All too often, we’ve seen situations where politicians and other public figures do something right, but can’t do it right. And almost as often, they often dig themselves in an even deeper hole. Well, add the saga of Breitbart News’ troll-in-chief, Milo Yiannopoulos, to the list. Following the discovery of footage from a few years ago showing him seemingly defending and condoning pedophilia, Yiannopoulos resigned amid a firestorm of criticism. However, he and his boss maintains that those big, bad libruls forced this move.
Within 24 hours of the footage coming to light, the Conservative Political Action Conference yanked him from this coming weekend’s schedule, and Simon and Schuster pulped his planned book, “Dangerous,” which was due out later this year. But the move that should have happened first–his ouster from Breitbart–didn’t happen until Tuesday afternoon, when Yiannopoulos announced his resignation. The New York Times’ Michael Grynbaum obtained his full statement.
Break: MILO resigns from Breitbart pic.twitter.com/pSQnJ0b9vA
— Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) February 21, 2017
No one seriously believes this was truly Milo’s decision. At least six Breitbart staffers were ready to resign if Milo were allowed to stay on, going as far as to give Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow an ultimatum–either Milo goes, or we go. Additionally, a growing faction of Breitbart’s senior management thought that these remarks were “a bridge too far,” even for a site that seems to have no standards at all.
Yiannopoulos addressed his impending departure in a press conference after he tendered his resignation. Watch here.
Yiannopoulos was seemingly contrite, saying that he spoke in a manner that led listeners to conclude his “British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humor” sounded like “flippancy, a lack of care for other victims, or worse, advocacy.” He also conceded that his language was “imprecise,” but adamantly denied that he supported pedophilia in any way, and even went as far as to tout his own record of blowing the whistle on abuse. However, he apologized if his manner of dealing with the abuse he experienced as a child did any harm to child abuse victims.
But at the same time, he continued to maintain that it is possible for younger men and older men to enter into relationships that help younger men deal with “lack of support or understanding at home”–something that he claimed was an open secret to any gay man. He also blamed his resignation on “a cynical media witch hunt,” and vowed to go it alone very soon with his own media venture.
As it turns out, Milo was digging a hole that his now-former boss, Marlow, started digging on SiriusXM’s “Breitbart News Daily” a few hours earlier. Listen here.
Marlow condemned Milo’s remarks as “indefensible” and “appalling.” However, he claimed–with a straight face–that they had come to light as part of a “coordinated hit” by liberal groups bent on taking down one of the most rabidly pro-Trump news sites on the Internet–a site that so loyal to the Donald that it’s been nicknamed “Trumpbart.”
Uh huh. So radical liberals like Bill Kristol and Jonah Goldberg launched a coordinated effort to bring down Milo. And those bleeding-heart liberal squishes at the American Conservative Union pulled Milo’s invite to CPAC. And Reagan Battalion, the conservative group that released those tapes, was hacked by liberals. Yeah, OK.
Apparently in the world of Trumpbart, you can’t be a conservative and have a basic sense of decency. Well, Alex, I know a number of conservatives who might disagree with you. One of them told me what she thought of the manner you and your Trumpbart colleagues handled this in a way that I can’t repeat here. I will say, though, that she was being extremely kind to it.
What makes this even more appalling is that there was even a debate about whether Milo needed to go. By comparison, “Saturday Night Live” writer Katie Rich was deservedly suspended within minutes of slagging Barron Trump on Twitter. So attacking the underage child of a politician gets you suspended immediately, but condoning pedophilia is cause for a debate about whether you should stay on? Got it.
The only conclusion that can be credibly drawn here is that Trumpbart created an environment that made it possible for a troll like Yiannipoulos to thrive at all. That’s about the only thing you can conclude when he stayed on the payroll after being banned from Twitter for trolling Leslie Jones and fobbing off the rape culture on Harvard’s men’s soccer team as “locker room talk.” And it’s about the only thing you can conclude when there was even a need to debate whether Milo should get the boot.
If Milo and Trumpbart seriously believe that a call for basic decency is a “cynical media witch hunt” and a “coordinated hit” by the left, then we really have to start asking whether and in what form Trumpbart should continue to exist. And we also have to ask whether former Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon, who is now Trump’s top political operative, has any business in the White House.
(featured image courtesy Kmeron, available under a Creative Commons-BY license)
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