Late-night television might get a jolt if Dave Rubin has anything to say about it.
The host of “The Rubin Report” tells The Daily Wire he’s exploring a late-night show of his own. And, given his unofficial membership in the Intellectual Dark Web, he might just revolutionize the format.
For now, Rubin is sharing his anti-P.C. sentiments in “Don’t Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason.” Part memoir, part teaching guide, the book asks readers to make up their own minds on hot button issues without fearing the woke mob.
“I’m not saying everyone should agree with me … [the book is] a framework for people to think about the issues of the day,” Rubin says.
“Don’t Burn This Book” excoriates the mainstream media, which he calls “deeply corrupt” and social justice scolds who eschew nuance and context.
That common-sense philosophy comes with a price in today’s culture. It’s something he explores in great depth in the book, but it’s also happening now. He cites a “massive coordinated campaign” on sites like Reddit to sink the book’s Amazon.com reviews.
“That is a modern book burning … It’s not actually tossing books into a bonfire. You burn a book because you don’t want its ideas to get out,” he says, noting his tome cracked the New York Times’ bestseller list despite the protests.
“Don’t Burn This Book” lets Rubin share how his shift from progressive to classic liberal cost him plenty of friends and even his mental and physical health.
He’s now a target due to his right-leaning ways, but liberals can’t escape the mob, either. He recalls a frank moment from former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson about the Left/Right divide.
“What does it say that Fox News is nicer to me than the lefties are? What does it say that the conservatives are nicer to me,” she asked.
The far left “has become this giant movement of destruction, not a movement of creation,” Rubin says, something even select left-leaning guests share off-camera with him.
Rubin’s show hails from California, home for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Yet those same celebrities rarely have his, or our, backs on free speech matters.
“They’re a bunch of cowards,” he says flatly. “Hollywood is filled with more cowards than most industries… they’re not providing anything that’s unique. Even the greatest actor could be replaced by a marginal actor tomorrow and we’d still go see movies.
“I have actor friends who agree with me on some [free speech views],” he adds, but they won’t say so publicly.
Rubin’s mission on and off the page is to bring back lively, vigorous debate. He thinks he knows partly why it’s suddenly gone out of vogue. For too many people, the political fight is front and center in our lives.
And that’s only hurting us.
“If politics, the day to day … if that thing is you guiding philosophy every day you’ll wake up to be miserable,” he says, adding it’s why Leftists get so emotional when anyone critiques their world view.
The latter plays out on college campuses nationwide.
“This has become a condition of the Left. We must silence everyone we disagree with,” he says.
If a radical like the far-left activist Linda Sarsour attempts to speak at a university, conservatives will either not show up or assemble a small, peaceful protest against her ideas. Rubin notes. That’s hardly the case when a Ben Shapiro or Dennis Prager touches down on those same universities. Instead of protecting their right to be heard, campuses often kowtow to the woke mob.
“They’ll also tell you words are violent … and the same people say it’s OK to ‘punch a Nazi,’” he notes of those far-left voices.
He playfully compares the treatment of conservatives to how the Jedis were eliminated by “Order 66” in “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.”
Yes, Rubin is a “Star Wars” enthusiast in between book deals and streaming interviews.
Not every liberal thinks this way, of course. Rubin cites HBO host Bill Maher, who he calls the “last liberal fighting” for free speech.
“Most of them are completely cowed into silence,” he says.
Should Rubin join the late-night TV fray he doesn’t sound afraid of the competition. That’s particularly true during the current pandemic.
“We’re seeing how irrelevant these quote-unquote comedians are … they’re barely funnier than your neighbor, and they’re all ideologically the same, all Leftists,” Rubin says.
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