Candace Owens Is Just Boring
Right wing podcast star courts banality on a daily basis
By David Andrew Stoler, February 8, 2023
In a recent episode of her eponymous Daily Wire podcast, Kanye West Influencer and Right Wing Troll Candace Owens needed to get something off her chest. About to chime in on the controversy surrounding the death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of the police, Owens couldn’t refrain from first letting listeners know, “This weekend…I organized my spice cabinet! I felt very productive.”
It’s time to face facts about Owens: although she has well over a million YouTube subscribers and nearly 23k podcast subs, she’s just boring. She knows how to step blandly into a controversy, yes; and there’s no need to guess why an attractive podcaster who is both black and keen to propagate the finest White Supremacy sentiment might become popular with the Far Right. But to delve much deeper into her podcasts is to find yourself hitting bottom right quick.
Still Waters Run Shallow
To get a sense of just how superficial Owens is, take a look at the tepidity of even her more controversially-themed podcasts from the first week of Black History Month:
Ep. 83 – My Opinion On Tyre Nichols
● Hot Take: Owens Kondo’d the heck out of her pantry last weekend.
● Bottom Line: Owens admits the footage of Tyre Nichols is wrenching, but with a caveat so full of baseless supposition it makes Miss Cleo look like a New Yorker fact-checker: “Maybe [the officers] got super angry because in the beginning he grabbed their gun, we don’t know.”
Ep. 84 – Pornhub Releases Its Top Searches for 2022
● Hot Take: We are experiencing “a time of evil,” and the proof is Sam Smith.
● Bottom Line: The fact that “Ebony” was the second-highest searched term on Pornhub doesn’t make sense because “we’re told we’re number one in racism.”
EP. 85 – Disturbing Truths About YouTube Kids
● Hot Take: Jealous people hate my organized pantry.
● Bottom Line: “There is an entire ecosystem of evil in the social media companies taking part in a campaign… to expose our children to the LGBTQIA+ agenda, which obviously is steering toward pedophilia.”
Ep. 86 – Women, It’s Time for Us to Stop Wearing Yoga Pants
● Hot Take: “Yoga pants are ruining Western Civilization.”
● Bottom Line: In the 1800s people wore formal clothes to plow fields. Now women are committing “violence” with their choices of clothing.
Ep. 87 – Something Strange Is Happening with Our Egg Supply
● Hot Take: Owens refused to vaccinate her kitten, “and she was never sick, not one day.” Until she was eaten by coyotes.
● Bottom Line: Why are egg prices so high? It’s not the Avian Flu, which her buddy Tucker Carlson points out is, like COVID, a “manufactured virus,” but an “Eggspiracy” (her term) in which chickens are getting burned aliveand/or poisoned by Big Pharma because… Land O’ Lakes doesn’t want anyone to buy other people’s eggs?
Yoga Pants, YouTubers, and Porn: cutting edge stuff. As for nuance, Owens’s Daily Wire stablemates Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson need not feel threatened: Owens literally mentioned her pantry more times during the week than she did Tyre Nichols, even though a whole episode is named after her “take” on him. And nearly everything that could have had meat on it – the nefariousness of social media marketing to kids; the way big companies, including Land O’ Lakes, profit off of suffering – were passed over in favor of tips on how to stick to your New Year’s resolution and the admission that, yes, she wore yoga pants up until two weeks ago.
Disconnected Dots
What is interesting about Owens is the way she fails to connect her own dots. For example, following her yoga piece is a take on George Washington University’s recent installation of a vending machine for Plan B. (Needless to say: she doesn’t like it.) One might call people choosing their own clothes and deciding when they want to get pregnant a major step forward or a major step backward, depending on your political alignment – but they’re certainly of a kind. Not to Owens: she set it up, then passed right over it, instead leaning heavily into xenophobia by repeatedly faltering over the ethnic names of those who pushed for the machines.
Owens may host one of the fastest growing podcasts on the Right, it doesn’t take a long listen before the truth becomes quickly clear: when it comes issues that actually matter, she’s out of her depth.
David Andrew Stoler’s writing has appeared in the Guardian, Politico, and McSweeney’s, among many others. He is the founder of misanthropictures, an independent film company whose award-winning work tells the stories of the traditionally underrepresented.
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She knows how to step blandly into a controversy, yes; and there’s no need to guess why an attractive podcaster who is both black and keen to propagate the finest White Supremacy sentiment might become popular with the Far Right. But to delve much deeper into her podcasts is to find yourself hitting bottom right quick. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
