Re: The war on big food.
Okay, so I'd never heard or seen Milo Yiannopoulos before watching that video.
I had vaguely thought that the talk about him must be exaggerated, to at least some degree, but he comes across as being every bit as vile as he has been described.
Given that he's gay (and a cross dresser too, or was that just for "shock"?), it takes a certain amount of stupidity to gleefully carry water for people who would, in very many cases, gladly string you up from the nearest tree, given half a chance.
But then, he's clearly a troll. As such, attention is like oxygen to him. So stop feeding the troll. Mahrer talked about "free speech" and whatnot, but free speech doesn't mean that you have to give loathsome scum all the air time they want. The best thing that could possibly happen regarding Yiannopoulos is if every media outlet made a collective deal to completely ignore him, so that he'd have nothing else to do but crawl back under his rock.
Does he even believe half the stuff he's saying? I somehow doubt it. What he wants it attention -- heck he was literally begging Kingston to tell him to "fuck off." As such, it seems that he'll do anything, say anything, so long as it gets him attention. But if he doesn't truly believe all the awful things he's saying, then in my opinion, that makes him worse than a genuine bigot. I can at least respect someone who spews such poison because he genuinely hates women, transgenders, African-Americans, Jews, etc. At least he's being honest. But someone who does so because he craves attention (and the money that it brings) is far worse, if you ask me, because he's willing to destroy civil society for personal gain.
But you know what? Jack Kingston didn't come off at all well, either. Sure, he wouldn't come right out and support Yiannopoulos, but he looked like he was enjoying the heck out of hearing Yiannopoulos speak. You could practically hear him thinking "Go! Keep talking, you magnificent bastard! The more you speak, the more you'll fire up the bigots, racists, and other Republican-voting scum."
Bill Mahrer clearly didn't care much for Yiannopoulos himself, but kept egging him on. I can only assume that he knew what Yiannopoulos was before booking him (and if he didn't, he very soon found out), so that pretty clearly demonstrates that he was willing to give such a vile excuse for a human being free air time in order to increase his own ratings. As such, I've lost a great deal of whatever respect I may have had for Mahrer.
Larry Wilmore and Malcolm Nance, at least, handled themselves well. Though in telling Yiannopoulos to "fuck off," they gave him exactly what he was looking for.
But honestly, Malcolm Nance may be my new hero. I absolutely love that he called Jack Kingston on his hypocrisy and opportunism, by pointing out that Kingston was clearly and blatantly putting the interest of the Republican Party over that of the nation itself.
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.” -- Socrates
Last edited by The Lone Ranger; 02-19-2017 at 04:29 PM.
Reason: Typo
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