Ocasio-Cortez disses Shapiro debate dare

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro challenged Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the newcomer socialist Democrat from the Bronx, to a debate last Wednesday.

The conversation quickly devolved into discussions of sexual harassment and Orthodox Judaism.

Shapiro had offered $10,000 to the charity of Ocasio-Cortez’s choice or to her campaign if she took him up on it, saying she had accused Republicans of being afraid to debate. The challenge spurred the equivalent of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” chants from conservative Twitter.

(In a brief Internet search, I found no accusations of Republican cowardice by Ocasio-Cortez, but I did find an account of her debate strategy in The New Yorker: she showed up. Crowley bailed twice, and the one time he came, she whomped him, at least according to the writer.)

If there is a debate, you can count on Shapiro, a prominent Israel defender, to challenge Ocasio-Cortez on her criticism. She described the day in May when Israeli troops killed more than 60 Palestinians, mostly Hamas operatives attempting to breach the Gaza fence, as a “massacre.”

Ocasio-Cortez did not have to respond to Shapiro’s challenge; no one expects a candidate to debate non-candidates, and her from-the-left appeal is based more on getting out the vote than it is on persuading undecided independents or hostile conservatives.

But reply she did on Thursday, and in the process advanced a jarring simile: Shapiro’s very polite debate challenge, she said, was akin to catcalling.

“Just like catcalling, I don’t owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions,” she tweeted.

That prompted a new round of conservative outrage, accusing Ocasio-Cortez of playing the gender card.

“Crying sexism in order to avoid a debate of ideas is not a feminism I want any part of,” said Erielle Davidson, a contributor to The Federalist and TownHall.

John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, seized on Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that Shapiro’s challenge was based on “bad intentions.”

And then it was Shapiro’s turn to get weird: He advanced his Orthodox Judaism as a defense against intimations that he was harassing her. A defender, fellow conservative pundit Daniella Greenbaum, said Shapiro is “a happily married man,” implying presumably that no happily married man (like no Orthodox man) has ever made a rude sexual remark to a woman.

Carol Costello, an anchor on CNN’s Headline News Network, had enough. Costello hosted Shapiro for a sympathetic interview when leftist protesters tried to drive him away from a lecture last year at the University of California, Berkeley. Quoting Shapiro’s “but I’m Orthodox” tweet thread, she admonished, “Sigh. Seriously Ben this is a silly stunt.”