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Andrew Klavan — the novelist-turned-pundit who hosts The Andrew Klavan Show on the Daily Wire — has released a new video in which he ranks classic video games, including the beloved Super Mario franchise, and admits there’s one title on the list he “truly hates.” His voice carries the kind of contrarian, no-nonsense cultural commentary his audience expects, and the clip is exactly the sort of plainspoken pushback against fashionable tastes that conservative listeners have come to enjoy.
There’s something righteous about defending the simple pleasures of an older generation of games, and Klavan’s show taps into that nostalgia like a shot of common sense. These classics rewarded skill, patience, and fair play — virtues that too often get mocked by today’s culture industries in favor of trends and social signaling. Fans tired of PC virtue-signaling appreciate a host willing to say what he thinks about a game, even if that opinion annoys gatekeepers in the cultural elite.
When a commentator says he “truly hates” one of the classics, it isn’t just hot take theater; it’s a reminder that taste is personal and that conservative critics don’t owe deference to the sacred cows of any clique. Klavan’s willingness to pick apart a cherished title is refreshing precisely because it rejects the bland consensus that modern media often imposes. Conservatives should welcome debate over aesthetics — defending what we love while not shrinking from honest criticism.
The bigger story isn’t the ranking itself but what the reaction to it exposes: an industry and media class eager to instruct us on what counts as respectable entertainment. That top-down cultural instruction works until it doesn’t — until ordinary people, adults who grew up on cartridge-driven joy, push back. Klavan’s video is a small but telling example of how grassroots taste resists being bureaucratized by pundits and programmers.
This episode also highlights an important conservative truth: culture matters, and reclaiming our cultural inheritance is part of defending a healthy public life. Classic games are not just retro kitsch; they’re artifacts of a time when entertainment aimed to amuse and challenge rather than lecture. If conservatives want to win hearts and minds, we should start by celebrating the things that brought generations together long before ideology got its hands on every pastime.
In the end, Klavan’s ranking is more than a list — it’s a call to steady judgment and plain speech in a noisy cultural marketplace. Whether you agree with his dislikes or not, it’s worth applauding a commentator who refuses to genuflect to trendy orthodoxies and instead talks honestly about what he enjoys and what he doesn’t. That kind of independence of taste is exactly the sort of cultural muscle conservatives should be exercising more often.
