Conventional wisdom suggested that Milo Yiannopoulos should have been finished last month, when Buzzfeed detailed his involvement in Breitbart News’ collaboration with racists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis.
It turns out that Milo wasn’t just a highly-paid troll. He was willing to let some of the most notorious white supremacists in the nation copyedit what turned into his idiot’s guide to the alt-right. He was also more than willing to let Steve Bannon weaponize him in Breitbart’s effort to “save Western civilization.” It also revealed that Milo was not above enlisting the help of reporters at other media outlets to assist in his trolling campaigns.
And despite his claims that he had nothing to do with the alt-right, BuzzFeed also caught Milo on tape singing a karaoke version of “America the Beautiful” while Richard Spencer and several other alt-right activists happily raised their hands in the Nazi salute. In case you missed it, watch here.
Combined with the furor that ensued after he was caught on tape appearing to condone pedophilia, it looked like Milo was going to have a hard time finding somewhere to troll.
But like a horror-movie monster arisen from the dead, Milo is back. On Friday, he joined another right-wing pseudo-news site, The Daily Caller, as a weekly columnist. Originally, Daily Caller editor-in-chief Geoffrey Ingersoll approached Milo about a one-time op-ed about the festering sexual assault scandal surrounding Kevin Spacey. Milo wanted a full-blown column, and The Daily Caller agreed.
Milo opened his column with a swipe at his former sugar daddy, Robert Mercer.
“This week I have been accused of causing ‘pain and divisiveness.’ I should hope so.”
He was referring to Mercer’s announcement that was stepping down as CEO of his hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, amid growing scrutiny over his role in funding Milo, Breitbart, and other right-wing media platforms and personalities. Mercer blasted Milo for causing “pain and divisiveness” rather than sparking “open and productive discourse,” and was in the midst of “severing all ties with him.”
What took so long, Bob? After all, you didn’t seem to mind when Milo was permanently booted off Twitter for leading the harassment of Leslie Jones. You didn’t bat an eyelash when Milo harrumphed that the rape culture on Harvard’s men’s soccer team was just “locker room talk.” Indeed, when Milo was pushed out at Breitbart, you immediately fronted him more money for a new venture called “Milo Inc.”
It’s probably why Brooke Rogers of National Review essentially asked The Daily Caller, “What are you thinking?”
https://twitter.com/bkerogers/status/926533480275734528
This isn’t the first time that The Daily Caller has formally joined hands with an alt-right luminary. If you’ll recall, this spring it cut a deal with Jason Kessler–later to become infamous as one of the organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. One of the articles he wrote concerned a series of protests against plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from a park in Charlottesville.
But when ProPublica discovered that Kessler was actually one of the rally organizers, The Daily Caller tore up its contract with him. In the aftermath of the Charlottesville rally, The Daily Caller scrubbed all of Kessler’s articles from its site. If past history is any indication, The Daily Caller is setting itself up to get burned again.
We already knew this outfit’s standards weren’t that great. This is the same outfit that published a staggeringly sexist profile of Baltimore City state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby after she indicted the six cops who killed Freddie Gray. But if they’re willing to join forces with the likes of Milo, their standards must be even lower than first thought. And we have to wonder if they even have standards at all.
(featured image courtesy Kmeron, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
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