MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan has seen the disparaging responses to “Barbie” from various conservative male figureheads — from Ted Cruz to Ben Shapiro to Piers Morgan — and finds the whole thing “pretty pathetic.”
Joined by fellow MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin on “The Mehdi Hasan Show,” Hasan admitted on Monday’s episode that he is “semi-enjoying watching the male conservative meltdown over the ‘Barbie’ movie,” but that it makes him question where the conservative movement as a whole went awry.
“These are grown men losing their minds over a movie about a doll. What has happened to the conservative movement?” he bemoaned. “There was a time when conservatives had substantive things to say about taxes, regulation, defense, foreign policy. But now it’s just, ‘Barbie this, Dr. Seuss that.’ Bud Light, Mr. Potato Head, the skin color of the Little Mermaid. It’s ridiculous, it’s childish. It’s pretty pathetic, actually.”
Mohyeldin jumped in agreeing and said that such behavior is actually “beyond pathetic” and that it’s an effort from the likes of Cruz and Shapiro to “inject themselves into every aspect of culture and somehow make it a point of friction between the right and the left.”
“They always do it with this kind of arrogance — this sense that they somehow speak for the masses and have the pulse for what Americans really care about or what they want. Everyone else is out of touch but Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro. They know what’s up,” Mohyeldin said.
The Egyptian commentator then looked to the staggering box office numbers behind “Barbie,” which as TheWrap reported Monday, drew in $162 million domestically.
“So once again, Ted Cruz, Ben Shapiro, the others who have been burning their Barbie dolls the past few weeks in protest? They are once again wrong,” Mohyeldin said. “Americans were excited to see this movie. And you know why, Mehdi? They know it’s just a movie to enjoy and not some sinister ploy to brainwash the masses.”
“It’s always projection, Ayman, with the right, because there is a movie out at the box office right now that I was just talking about called ‘Sound of Freedom,’ which is all about enraging and getting the base worked up. But ‘Barbie’ isn’t that,” Hasan concluded.
Watch the interview segment from Monday’s “The Mehdi Hasan Show” in the video above.
