Ahead of the release of the "Barbie" movie, the far-right invented a conspiracy that the film promoted Chinese Communism and other reasons for outrage. Other conservatives, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), say it should be the "next Bud Light," a campaign that ended with the beer company pulling back from its campaign targeting LGBTQ customers.
Extremist "Ben Shapiro [claimed] he has destroyed Barbie," said MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan.
Neither succeeded, as the film's opening weekend pulled in a record $155 million in the United States.
Conservatives who claim to be the "guardians of pop-culture (sic)" spent 72 minutes attacking the film as a "cancer" and "man-hating, feminist propaganda."
Other men were triggered by the idea of Ken being a "beta," which goes back to the actual history of the doll itself, which was treated as an accessory with no other identity other than being Barbie's boyfriend.
Even one female MAGA fan cited it as an indicator of why Hollywood was "flailing."
"These are grown men losing their minds over a movie about a doll," Hasan continued. "What has happened to the conservative movement? There was a time when conservatives had substantive things to say about taxes, regulation, defense, and foreign policy. Now it's Barbie this, Dr. Seuss that, Bud Light, Mr. Potato Head. The skin color of the Little Mermaid. It's ridiculous. It is childish. It is pretty pathetic, actually. Is it not?"
Colleague Ayman Mohyeldin agreed but brought up the sexualization of M&M's by fired Fox host Tucker Carlson.
"Remember, there was a period when they had an outrage over M&M's. You are totally right. It is beyond pathetic and honestly, you know it's worse," Mohyeldin said. "It's not just, you know, the desperation of people like 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. It's that they always do it with this arrogance. A sense that they somehow speak for the masses. They have the pulse of what Americans really care about or what they want. Everyone else is out of touch. Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro — they know what's up."
He went on to cite the box-office numbers revealing Barbie was the top movie for 2023 thus far.
See the moment in the video below or at the link here.