and saying super dirty things,” he said in a monologue on his podcast. “She also happens to be an absolute dumb-ass around politics.”

Silverman tweeted an image Sunday showing two orange scrawlings on a sidewalk that were S-shaped and that she thought might resemble swastikas. It turned out they were common scribblings left on the concrete to help utility workers do their jobs.

Walking to get coffee saw these all over a sidewalk in the town I’m in. Is this an attempt at swastikas? Do neo nazis not have google? pic.twitter.com/A4ses1G3ru

— Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) February 12, 2017

“It’s hard enough to fight anti-Semitism without people making up instances of anti-Semitism to fight,” Shapiro fumed. The right-wing pundit appears to take particular relish in targeting left-wing comedians, having previously attacked Amy Schumer, Timothy Noah, Samantha Bee and Lena Dunham (whom he has referred to as a “potato”).

Silverman apologized for her mistake, and explained that she was prone to interpret the sign as anti-Semitic due to constant trolling against her for being Jewish.

It’s a construction marker. Innocent mistake for a Jew that gets “burn in an oven!” at least weekly on twitter. Still pretty close though.. pic.twitter.com/8Gsuy3QkuE

— Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) February 13, 2017

To be sure, vandals often do struggle to draw their swastikas correctly; the Forward has documented a number of ineptly executed graffiti during the post-election surge in hate crime.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO