Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Stuck for Slurs, Ben Shapiro Calls Lena Dunham a ‘Potato’ — Again

Ben Shapiro is continuing his verbal assault on Lena Dunham, with the right-wing pundit referring to the artist as a “human potato” and ridiculing her father’s parenting skills.

“She actually thinks that she’s some sort of poetic genius,” he said on his Wednesday podcast, reading aloud a poem that the “Girls” creator penned after the Women’s March on Washington.

Headlined “Monday After March,” the poem likened President Donald Trump to an overbearing father and the marchers to rebellious teen girls.

Shapiro responded to the poem’s theme by denigrating the parenting skills of her father, Carroll Dunham, a New York-based avant garde painter. “He was this kind of art nouveau, ridiculous leftist and he brought up a daughter like Lena Dunham, who thinks that males are the worst thing ever,” he said. He added that the march gave Lena Dunham an excuse to “act like a bratty teenage child and rage about her vagina for no apparent reason.”

Dunham’s boyfriend is musician Jack Antonoff.

The former Breitbart editor (now head of his own Daily Wire) frequently targets Dunham for pillory, and is quite fond of the potato metaphor. He described her in December as someone with the “charisma, brains and looks of a russet potato.”

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

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

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.